By Jill Lawless
The Associated Press
London – The latest battle of Trafalgar is getting ugly.
Mayor Ken Livingstone wants to erect a statue of former South African President Nelson Mandela in London’s Trafalgar Square alongside monuments to British military heroes.
City officials oppose the idea, and in a showdown last week, one of Britain’s most respected sculptors dubbed the proposed Mandela statue “mediocre.”
Livingstone then compared that sculptor’s work to a “dog mess.”
Beneath the aesthetic mudslinging lies a political divide over what kind of heroes should be commemorated in London’s most famous square.
“Suppose I had proposed, in a moment of euphoric bipartisanship, to erect a statue of (former Conservative Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher in Trafalgar Square. Would I have had problems with Westminster City Council?” the left-leaning mayor asked the Labour Party’s annual conference last week.
He answered his own question: “No.”
The conservative-controlled Westminster Council has rejected Livingstone’s plans for a 9-foot-tall bronze statue on the square’s north terrace, outside the main entrance to the National Gallery.
The council says its opposition is practical, not political. It does not like the look of the proposed statue by sculptor Ian Walters, which depicts Mandela clad in a characteristic loose-fitting shirt, his hands raised as if in animated conversation. It also wants the monument placed in front of the South African embassy on the eastern edge of the square.
Livingstone wants Mandela at the heart of the piazza, already dominated by another Nelson. Their, a statue of 19th-century naval hero Adm. Horatio Nelson stands atop an 185-foot-tall column, and the square itself is named for the admiral’s 1805 victory over the French and Spanish fleets.
Also in the square are statues of King George IV and Victorian generals Sir Henry Havelock and Sir Charles James Napier.
Paul Drury, a consultant for conservation group English Heritage, which also opposes the mayor’s plan, has said that placing an “informal, small-scale statue” of Mandela alongside military heroes “would be a major and awkward change in the narrative of the square.”
Changing that narrative is exactly what the radical mayor – once nicknamed “Red Ken” by the press – wants to do. During South Africa’s apartheid rule, a constant vigil calling for Mandela’s release from prison was held at Trafalgar Square, a traditional site of demonstrations.
Mandela has addressed crowds there several times since he was freed in 1990. Livingstone said critics complaining about the statue’s location were hiding their motives.
“I actually think it’s what he represents they don’t want to see depicted, because in that square one Nelson signifies the birth of the British empire and 100 years of global dominance,” Livingstone told Labour delegates.
“Nelson Mandela would signify the peaceful transition to a multiracial and multicultural world, and I would be proud to have that in London.”
