Anger over plan to move Pankhurst statue away from parliament

[IAmInsignificunt]

www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/17/anger-over-plan-to-move-pankhurst-statue-away-from-parliament?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Link to the planning application here:

idoxpa.westminster.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=neighbourComments&keyVal=PBLU35RPJD200

It takes less than five minutes to register on the planning site and register an objection - five minutes well spent!

Sigh. I've read the article twice but I still don't understand why they want to move the statue?

I don't know why they want to move it, but there's 145 public comments so far, all of them objecting to the move.

FermatsTheorem
Thanks for that link! I’m going to object but also going to encourage my friend who lives very nearby to do the same. I wonder if locals objecting has sway in planning persmission more so than outsiders?

why would the EP trust want to move it?

have they been offered a huge amount of money by the private college or something?!

Up to 175 comments now, all of them objecting to the move.

Womaningreen, it's not the real Pankhurst Trust, it is some people calling themselves the Emmeline Pankhurst Trust.

Thanks @badtime

WTAF is going on?! I don't want to go all conspiracy theory...but that's kind of all I can think of. A dummy named company to see if they could get away with it?

it's not the real Pankhurst Trust, it is some people calling themselves the Emmeline Pankhurst Trust.

Wow, this is weird. What is their reasoning for setting up a rival trust?

How weird - they appear to have been set up last year

beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10726298

Looking very dodgy indeed. The officers of the company seem to be former Tory MP Sir Neil Thorne and his wife Lady Sheila Thorne. It says on his wikipedia page that he's leading a campaign to install a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Parliament Square. So why remove one from Victoria Gardens (just the other side of the HoP) and seek to move it to a private garden in some college grounds?

Baffling. Is this a wealthy man appropriating a women's group (now where have we heard that before?) or what?

They've taken down the planning application link / closed it to the public...

refuse
It's still there - I can see a number of new objections

I can still access it from the email I received confirming my objection.

@FermatsTheorem

thanks, that's interesting.

the best outcome I can see from that is that a pair of idiots genuinely want a new statue and thought it was naice to move the current one to a private college. But that's a best case, and surely they would have realised that it would cause a public outcry?

We do of course have these vanity projects in London - that stupid thing Mittal built in Stratford, don't know what it is exactly or what it is meant to be. But perhaps this couple wanted to build a new statue in an ego drive thing? And what's the betting they have a £ interest in the college, in that case?

From the planning documents:

"The proposal involves the relocation of the memorial to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst from its existing location in
Victoria Tower Gardens , Westminster to a new site at Regent’s University London, Inner Circle , London , NW1 4NS . The proposals also include the erection of a new memorial sculpture to Emmeline Pankhurst by Angela Conner on Canning Green, Parliament Square
. All three sites are located within the City of Westminster. Victoria Tower Gardens and Canning Green (both Grade II Registered Parks and Gardens) are located within the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area, whilst Regent’s University London is located within Regent’s Park,
a Grade I Registered Park and Garden and Conservation Area. The existing memorial to Emmeline was unveiled in 1930 and sculpted by A. G. Walker, a well -known artist of public memorials; the memorial to Christabel was added in 1958 -59. The memorial as a whole was statutorily listed Grade II in February 1970; the brief list description can be found in Appendix 1. "

It may be above board - Thorne has apparently been campaigning for a statue to Pankhurst in Parliament square, and the application certainly mentions the erection of a new statue, so it may be that it's not considered possible to have two statues to one individual so close to Parliament, so a choice has to be made. But if that's the case, why not say so?

(Dons tinfoil hat - it is also possible that the Graun is doing its "report extremely selectively thing" and deliberately omitted the detail about the plans for a replacement statue in a much more prominent place. Thorne was a Tory MP, after all, and from the sound of it, had a number of run-ins with John Bercow. As we all know, if the Graun has to choose between women's issues and toeing the "lefty-dude-bro-solidarity" line, they'll go for the latter every time.)

Yes, that is interesting. This report from the Art Newspaper says the folllowing:

The former Conservative member of parliament, Neil Thorne, launched a campaign more than three years ago to erect a sculpture of Pankhurst, which was backed by the former prime minister David Cameron. According to the Daily Telegraph, Thorne’s wife, Sheila, noticed the existing statue of Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens. The couple’s original plan was to move this sculpture to Brompton Cemetery in west London where Pankhurst is buried. This idea was scrapped, and the London-based artist Angela Conner was subsequently commissioned to make a new sculpture of Pankhurst for the Canning Green site near the Supreme Court by Parliament.

www.theartnewspaper.com/news/pankhurst-statue-on-the-move

I'm completely confused by this.

Anyone can apply for and get planning permission for any land without the applicant owning or having any right to the land. But if you don't own (or have a lease with appropriate rights) you can't implement the consent so what right would this trust have to actually do anything?

Apparently it was because of some ones wife thought it was in the way while she was walking her dog. Don’t know how true that is ..,

womanandhersphere.com/2018/08/15/suffrage-stories-save-mrs-pankhursts-statue/

I might be missing something but it is the owner of land who decides if a planning consent is implemented.

Do these people own the land? They don't need to own it to apply for a planning consent but they can do nothing with it if the owner doesn't let them.

The replacement is described as a "sculpture" not a statue.

What kind of sculpture? A globe or a triangle? Because that's the sort of "sculpture" that Angela Conner produces.

There was a humorous comment in today's Sunday Times that the statue should be chained to the railings outside parliament. That's a somewhat appealing idea.