Erection date: 24/4/2018
{On the front of the marble plinth:}
Millicent Garrett Fawcett
{On the banner displayed by Fawcett:}
Courage calls to courage everywhere
{Laid into the top of the marble plinth, immediately under the hem of the skirt is a coin-sized brass plaque:}
G.W 2018
The 'courage' quote is from a speech Fawcett gave after the death of fellow suffrage campaigner Emily Davison.
Site: New Millicent Fawcett statue (1 memorial)
SW1, Parliament Square
This statue of Millicent Fawcett is the first (and, 2022, still the only) statue of a woman in Parliament Square where there are 12 statues of men. This is also the first statue in the Square created by a woman. Erected following a campaign, to celebrate 100 years of voting rights for (some) women.
The plinth has a continuous frieze consisting of 52 images of people who actively supported women’s suffrage, so we have treated that as a memorial in its own right.
On one of our visits a gardener was planting out the flower beds either side of the statue. He kindly pointed out that the plants chosen provided the colours of the suffragists, to which Fawcett was affiliated: red, white and green. Not the colours of the suffragettes who had split off in order to continue their more militant campaign: purple white and green.
This seems a good place to provide a link to a ground-breaking 2016 by Caroline Criado-Perez: "I sorted the UK’s statues by gender – a mere 2.7 per cent are of historical, non-royal women. If you’re a woman, your best chance at becoming a statue is to be a mythical or allegorical figure, a famous virgin, royal or nude."
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