PLANS FOR MEMORIAL SLAMMED - Tempers flare over ‘triumphant’ bid for RAF monument in Green Park

Published: 7 May, 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

THE group masterminding plans to build a memorial to thousands of airmen who lost their lives in the Second World War has been accused of unleashing a wave of “triumphalism” to see it pushed through.
The Thorney Island Society, the prestigious neighbourhood group that counts musician Jools Holland as a patron and opposes putting the memorial in Green Park, has also criticised the RAF-backed Bomber Command Association (BCA) for its “inappropriate” use of images of bomb scorched Germany.
It says the £3million monument close to Hyde Park Corner, which stretches more than 80 metres, would threaten the peace of the park and bring about an irreversible loss of open space.
Planning chiefs from Westminster Council will decide its fate at a crunch committee meeting on Thursday.
Included in the application literature submitted to the council are photographs showing the destruction wrought by bombers during raids on dockyards in Hamburg in 1943.
TOM Ball, committee member of the Thorney Island Society, said: “To reproduce such pictures showing the destruction of Germany 65 years after the cessation of hostilities is disturbing when we are now united with them... It is emotive and inappropriate.”
He stressed that the St James’s-based society was not against a memorial “per se” but that Green Park is the wrong location.
Mr Ball’s words were branded “disgraceful” by the secretary of the BCA and former gunner Douglas Radcliffe MBE.
The memorial for the 55,573 bomber airmen who died during the war has a list of high profile supporters, including both Gordon Brown and David Cameron, Lord Ashcroft, who has helped finance the project and the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which led a fundraising campaign.
Last week Mr Cameron said it was high time the country showed its gratitude by building a permanent memorial to the “brave men”.
Mr Ball added: “To produce an enormous architectural feature which destroys physically part of Green Park, with a lasting structure which would change that part of the park for ever, shows an insensitivity which is without feeling and is outrageous.
“The parkland is unique as a Royal Park. Ironically it survived the horrors of war only to be threatened by the incursions of a ‘memorial’ to those who lost their lives in part to save England’s traditions.”

His opposition was echoed by Juliet Lyle, a fellow member of the society and Green Party candidate for St James’s ward who is collecting a petition ahead of the hearing, which if successful would see work completed by the end of next year.
Ms Lyle said: “It has an air of triumphalism about it. We are definitely not unsympathetic to the cause, but I think using these sort of emotive and disturbing images is below the belt.
“Green park is not the right location for this. We should guard our environment and especially this quiet, peaceful corner of the park.”
Mr Radcliffe said: “I think it is quite disgraceful that we should be accused of triumphalism for trying to honour the people who gave up their lives for their country. My rear gunner and pilot are buried in Germany. Are they suggesting they don’t deserve a monument?
“It is in the hands of Westminster Council. But actually I think that part of Green Park needs something anyway. It’s not the best part of the park and is a good location given there is already a First World War memorial around the corner.”
The monument features quotations from Winston Churchill and a bronze statue of an air crew within a line of stone columns. Bomber Command was formed by the RAF in 1936 to fly raids at night.