Pictures emerging on Friday morning show pro-Palestine slogans painted on the plinth of the statue as well as on the bronze depiction of Winston Churchill. Some of the graffiti read “Zionist war criminal”, “Stop the Genocide”, “Never again is Now”, “Globalise the Intifada”, and what appears to be “Greetings from the Hague” in Dutch.
The Winston Churchill statue in London was unveiled in 1973 (Image: Getty)
The Churchill statue in Parliament square was vandalised overnight (Image: Getty Images)
As the pictures of the defaced statue started to circulate online, social media users were quick to react in anger. One X user wrote: “What a disgrace to the memory of the greatest Briton!”
Another one commented: “This place is heading down a very dark hole.”
Sharing a picture of the statue on X, Sky News political correspondent Ben Bloch said the area had been cordoned off and the statue was seemingly being cleaned.
He wrote: “The Churchill statue in Parliament Square has been defaced overnight with ‘Zionist war criminal’ and other graffiti. My colleague who took the photo says the statue is covered on all sides. It is cordoned off and being cleaned, it seems.”
The area was cordoned off on Friday morning to clean the monument (Image: Getty)
Matt Vickers, deputy chair of the Conservative Party, told GB News in reaction to the incident: “Its disgusting and vile. Whoever is doing this needs to be held to account. When we were in office we brought forward legislation to help tackle this. This is an attack on democracy, this is an attack on this country, its culture and its history.”
One X user commented: “The Churchill statue gets defaced again and again but somehow it’s never observed despite being in the middle of central London. Again and again.”
