Over the weekend, a local artist erected a statue of a severed head in the hometown of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with a spear, and police have launched an investigation into alleged acts of criminal sabotage.
At 4am on Sunday, Welshman Mark Roberts lifted his carved plaster statue of the Iron Lady to the pedestal in Grantham, Lincolnshire, which was reserved for thatcher statue and is worth £300,000 and is 11 feet tall. The official bronze statue will be placed in the same location, but the unveiling ceremony has been postponed due to the outbreak of the epidemic, which cost £100,000 and the statue is currently stored in a secret location.
The 34-year-old said he spent 5 months making his own sculpture with the aim of saving hundreds of thousands of pounds for the South Kestiven District Council, which he later denied breaking the law.
The 5-foot-tall piece, made from £5 plaster and an old office chair, also features Margaret Thatcher's iconic tote at the bottom of the pedestal.
Mr Roberts, who is from Wales and now lives in Grantham, said in an interview: "I want to try to get this done before this statue is unveiled. I made a version of my own, which saved Parliament hundreds of thousands of pounds. I started designing the whole body, but her arms kept falling off, so I decided to nail her head to the spear. ”
Mr Roberts said he got up early to erect his £100 statue on St. Peter's Hill so that no one else would find it.
He added: "No one broke in. There was a metal fence around it, so I climbed in with a ladder and put it up in about five minutes. I was wearing a very conspicuous jacket, and the plan was that if someone said anything, I would say I was measuring the base for parliament. I just wanted to hang it up so I didn't get noticed, so I did it early in the morning. Unbeknownst to the Committee, this is one of the easier things to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. I don't think it's too much to put a decapitated human head on a stick in this day and age. I'm glad it could be kept for a week, but it's up to the council itself, and they'll dismantle it — though it doesn't cause any damage to the base. I think a big part of British history is obviously about things like beheading people in castles, which is a tradition. I don't think hanging her head on a spear on a pedestal is necessarily celebrating her. Initially I wanted her to put a few bags of coal on the bottom of the bag, but she now put her hand on the bag so that the visuals were better. ”
Lincolnshire Police have confirmed they are investigating whether there is a crime, with a police spokesman saying, "Damage to the base has been documented." We are in contact with the South Kestiven District Council and will investigate if there are any violations. ”
A spokesman for the city council said the city council had removed the unauthorized artworks, ensuring public safety in the area. They are also in contact with the police on the matter.
Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a shopkeeper, was born and raised in Grantham and later received a scholarship to Oxford University.
As prime minister from 1979 to 1990, she led the country toward a free-market economy, shutting down mines and weakening unions. Her approach caused a lot of opposition from the British.
Mr Roberts comes from a working-class family and most of them are traditional Welsh and Liverpool, so he thinks welshmen and Liverpool don't like her.
He told reporters: "A lot of my opinions about Thatcher come from Welsh. Our factory was closed and she was never a popular character when I was growing up. As soon as I mentioned the Hillsborough thing, my dad would scold her. But from what I've observed, she's very eccentric, some people like her, some people don't like her. But I know that because of what she did to the community where I grew up in North Wales, a lot of people don't like her. ”
London rejected the statue of the former prime minister, instead presenting it to the South Kestiven District Council.
The painting was auctioned for £300,000, with the money coming mainly from public fundraisers, private donations and backers of the Grantham Museum.
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