St Peter's Square, Manchester
Been meaning to snap this sculpture since its unveiling on 14th Dec 2018, so a Saturday morning meet up in town with Eddie was the opportunity to put that right. I wanted to try a different pov to the hundreds that have snapped it before me, but by god it's difficult trying to focus at ground level with a camera that doesn't have an articulated rear screen, even with live view.
This sculpture of Emmeline Pankhurst is the first female statue in Manchester that is not of Queen Victoria.
The Moss Side-born suffragette was the overwhelming winner in a public vote three years ago to choose which woman should be immortalised in bronze, beating the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, the anti-racism campaigner Louise da-Cocodia and “Red” Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour cabinet minister and leader of the Jarrow March.
Members of the public then chose the final design, by sculptor Hazel Reeves. Her last big commission was the “cracker packer” statue honouring the lives of female biscuit factory workers in the Cumbrian city of Carlisle.
Reeves chose to portray Pankhurst in full tub-thumping mode, standing on a chair as she rallied a crowd. Helen Pankhurst, the suffragette’s great-granddaughter, was among those who unveiled the “Our Emmeline” statue on the Friday, 100 years to the day after some women got the vote for the first time in the UK.
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