Space for the new, not the old

With gushing tributes still flowing in for Baroness Thatcher as if commentators had just lost their mother (or for the toffs their nanny), it’s as if the funeral procession had already begun its stately crawl through Fleet Street. I mean, it’s not as if there is real news around, like Kim Jong-Un thinking the game of ‘Nuke ‘Em’ in Robocop can be recreated.


This talk of a statue for the greengrocer’s daughter to take over the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is disturbing in its own right. To be sure, the characters already have dubious pasts, if not being outright reprobates. George IV’s gluttonous girth somehow didn’t kill the horse upon which he is sitting. General Sir Charles James Napier indulged in the most outrageous piece of imperialism since Clive of India (Punch had him sending a one-word telegram ‘Peccavi’, Latin for “I have sinned” i.e. Sindh). Major-General Sir Henry Havelock was responsible for suppressing the Indian Mutiny and quite a brutal campaign that was. And then, on top of the central column, we have an arch-philanderer. So, she would fit right in.

Yet and yet, it would be so wrong. These figures have passed out of our understanding – they are backdrops, not focal points, as a Thatcher statue would be. And what a focal point! It wouldn’t just be the pigeons depositing their faeces on it – at least Winston Churchill only gets carpeted (literally) once a year on May Day. And a statue of Thatcher has been decapitated before – who is to say it won’t happen again? Moreover, with the likes of newspaper blogger Graeme Archer saying she was a warrior against the real enemy of socialism (a disturbing catch all term ranging from democrats to dictators), it would be a massive affront to anyone who regards themselves as socialist. Where is Clement Attlee’s statue? Having Grantham’s most famous daughter would instantly politicise the place and as the Queen owns the square in Right of Crown, I think she would be loathe to take sides after using all her capital in attending the funeral.

The empty Fourth Plinth is, in fact, rarely empty. It says something about the British character – that while we are happy to glory in our history, we also leave a space for innovation, we are not afraid to experiment and we move on before it gathers dust like everything else. Our psyche is not set in stone.