Of Mayors and Monuments

When the position of Mayor of London was created the elected representative was given responsibility for Trafalgar Square. Arguments over its statuary have dominated all reportage. Firstly Ken talked of generals in the Square he had never heard of. He meant Henry Havelock -the first statue to have been created from a photograph- an officer who fought in the Sikh Wars and the Indian Mutiny and the companion piece James Napier most famous for the conquest of the province of Sind in India. They have been there since the mid-nineteenth century and Havelock even features in Zadie Smith's book White Teeth.(See below) Ken of course was preparing the way for his proposal to have a statue of Nelson Mandela in the Square. Westminster Council preferred that it be outside South Africa House. A savage war of words ensured and Prescott was called in to referee! Eventually Mandela's second representation in London went up in Parliament Square close to that other S.A. statesman Jan Smuts. He is also close that other black icon Martin Luther King. Look at the statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey. They may look like they have been there for centuries but they are the Christian Martyrs of the twentieth century and the one in the middle is King. He visited London in 1964 on route to Oslo to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize and spoke at St Paul's Cathedral.

Onto the debate about the empty fourth plinth. Should there be a permanent figure on it or should it continue a revolving site for Modern Art. Before the last Mayoral election a campaign was building for a statue to go up of WW2 RAF hero Sir Keith Park on the plinth and Boris backed the idea only to change his mind once elected. The Art will continue and Park will be honoured elsewhere. Hyde Park could even be renamed after him( yes he said that) But what Art? A competition came up with two winners. Anthony Gormley will get people to stand on it for an hour for a hundred day period and Yinka Shonibare will exhibit his replica of HMS Victory in a bottle(a worthy winner). So Nelson will look down on his old ship, tool of his great victory and the site of his death. His demise is depicted on the carving at the base of his column, the one facing down Whitehall. A close look at this reveals a black seaman returning the fire of the French snipers. Black sailors were quite common in the British Navy of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The famous anti-slavery campaigner Olaudah Equiano sailed with Nelson.

The obvious candidate for the fourth plinth is a woman. In 1897 a statue of actress Sarah Siddons was put up in Paddington Green. The first woman outside Royalty to be immortalised in London. The subsequent years have not brought many more - Boudicca, Cavell, Nightingale, Pankhurst, Mrs Booth, the Women of WW2 and surgeon Louisa Aldrich-Blake. Struggling to think of anymore stand alone exterior statues of women. Lets put up a statue of this underrepresented half of the human race in the centre of the capital. Who should it be? Time for public debate.

Used the term Indian Mutiny earlier. The British have always viewed the events that started on the 10th May 1857 in military terms. It was a mutiny of one of the East Indian Company's armies in India supported by some Indian Princes with grievances. The other armies remained loyal and the principle warrior races of the sub-continent fought on the British side. Today many Indians see it as a War of Independence which united Muslim and Hindu against a common enemy. The truth is probably somewhere in between - perhaps its time to come up with another name for the uprising. There is a Havelock Road in Southall, with a pub of the same name, that leads to the the new Gurdwara and Asian councillors on the governing Ealing Council sometimes lobby to have the road's name changed. Well councillors I'd look at upgrading your rubbish and council tax collection first or restarting the funding of the animal rescue centre in Walpole Park. Saw a poster in Southall about a year ago on the subject of the Havelock Road renaming campaign claiming that the Sikhs had fought the British during the Mutiny - not the case.