statue of Emmeline Pankhurst

A bronze statue of Emmeline Pankhurst stands in St Peter’s Square, Manchester. Pankhurst led the British suffragette movement and the statue was created by sculptor Hazel Reeves. A circular stone platform called the Meeting Circle surrounds the bronze figure. The work was unveiled on 14 December 2018, exactly a century after women over thirty first gained the vote. It is Manchester’s first statue of a woman since Queen Victoria’s was placed over a hundred years earlier. The statue was commissioned after a five-year campaign led by councillor Andrew Simcock. His friend Anne‑Marie Glennon pointed out the lack of women represented among civic busts in Manchester Town Hall. A craftivism exhibition by Warp & Weft yarn‑bombed eight male busts with crochet masks of local women achievers. Thousands of people worldwide voted to choose Pankhurst from a shortlist of twenty candidates. Visitors find the bronze figure in the centre of the Meeting Circle, a Portland‑stone ring added in July 2018. The unveiling drew six thousand people, many marching from the Pankhurst Centre where the suffragette movement began. Two processions set off from the People’s History Museum and the Pankhurst Centre, converging on St Peter’s Square. The statue was funded by local sponsors and a government centenary grant, with maintenance costs covered by the original campaign.