Traitor or hero? Statue of George Washington stirs mixed reaction in London.
Why was a rebel commander and vanquisher of redcoats — the confounding father of a breakaway republic — ascending a pedestal in a plaza devoted to Britain's own heroes, including the eldest son of the king Washington routed in the Revolution?
Related
:
Advertisement
To most of those pausing to watch, there were no hard feelings about that 18th-century unpleasantness. But Washington's arrival was a bit of a head-scratcher to many, given the current transatlantic tumult and the state of the special relationship 46 presidents later.
'At least it's not Trump,' Townshend concluded with a shrug before going on her way.
'We're not completely happy with America right now,' said Judith Webster, visiting London from the city of Sheffield in the north of England. 'I'm not really sure I want him here.'
Families walking to school passed the statue of Washington.
Gabriella Demczuk
In fact, the metal commander in chief was not a newcomer.
The sculpture was sent in 1914 by the Commonwealth of Virginia, a gift from former colony to former colonizer to mark the 100-year anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent, which formally ended decades of war between the United States and the United Kingdom. It was a cast copy of a marble statue by French master Jean-Antoine Houdon, sculpted from a plaster mask of Washington's face. The original statue stands in the Virginia Capitol to this day.
Advertisement
Trafalgar Square, near the Charing Cross rail station in central London, is a bit more exposed to the elements. So after a century of the replica steeping in London pollution, a group of Virginians had it taken away in May for restoration and the construction of a new limestone plinth.
It was rededicated Wednesday in a ceremony featuring Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, the American and British ambassadors, and former prime ministers Theresa May and David Cameron.
But Washington's spot flanking the entrance of the National Gallery —
Britain's
National Gallery — has always been an oddity, showing up on lists of London's weird wonders and a fun fact for taxi drivers to share with American tourists. Tour guide legend holds that the statute was set on a patch of dirt transported from Virginia to honor Washington's reputed pledge to never again set foot on English soil.
Locals, meanwhile, in online message boards and tour groups, periodically debate the propriety of honoring a British subject who went on to best the British army and slice off a valuable hunk of the empire.
'George Washington was indeed a traitor to the crown,' a poster said last year in a thread on the topic on Quora.
But to most of the visitors and workers surging through Trafalgar every day, he is just one more garden-variety great man in the sculptural clutter of central London.
Advertisement
A crowd watched as conservators placed the Washington statue in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
Gabriella Demczuk
'Everyone walks past statues all the time without looking at them,' said Alexandra Jackson, a Blue Badge tourist guide. 'It was really more noticed when it disappeared. People were wondering if it was taken away because someone might throw something at it.'
The rebooting of Trafalgar's Washington began when John Gerber, an architect and developer from McLean, Va.irginia, did a double take when he passed the familiar figure during a visit last year. He was delighted to read the inscription that it was a gift of his home state but distressed to see how worn it was, particularly the pedestal.
Gerber formed a fund-raising group, Friends of the Washington Statue, and pitched the idea of a rehab to Youngkin and British architect Norman Foster, who agreed to oversee the work. In May, workers wrangled the figure and the 1.3-ton pedestal to the studio of art conservator Rupert Harris.
'It's never touched the ground since it's been here,' Harris said in his east London workshop this month, with the Father of America standing serenely amid the dismembered heads and torsos.
Related
:
For weeks, Washington stood elevated on a wooden pallet as he was stripped of grime, repaired, and buffed to high gloss with repeated coats of the black wax used on many London sculptures. That just was normal procedure, but Harris was also aware of the whole never-touch-English-soil thing.
Which, as it turns out, is not true. Nothing the researchers could find suggests Washington ever said he was loath to set foot in England, nor that Virginia clay was brought for the statue to stand on.
Advertisement
'It seems to be completely made up,' said Douglas Bradburn, president of Mount Vernon, Washington's Virginia home, now a museum and popular tourist stop. 'It goes completely against the character of George Washington, who made it clear he did not resent the people of England.'
Washington never visited Britain (his only trip abroad was to Barbados), but he considered himself a proud English subject for the first part of his life, Bradburn said. He was popular in Britain even during the American Revolution, known to be magnanimous in victory and respectful to defeated officers.
George III himself, upon hearing that the general who pried America from his royal grasp gave up his command and returned to farming, called Washington 'the greatest man of the age,' according to Troy Bickham, a Texas A&M University historian who has written about the post-Revolution relationship between the two countries.
'The English public were frustrated with their own generals, who weren't able to win,' Bickham said. 'And here was this American guy, a gentleman farmer. He wouldn't even take a salary.'
This reputation made it an easy sell when, 131 years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia offered London a Washington of its own. The statue arrived in 1914, and King George V personally approved Trafalgar for its home.
World War I intervened, and it wasn't until 1921 that the statue was dedicated. By then the countries had become true allies, this time fighting together in a devastating war. It was the moment some scholars say the special relationship actually began.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Mahmoud Khalil released from federal immigration detention
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released from federal immigration detention on Friday following a judge's ruling, the Associated Press reported. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and lead negotiator for the encampment at Columbia University while he was a student, was detained more than three months ago as the first case in a wave of crackdowns against foreign students involved in campus protests. 'My priority now is to get back to my wife and son,' Khalil told reporters after his release. 'Although justice prevailed, it is very long overdue.' As a condition of his release, Khalil must surrender his passport and cannot travel internationally. His movement within the United States will be restricted to New York and Michigan to visit family, Washington to lobby Congress, and New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances. A judge ordered earlier Friday that Khalil should be released, calling it 'highly, highly unusual' that the government still sought to detain him. 'Together, they suggest that there is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner — and, of course, that would be unconstitutional,' the judge, Michael Farbiarz, wrote in his ruling. The Trump administration had argued that Khalil could be deported under a rarely-used law that allows them to do so if they determined his presence in the country would have significant negative consequences for American foreign policy. Khalil has not been charged with a crime. Farbiarz had previously held that the government could not continue to hold Khalil under the determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. However, the judge allowed his detention to continue under a claim by the administration that Khalil had omitted some prior work experience from his green card application. Khalil's release follows the releases of several students apparently detained for pro-Palestine speech, including fellow Columbia alum Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested at his citizenship interview, and Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, who co-wrote an opinion in her campus newspaper calling for divestment from Israel. Khalil's arrest on March 8 was the first shot from the Trump administration in a dramatic salvo against international student visas. The administration has since declared it will ask student visa applicants to make their social media accounts available for inspection. Also on Friday, a judge indefinitely blocked the government's move to bar Harvard University from being able to enroll international students. The Associated Press contributed to this report. This is a developing story.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil freed from immigration detention
JENA, La. (AP) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention, freed after three months by a judge's ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump 's clampdown on campus protests. The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his U.S. citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained. 'Justice prevailed, but it's very long overdue,' he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. 'This shouldn't have taken three months.' The Trump administration is seeking to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be 'highly, highly unusual' for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn't been accused of any violence. 'Petitioner is not a flight risk and the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community,' he said. 'Period, full stop.' Later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone, the judge said the government had 'clearly not met' the standards for detention. The government filed notice Friday evening that it's appealing Khalil's release. Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. He was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump 's crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel's devastating war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic. Protesters and civil rights groups say the administration is conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to silence dissent. The international affairs graduate student isn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. He served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists and wasn't among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics. Khalil said Friday that no one should be detained for protesting Israel's war in Gaza. He said his time in the Jena, Louisiana, detention facility had shown him 'a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and justice.' 'No human is illegal,' he said when a reporter asked what message he'd like to send the public. 'The message is: Justice will prevail, no mater what this administration may try to portray, portraying that immigrants are criminals.' Khalil had to surrender his passport and can't travel internationally, but he will get his green card back and be given official documents permitting limited travel within the country, including New York and Michigan to visit family, New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances and Washington to lobby Congress. Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government couldn't deport Khalil on those grounds, but gave it leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Trump administration lawyers repeated that accusation at Friday's court hearing. It's an accusation Khalil disputes. In issuing his ruling Friday, the judge agreed with Khalil's lawyers that the protest leader was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention. The judge noted that Khalil is now clearly a public figure. Khalil's lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or, at the very least, moved from Louisiana to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, who are both U.S. citizens. Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally 'breathe a sigh of relief' after her husband's three months in detention. 'We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others,' she said in a statement provided by Khalil's lawyers. 'But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.' The judge's decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri. ___ Marcelo reported from New York. Jennifer Peltz contributed from New York.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk trades threats with Trump: What it could mean for SpaceX, Starship in Texas
When President Donald Trump took office in January, he began offering plenty of signs that his goals for U.S. spaceflight aligned closely with those of billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk. Now those goals, which included making reaching Mars during Trump's second term a top priority, appear to be up in the air with the increasingly volatile fallout between two of the world's most powerful men. As insults have turned to threats, Trump has suggested he'd hit Musk where it could hurt most: His wallet. Musk's SpaceX has spent years positioning itself at the center of American civil and military spaceflight – a profitable relationship that has made the company's founder incredibly wealthy. In response, Musk has floated – and then retracted – the idea of decommissioning a SpaceX vehicle critical to NASA's spaceflight program. Serious threats, or empty words? That remains to be seen as Musk and Trump reportedly consider a détente. In the meantime, here's what to know about what's at stake if the U.S. government's relationship with SpaceX were to crumble: U.S. spaceflight: Dozens of NASA space missions could be axed under Trump's budget The feud between Trump and his former top adviser escalated in a dramatic fashion when the president threatened to cut off the taxpayer dollars that have fueled Elon Musk's businesses, including SpaceX. "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," Trump said in a post on his social media platform. "I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!" In all, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, a Washington Post analysis found. With SpaceX as the fulcrum of much of the U.S. government's spaceflight programs, parting ways with the commercial company would leave a void that would be hard to fill. But NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said in a post on social media site X that 'NASA will continue to execute upon the President's vision for the future of space.' 'We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President's objectives in space are met,' Stevens wrote. Elon Musk, the world's richest man, founded SpaceX, in 2002. In July 2024, Musk announced his intentions to move his company, as well as social media platform X's headquarters, from California to Texas. The move was in response to his personal frustrations over a public school policy in California regarding transgender students. Now, the commercial spaceflight company is headquartered at Starbase in South Texas about 180 miles south of Corpus Christi. The site, which is where SpaceX has been conducting routine flight tests of its 400-foot megarocket known as Starship, was recently voted by residents to become its own city. SpaceX conducts many of its own rocket launches, most using the Falcon 9 rocket, from both California and Florida. That includes a regular cadence of deliveries of Starlink internet satellites into orbit, and occasional privately-funded commercial crewed missions on the Dragon. The most recent of SpaceX's private human spaceflights, a mission known as Fram2, took place in April. SpaceX was also famously involved in funding and operating the headline-grabbing Polaris Dawn crewed commercial mission in September 2024. SpaceX benefits from billions of dollars in contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense by providing launch services for classified satellites and other payloads. Gwynne Shotwell, CEO of SpaceX, has said the company has about $22 billion in government contracts, according to Reuters. The vast majority of that, about $15 billion, is derived from NASA. SpaceX's famous two-stage Falcon 9 rocket ‒ one of the world's most active ‒ is routinely the rocket of choice to get many NASA missions off the ground. For instance, the rocket is due in the days ahead to help propel a four-person crew of private astronauts to the International Space Station for a venture with NASA known as Axiom Mission 4. NASA also has plans to use SpaceX's Starship in its Artemis lunar missions to ferry astronauts aboard the Orion capsule from orbit to the moon's surface. The rocket, which is in development, has yet to reach orbit in any of its nine flight tests beginning in April 2023. SpaceX's Dragon capsule is also a famous vehicle that is widely used for a variety of spaceflights. The capsule, which sits atop the Falcon 9 for launches to orbit, is capable of transporting both NASA astronauts and cargo to the space station. Under NASA's commercial crew program, the U.S. space agency has been paying SpaceX for years to conduct routine spaceflights to the International Space Station using the company's own launch vehicles. The first of SpaceX's Crew missions ferrying astronauts to the orbital outpost on the Dragon began in 2020, with the tenth and most recent contingent reaching the station in March for about a six-month stay. Standing nearly 27 feet tall and about 13 feet wide, Dragon capsules can carry up to seven astronauts into orbit, though most of SpaceX's Crew missions feature a crew of four. The Dragon spacecraft also was the vehicle NASA selected to bring home the two NASA astronauts who rode the doomed Boeing Starliner capsule to the space station in June 2024. Certifying the Starliner capsule for operation would give NASA a second vehicle in addition to Dragon for regular spaceflights to orbit. Because Boeing is still developing its Starliner capsule, Dragon is the only U.S. vehicle capable of carrying astronauts to and from the space station. It's also one of four vehicles contracted to transport cargo and other supplies to the orbital laboratory. For that reason, Musk's threat Thursday, June 5 to decommission the Dragon "immediately" would be a severe blow to NASA if he were to follow through on it. Musk, though, appears to already be backing off on the suggestion, which he made in response to Trump's own threats. In response to a user who advised Musk to "Cool off and take a step back for a couple days," Musk replied: 'Good advice. Ok, we won't decommission Dragon.' Seven astronauts are aboard the International Space Station, including three Americans. Four of the astronauts rode a SpaceX Dragon to the station for a mission known as Crew-10, while the remaining three launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Contributing: Joey Garrison, Josh Meyer, USA TODAY; Reuters Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: SpaceX at center of Trump, Musk feud: What that could mean for Texas
