Call for Shropshire suffragette Katherine Harley to replace Clive of India statue
Calls have been made for a suffragette to replace the statue of Clive of India in Shrewsbury if it is to be removed.
Councillor Kev Pardy believes the women from Shropshire’s history are not celebrated enough, and thinks nurse and suffragist Katherine Harley would be a fitting replacement to stand proudly in The Square in Shrewsbury.
Katherine Harley was an army wife who lived in Condover, near Shrewsbury, but after the death of her husband her approach to life radically changed and she became very politically active.
She was a leading member of the West Midland Federation of The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and became president of the Shropshire society. She was also involved with The Church League for Women’s Suffrage.
Katherine was the originator of the 1913 Suffragist Pilgrimage, a march from seventeen cities across the country by women to Hyde Park in London.
In the First World War she mobilised women to take over men’s jobs so they could go and join the army, and was involved in setting up hospitals in France, Greece and Serbia.
It was Serbia where she was killed by a bomb explosion in 1917.
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She was given a military funeral which was attended by thousands, to say thank you for her work in feeding babies and small children.
Councillor Pardy said: “When it was suggested that Robert Clive should be removed, this name came back to me.
“She was a suffragette and was born in Kent but lived in London. She wasn’t native to Shropshire but she lived in Condover.
“If the statue of Robert Clive was moved, and I don’t think it will be because the council will decide, I think we don’t celebrate women from our history enough.
“There are plenty of women in this county who are historically important.
“It seems the main thing history celebrates is the military, but it doesn’t always have to be about that.”
He also suggested Ellesmere’s Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save The Children, as a favourable option.
Shropshire Council will debate whether the statue of Robert Clive should be removed at its next full council.
More than 20,000 signed petitions to get rid of it, while more than 6,000 signatures were collected of people who want it to stay.
In brief: Who was Robert Clive?
Clive was born on the Styche Hall estate, near Market Drayton, in 1725 and went to school in London before travelling to India with the East India Company in 1743.
After two years in Britain, in 1755 Clive returned to India and two years later retook Calcutta (now Kolkata) for the company at the Battle of Plassey, a key moment on Britain's path to controlling Bengal and then India for almost two centuries.
Corruption and looting saw Clive amass a huge amount of wealth and he returned to Britain in 1760, aged 34.
He was made Baron Clive of Passey, knighted and became Shrewsbury's MP, a position he held until his death.
He went back to India in 1765 for two years before returning to Britain where the activities of Clive and the East India Company in India came under sustained attack.
The famine of Bengal that lasted between 1769 and 1773 and killed around a third of the region's population was said to have largely been caused by the company's policies.
Clive defended himself in Parliament, saying "I stand astonished at my own moderation," and in 1773 Parliament declared that he did “render great and meritorious services to his country.”
He died at home in London aged 49 and is believed to have killed himself.
All the petitions can be found by searching ‘Clive of India’ on change.org.
