at a special council meeting at Hove Town on  Thursday 14 December 2023. This followed a wonderful Reception for trustees of the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal and supporters, hosted by the Mayor Jackie O’Quinn.

Briony Goulden, Mary’s great-great-niece, and a trustee of the Appeal, accepted the honour, assisted by her daughters Sylvie and Lena. The two girls are Child Ambassadors for the Appeal.

The award was unanimously agreed by all three parties represented on the Council. Briony received the official certificate on behalf of the Mary and our Appeal. She thanked the council for its support and assistance over the years, in particular for its help in funding our bronze maquette made by sculptor Denise Dutton to the design of the proposed statue. The maquette was on display in the Council Chamber along with our embroidered banner, a poster of Mary and a seven foot cut-out of the proposed statue.

There were many moving speeches. Cllr Bella Sankey, the Labour leader of the Council and a campaigner for women’s rights and safety, moved the motion to honour Mary. She said: “It is only thanks to women like Mary that I can stand here, that women like me can enter politics and continue the fight for women’s rights.”

She added: “There is still so much to fight for. I want this award to be the first step in celebrating her legacy”…. “I want every girl and woman in our great city to know about Mary Clarke and what she did for us.” Cllr Sankey said that she hoped one day to see Mary Clarke’s statue in the grounds of the Royal Pavilion and Conservative councillor Carol Theobald and others agreed. 

Councillor Theobald said: “Let us hope that the statue proposed for Mary for will come

to the Pavilion estate, as it is thoroughly deserved.” She recalled 2018, when the blue plaque for the WSPU was installed at the Quadrant, commenting correctly that it was a shame that:  “…Mary had not been recognised among the women’s suffrage campaigners who were commemorated on the plinth of Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.” 

Cllr Theobald highlighted the terrible violence Mary and her fellow suffragettes suffered at Black Friday, when so many were attacked and sexually assaulted.

Labour Cllr Amanda Grimshaw, who has long supported our campaign and is an active campaigner against domestic abuse, also made a moving speech. There was warm support too from Green Councillor Sue Shanks who said she hoped to see many more women given the freedom of the city.

Labour Cllr Alan Robins spoke passionately about the importance of the statue and

paid generous tribute to the campaigning work of the Statue Appeal. He especially highlighted the awareness raising work of the child ambassadors and the Mary’s Lamp girls’ group at Balfour School. Since the 2018 centenary, Cllr Robins has worked with us in advocating for suffrage plaques and the statue of Mary. He too supports it being erected in the Pavilion Gardens near the Museum to ensure it is seen by as many people as possible, especially children.

When Labour Councillor Mitchie Alexander rose to speak she surprised those present, not by making a speech, but by reading a very powerful poem she had written herself about Mary’s  importance to women.

With Cllr Alexander’s permission, we hope to get the text of that poem and post it on the website

Statements of support were also read from the city’s three members of Parliament, Caroline Lucas, Peter Kyle and Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the first two of whom are Patrons of the Appeal.

After the meeting, Jean Calder, Chair of Trustees commented: “Our fundraising has

been hard hit, first by the COVID lockdown and then the cost of living crisis. This wonderful honour has raised Mary’s profile once again and will provide a renewed boost to the campaign as it relaunches in 2024. We are so grateful to the Mayor, Cllr Sankey and others for all their help.”

“Given an  increase in foundry costs, including the cost of bronze, our target is now £60,000, of which we have raised £20,000, almost all of it from small individual donations.”

The Statue Appeal’s primary focus is to fundraise for the statue of Mary Clarke and following the difficulties posed by COVID and lockdown, we plan to redouble our efforts to raise the £35,000 we still need. However, the Appeal’s purposes are broader than just the achievement of a statue. 

An important aspect of our purpose has always been to use the commemoration of Mary’s life as an educational tool to raise awareness of the importance of equality and women’s rights, including the right to safety from abuse and violence, of the kind experienced by Mary, during her marriage and subsequent political life. We commemorate Mary, but Mary’s legacy demands we also honour the lives of other women who have died as a result of misogynist violence.

Like others, we were horrified by the terrible death of Sarah Everard and appalled, though not surprised, by emerging information about the numbers of women killed since then. We decided there was a need for wider commemoration, in particular, for women and girls who have died locally. 

In Parliament, of recent years, a Member of Parliament has read out the names of women killed during the previous twelve months. Spontaneous local vigils followed Sarah’s death, but here in Brighton and Hove, there have been no formal Council-led commemorations.

We approached the current Mayor Cllr Alan Robins, along with leading councillors of all

parties, to ask them to work together to give much greater priority to this issue. We also asked them to commit to high profile commemoration, each year, as close as possible to the U.N. International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25th November and the U.N. 16 days of Activism to End Violence Against Women and Girls* which follow it. We requested that the U.N.’s designated campaign colour of Orange be worn by councillors and if possible be used to light up civic buildings. We also asked the Mayor to hold a minutes silence for women – and, as he did so, to remember Mary Clarke, who almost certainly sustained her fatal injury during the violence of ‘Black Friday’ on the 18th November 2010 (dying on 25th December of a brain haemorrhage).

On 21st October 2021, a full meeting of Brighton & Hove City Council prepared to move a Notice of Motion which included most of the proposals we had made. That meeting did not proceed because a councillor who was present was found to have tested positive for COVID.

The Notice of Motion will be discussed at the next meeting in December and we look forward to that. However, we are delighted to report that, before the meeting of the 21st October was halted, the Mayor was able to start the meeting with a minute’s silence, while all councillors wore orange ribbons as a gesture of support. Not only that, our replica of ‘Mary’s lamp’ (a model of the lamp planned for the eventual statue donated by our sculptor Denise Dutton) was at the Mayor’s side as he did so, the candle inside flickering softly in remembrance. 

We are so great full to the Council and hope this commemoration and associated discussion will be repeated in future years.

* The 16 Days of Activism are part of The UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence Against Women Campaign (UNiTE campaign), managed by UN Women. As the U.N. Website states it is “a multi-year effort aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls around the world. It calls on governments, civil society, women’s organisations, young people, the private sector, the media, and the entire UN system to join forces in addressing the global pandemic of violence against women and girls.”

Cllr Alan Robins, the Mayor of Brighton & Hove received it on behalf of the Appeal and the people of Brighton & Hove in a brief socially-distanced ceremony on the evening of Friday 11 December 2020 at Brighton Town Hall. A more elaborate event to welcome the figure had had to be cancelled.

The Mayor thanked Denise Dutton saying he was “honoured” to receive the maquette. Chair of Trustees Jean Calder also thanked Denise for the maquette and expressed gratitude to the Council for its support and generosity in helping to fund the maquette and the planned statue. Jean also conveyed the Appeal’s thanks to the Mayor for his “unstinting support”.

The next day, on the 12 December 2020, the charity’s trustees met the sculptor once again to launch its Christmas Appeal, aimed at funding the next phase of the campaign. The time-limited appeal will last from 12th December to the 31st January and will aim to raise £5,000 in the first instance as  “A Gift for Mary”.  

December was a very significant month for Mary. Born in December, she spent her last birthday in Holloway Prison. Released on 23rd December 1910, she died of a brain haemorrhage on Christmas Day.

The maquette represents Mary released from prison, in Brighton, a day or two before her death. 

She wears a suffragette sash and on her left arm carries a last few copies of Votes for Women, the suffragette newspaper she regularly sold in Brighton. The front page of the November 1910 issue depicts the events of ‘Black Friday’, when, a few days before she was arrested and imprisoned,  she and hundreds of other women were assaulted by police. 

Mary wears the Hunger Strikers’ medal and walks with gentle dignity over the implements used in forcible feeding, which are imbedded in the surface of the plinth. Her clothing, accurate for the period, subtly references her background as an artist, her love of flowers and her time in prison. She gestures towards a lamp at her feet which she has placed there for others to pick up. This refers to the words of Isabella McKeown spoken after Mary’s death “Her they must not mourn in silence. They must take the torch from her and light the darkness…”.  Mary’s hand is positioned low, so that children can hold it.

A low plinth carries the above quotation from Isabella McKeown and others from  Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Mary’s sister Emmeline Pankhurst – as well as Mary’s own courageous words: “I am glad to pay the price for freedom..”

Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence’s statement about Mary as the “..first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause..”, provides another iconic quotation on the sides of the low plinth, while Emmeline Pankhurst’s moving words: “She is the first to die. How many must follow…” are etched into its surface, curving around the line of the feeding tube embedded in the bronze. 

Those wishing to give a special ‘Gift for Mary’ can do so online via Local Giving or PayPal. Please invite your friends to visit our website or go directly to https://localgiving.org/charity/mary-clarke-statue-appeal/ or https://www.paypal.com/gb/fundraiser/charity/3881341. If they wish they can send cheques to The Mary Clarke Statue Appeal, c/o the Regency Town House, 13 Brunswick Square, Hove BN3 1EH. 

The Pavilion Estate has deep historic ties with the suffrage movement. In 2018 the Dome was declared a site of National Suffrage Interest by Historic England, because so many meetings had taken place there. We know that Mary herself chaired and spoke at a large meeting there in May 1910, seven months before she died. However, we also know that suffrage meetings took place in the Pavilion itself and in the tea rooms adjacent to the Pavilion (almost certainly on the site of the present Pavilion shop). Mary’s memorial service in January 2011 was held in the Pavilion. At least one suffrage meeting took place in the Chapel Royal and we have been informed (though we do not yet have written evidence) that fundraising teas took place in the Gardens.

Our aim is to place Mary’s statue in the Gardens, as close as possible to the entrance to Brighton Museum, where it can be linked to educational displays in the Museum. We hope that every school child, adult resident and visitor will see and recognise the statue as a symbol of the city’s ongoing commitment to democracy, equality and women’s rights.