Contribution
My Lords, as I explained in Committee, I support the aims that the Government are seeking to achieve through Clause 137, which creates a new offence of climbing on memorials. Although there is a long history of statues forming part of peaceful protest and standing in dialogue between past and present, there is something special about war memorials, which stand as sacred monuments to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms that we now enjoy. It is therefore a particular affront when they are dishonoured or desecrated, especially for the proud comrades, families and descendants left behind by the heroes that they commemorate. So I am glad to see the Government taking action in this area, but I am rather perplexed about the way they are going about it.
The Government have correctly identified a problem of principle—that war memorials are specially cherished parts of our public realm and should not be climbed on in this way. However, in translating that principle into this legislation, they have severely and illogically curtailed it. Rather than applying the power to all war memorials, they say it must only be ones specified by the Home Secretary, and have named just 24 in the initial list included at Schedule 14 to the Bill.
Reading that list, I was pleased to see some very fine memorials indeed, including The Response, Sir William Goscombe John’s splendid memorial to the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, who raised 52 battalions throughout the Great War, more than any other regiment. It stands in the grounds of St Thomas’s church in the heart of Newcastle city centre, by the Haymarket and the civic centre. It was commissioned by a local ship owner and Conservative MP, Sir George Renwick, to commemorate the raising of four of those “pals” battalions and later dedicated in thanks for the safe return of Sir George and Lady Renwick’s five sons from the Great War. Not as many families were as fortunate as they.
Similar stories stand behind each of the two dozen memorials specified in Schedule 14, Part 1, but it is a curious list both for what it does and does not contain. While the Government’s list has an admirable geographic spread, it does not include some of our most well-known national memorials, such as the Battle of Britain Monument or the Royal Air Force Memorial, to give just two examples from very close to here on the Victoria Embankment. Their proximity to Parliament makes them, sadly, a focus for protest and vandalism far more frequently than some of the memorials currently specified in the Bill, but they are not included. In Committee, we found out why. Schedule 14 simply specifies those monuments that are presently listed grade 1 in heritage and planning terms.
Although the listing system is a vital tool for preserving those assets that we most value as a society, applying it in in this way is fraught with problems. First, the Government have restricted themselves to those memorials that are presently given the highest designation, at grade 1. This misses many thousands of memorials that stand proudly in every parish of the kingdom, sacred to the memory of those who laid down their lives in combat and whose memory surely deserves to be honoured just as much as those inscribed on the memorials set out in Schedule 14. The Government have started with a problem of principle but addressed it only in part.
Secondly, the listing system is predicated on specific criteria. As Section 1 of the planning Act 1990 puts it, listing is for
“buildings of special architectural or historic interest”.
This means that a memorial can be given a higher grading for its sculptural accomplishment than for the subject it celebrates. In Committee, I gave an example of this—the Bill will protect Sir George Frampton’s grade 1 listed statue of Edith Cavell at St Martin’s Place but not Arthur Walker’s grade 2 listed memorial to Florence Nightingale round the corner in Waterloo Place. Is one of those wartime nurses really deserving of greater protection than the other because they happen to have been sculpted by different hands?
Thirdly, I worry that this approach will have a chilling effect on the listing system itself. If designating a monument grade 1 is accompanied by new restrictions and criminal sanctions, will that not deter Ministers and their advisers at Historic England from recommending those higher levels of protection? A better approach, I submit, is to follow what I have proposed in my Amendment 370 and specify any war memorial that has been listed, whether at grade 1, grade 2* or grade 2, or any that has been designated as a scheduled monument. This would avoid the practical problems that I have just set out and answer the problem of principle, on which the Government and I agree much more squarely.