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A fine figure At long last, leading suffragist Millicent Fawcett takes her place among the male statues of Parliament Square Words RACHEL WARD
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his February a peaceful and long overdue revolution is set to take place on London’s Parliament Square as the first commemorative statue of a woman takes its position among a multitude of males. A bronze casting of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929), the feminist and constitutional campaigner, its unveiling will commemorate 100 years of women’s suffrage. Perhaps a less well-known figure than say Emmeline Pankhurst, Fawcett defined herself as a suffragist and advocated peaceful and legal means as opposed to
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the more militant approach of the suffragettes, whose mantra was ‘deeds not words’. A key figure in the movement from the beginning to the end, Fawcett helped secure the voting rights of women of property over the age of 30 in the 1918 Representation of the People Act and continued to campaign tirelessly until women were given electoral equality with men in 1928. The driving force behind Fawcett’s statue is journalist and activist Caroline Criado-Perez, who also successfully campaigned to feature Jane Austen on £10 bank notes. It was during a jog through Parliament Square in May 2016 when she noticed that the 11 existing statues, Nelson Mandela and Sir Winston Churchill amongst them, were all male. Compelled to start a petition, she quickly attracted more than 84,000 signatures and high-profile supporters such as JK Rowling and Emma Watson.
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The resulting commission was given to Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing, who will simultaneously become the first female artist to create a statue for the iconic square. Her sculpture will portray Fawcett in 1897 at the age of 50, the year the non-violent National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies of which she was leader for more than 20 years, was founded. Stood defiantly facing Parliament, the statue will show the suffragist holding a placard that reads ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere’, a rallying cry from a speech Fawcett gave after the infamous death of campaigner Emily Wilding Davison at the Epsom Derby in 1913. In the spirit of inclusivity, the plinth will also name-check 52 other suffrage campaigners (including a couple of men) who all pushed for votes for women. Today, it’s strange to think that women once had no place in politics, yet out of 650 MPs elected in 2017 only 208 were female – and that was a record breaker. So while the statue of Fawcett is a welcome celebration of how far we’ve come in the quest for equality, let it also serve as a reminder of how far we’ve yet to go. fawcettsociety.org.uk
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