Historical Statues and Memorials

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, my involvement with memorials is as a trustee of the War Memorials Trust. First, I want to wish a fair wind to the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and his colleagues are working on. I hope they are successful.

There are a number of museums about the slave trade, particularly in various port cities in our country, which tell people about the appalling effects of the trade in considerable detail. They are in their way memorials to what took place and to those who suffered. A discussion about memorials versus museums echoes the discussions, particularly after World War I, when local people thought about whether they wanted a war memorial carved in stone in their area or whether an amenity of some kind was more appropriate. Different communities took different decisions. We all know of war memorial hospitals, playing fields, village halls and so on.

I come originally from Leicester, where we have not only a fine memorial arch, designed by Edwin Lutyens, but also the University of Leicester, which was founded as a college in 1921, specifically as a war memorial. It proudly proclaims in its motto, “Ut vitam habeant”—so that they may have life. Its website describes the university as,

“a living memorial for those who lost their lives in [the] First World War”.

The War Memorials Trust supports war memorials that are in need of restoration, both of the stone kind and of an amenity kind—although not the University of Leicester, simply because it is outside our scope. We are assisted in this now by the Government’s First World War Memorials Programme, which we run for them with Historic England and the equivalent bodies in other parts of the UK. If any noble Lords or others know of a war memorial of either kind that seems in need of a bit of TLC, please let us know and we will do what we can to help, with both advice and, sometimes, grants.

Unfortunately the memorial suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, would not qualify, both because it is a new memorial—we are specifically about the conservation of existing memorials—and because I do not think it could exactly count as a war memorial under the definition used for legal purposes. Nevertheless, I wish his project well. It deserves the support of all in this House.