The statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, Westminster, London, is a work by the sculptor Philip Jackson.

In July 2014, Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, George Osborne, announced while on a visit to India that a statue of Mahatma Gandhi would be placed in Parliament Square, Westminster. He said that “I hope this new memorial will be a lasting and fitting tribute to his memory in Britain, and a permanent monument to our friendship with India.” It was announced at the same time that sculptor Philip Jackson had been asked to create the statue. He had previously created the statue of the Queen Mother, the RAF Bomber Command Memorial, and the statue of Bobby Moore. Planning permission was granted by Westminster City Council later that year in November.

Financing for the statue was by public donations and through sponsorships. This was supported by the work of the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, which was set up by Meghnad Desai, Baron Desai, as well as a special advisory panel created by the Government. This was chaired by Sajid Javid MP, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. By the time that planning permission, £100,000 had been raised by the Trust, but a further £500,000 was needed and they sought to raise that by January 2015 in order to tie in with a planned visit to London by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi of India.

The statue was unveiled by the Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on 14 March 2015. It was dedicated as a commemoration of the centenary of Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa, which is generally regarded as the commencement of his efforts for Indian independence. Speakers at the unveiling of the statue included Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron, the Indian film actor Amitabh Bachchan and Gandhi’s grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, the statue was vandalised by protesters along with the statue of Winston Churchill. Someone painted the word “racist” onto the Gandhi statue.

The statue is 9 feet (2.7 m) tall, and made from bronze. It is based on a photograph of Gandhi standing outside the offices of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1931. The plinth that the statue is mounted on is lower than those on the other statues in Parliament Square, which was a deliberate choice by the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust.

It was planned to be the final statue to be placed in Parliament Square. Because of the placement of the statue of Gandhi, developers are expecting to move the placement for a planned statue of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to outside of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in Middlesex Guildhall.

On its unveiling, commentators noted the irony of the statue’s placement near the statue of Sir Winston Churchill that also stands in Parliament Square. The Telegraph of Kolkata noted that the fact “that Gandhi and Mandela now stand alongside a slew of white men in Parliament Square is proof of how much England itself has moved away from Winston Churchill’s views on racism and imperialism.”

Object description
Type: Monument > Statue
Location: Parliament Square, London SW1
Material: Bronze, stone
Artist: Philip Jackson CVO DL (b. 1944)
Date: 2015

Image details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: Nikon D50
Lens: Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6G ED
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/4.2
Shutter Speed: 1/1,000s
ISO: 280
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

The King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Memorial, situated between The Mall and Carlton Gardens in central London, is a memorial to King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). Completed in its present form in 2009, the memorial incorporates an earlier, Grade II listed statue of George VI by William McMillan, unveiled by his daughter Queen Elizabeth II in 1955. The reconfigured memorial, which includes a statue of the Queen Mother by Philip Jackson, relief sculpture by Paul Day and an architectural setting by Donald Buttress and Donald Insall, was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 2009.

The statue of King George VI was sculpted in bronze by William McMillan, and depicts him in his naval uniform. The statue stands on a base of Portland stone. The statue was unveiled by Elizabeth II in the presence of her mother and other senior members of the royal family. The architect of the memorial was Louis de Soissons. It was feared that the location of the memorial would aesthetically disrupt The Mall, adding a further set of steps so near to the Duke of York Column, but it was positively received upon unveiling on 6 October 1955.

The statue was designated a Grade II listed building on 9 January 1970.

The statue of Queen Elizabeth was sculpted in bronze by Philip Jackson, and portrays her at the time that she was widowed, aged 51. The memorial to Queen Elizabeth cost £2 million, and was funded by a special five-pound coin produced to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s 80th birthday.

A second casting of the statue was unveiled in Queen Mother Square, Poundbury, Dorset, on 27 October 2016.

Object description
Type: Monument > Statue
Location: Carlton House Terrace, London SW1
Material: Bronze, stone
Artist: William McMillan RA (1887 – 1977), Philip Jackson CVO DL (b. 1944)
Date: 1955, 2009
Listed: Grade II

Image details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: Nikon D50
Lens: Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6G ED
Focal Length: 42mm
Aperture: ƒ/5.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1,000s
ISO: 280
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International