A Margaret Thatcher Statue Was Egged Mere Hours After Being Installed
Looks like we have another egging legend on our hands.
The Iron Lady herself has been egged. Well, a statue of her has.
The bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher was first planned for Parliament Square in London, but the plans were rejected. The statue was then erected this past Sunday in Thatcher’s home town of Grantham.
Within two hours of the statue being lowered into place, it was egged. The legendary egger has remained anonymous thus far.
Ironically (Get it? Because she’s the iron lady?), the £300k statue was placed on a three-metre high plinth under CCTV surveillance. The measures were an attempt to minimise the chances of vandalism.
Thanks to her draconian policies, Thatcher’s legacy as the UK’s first woman PM is not a positive one. Her government’s policies led to mass unemployment and a housing crisis remains ongoing in many parts of the UK.
Not to mention, the infamous Section 28 in which her government banned government-funded schools from educating students about queer relationships during the AIDS crisis. Section 28 also prohibited books, films, TV and plays from portraying LGBT content.
Thatcher also objected to immigration for minorities. During her time in office, the number of Vietnamese migrants permitted to settle in the UK was limited to 10,000.
When the statue was announced last year, plans for an unveiling ceremony for the statue — paid for by taxpayers — were scrapped after they divided the town. According to The Guardian, a Facebook group advocating for an egg-throwing contest at the statue’s site amassed over 10,000 expressions of interest.
This is hardly the first time a stony likeness of Margaret Thatcher has been vandalised. In 2002, a marble statue of Thatcher in London’s Guildhall Art Gallery was bashed with a cricket bat.
Watch footage of the statue being egged below.
🎥 Watch: A Margaret Thatcher statue was egged by protesters just hours after being lowered in Grantham.
➡️ The statue of the former Prime Minister was placed on a 10ft-high plinth in the wake of warnings from policehttps://t.co/ZJFljgxTJ3 pic.twitter.com/18k8401TRD
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 15, 2022
Photo by Paul Ellis, courtesy of Getty.