PoW memorial on track after universal Council backing

Published: 24th March, 2011
by DAN CARRIER

A WAR memorial paid for by readers of the New Journal came one step closer this week after councillors voted unanimously to back the plans.

The Town Hall’s planning committee granted planning permission for the design, which the New Journal has worked on with Labour councillor Roger Robinson and Camden Town-based architect Chris Roche, by 12 votes to none. 

Former CND chairman Bruce Kent attended the planning meeting on Thursday night to give his support.

The memorial, paid for by generous donations to the Journal’s PoW fund, is due to include a set of railway sleepers and tracks to mark the fact many prisoners were used as slave labour on engineering projects. 

The sculpture is due to be placed on the Cobden traffic island, near Mornington Crescent, opposite the statue of Sir Richard Cobden, the Victorian campaigner. 

Former National Serviceman and Somers Town Labour councillor Roger Robinson has been working on the plans for nearly a decade. 

He said: “After 10 years of campaigning, I am so happy the council have now given their support for this important memorial. 

“It is also a very timely moment for such a memorial to be unveiled: to be installed at the time when we are watching a world still at war, we need memorials to remind us of the misery armed conflict brings.

“This will honour the sacrifice made by people in the last World War – and remind us all of the follies of fighting. We hope to have the work completed and in place to hold a memorial unveiling late this year.”

And the plans got the backing of Far East veteran Ernest Mount, now 90, who survived a prison camp in the Far East. 

He was in his early 20s when he almost died of starvation in Japanese camps, where he was kept captive for four years.

He said: “I was extremely thin and malnourished. There were times I thought I’d die. Even today I don’t know how I got out alive.”