Historical Statues and Memorials

Lord Finkelstein Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for holding this debate and for his eloquent and persuasive speech, backed equally eloquently and persuasively by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence. It was a compelling case that he made.

I start with a quiz question: what do General Smuts, Winston Churchill, Viscount Palmerston, David Lloyd George, Nelson Mandela, George Canning, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi have in common? There are two possible answers, neither of which will win you the points. The first is that they are all commemorated by statues in Parliament Square. The second is that they are all men. Every statue in Parliament Square is of a man. The fact that this point is very simple and very obvious does not rob it of significance. In my view, it is simply wrong. I would go so far as to say that it is a national embarrassment.

I want to make a simple proposal. I am proud that we should commemorate outside our Parliament the end of apartheid, the fight for Indian independence and victory in the American civil war. We should pay tribute to the great struggles for freedom and it is an appropriate place to do so. But let us also pay tribute in an appropriate place to our own great struggles for democracy. Of these, surely one of the greatest is the struggle to win votes for women. Let us have a statue in Parliament Square for Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Let us have a statue for the woman who led the peaceful democratic campaign for change; the woman whose leadership of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies changed minds and won votes—its work was the heart of the movement, with 25 times the membership that Mrs Pankhurst boasted. Let us have a statue for the woman who was there from the first petition to the final victory for the cause; who took up campaigns to curb child abuse by raising the age of consent; who fought to criminalise incest, combat cruelty to children within the family, end the practice of excluding women from courtrooms when sexual offences were under consideration and to stamp out the “white slave trade”. How can this country have no proper monument to celebrate the life of one of its greatest pioneers and leaders? How can it be that so many people are unaware of one of our most successful and important political leaders, somebody who produced work of real consequence that has changed the nature of Parliament, and rightly so?

The feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez has launched a drive to see justice done in Parliament Square and justice for Millicent Fawcett. I proudly join my cause to hers. On Millicent Fawcett’s statue, let it say, “This is Dame Millicent Fawcett, champion of the weak, defender of children, tribune of the great women’s campaign”.