51°29′44.35″N0°10′20.62″W / 51.4956528°N 0.1723944°W /51.4956528; -0.1723944
| Twelve Responses to Tragedy | |
|---|---|
 The memorial in January 2016 | |
 | |
| Artist | Angela Conner |
| Year | 1986 |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Medium | Bronze |
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
Twelve Responses to Tragedy, or theYalta Memorial, is a memorial located in theYalta Memorial Garden onCromwell Road inSouth Kensington in west London. The memorial commemorates people displaced as a result of theYalta Conference at the conclusion of theSecond World War. Created by the British sculptorAngela Conner, the work consists of twelve bronze busts atop a stone base. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 to replace a previous memorial (also by Conner) from 1982 that had been repeatedly damaged by vandalism.
The memorial is located in theYalta Memorial Garden at the junction of Cromwell Gardens, Thurloe Place andThurloe Square, adjacent to theVictoria & Albert Museum to the north. The garden and memorial are publicly accessible at all times.[1]
Plans for a memorial were initiated after a letter was written toThe Spectator in the 1970s signed byRichard West,Patrick Marnham andAuberon Waugh who proposed that a memorial be erected to the "... memory of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who were forcibly repatriated by the Allies to the Soviet and Yugoslav authorities at the end of the Second World War, a crime that was carefully hushed up at the time and even concealed from Parliament for fear of the outcry that would have resulted".[2] A later letter toThe Times calling for a memorial was signed by politiciansBernard Braine,Jo Grimond,Donald J. Stewart,John Mackintosh,James Molyneaux,Gwynfor Evans,Nicholas Bethell,John Foster,Christopher Mayhew, andHarmar Nicholls, and writersRebecca West,Hugh Trevor-Roper,Nicolas Cheetham,Nikolai Tolstoy and John Jolliffe.[3]
Braine and Jolliffe later appealed for funds in a letter toThe Times in 1978. The cost was of the memorial was estimated at £11,000 in their letter.[4]
The memorial was approved byPrime MinisterMargaret Thatcher in May 1980, over the objections of theForeign Office who opposed the erection on land that belonged to theCrown Estate of a monument that implicitly criticised the past actions of the British government.[5]
A memorial fountain with stone benches sculpted byAngela Conner was built and dedicated by theBishop of London,Graham Leonard, on 6 March 1982.[2] The creation of the memorial was opposed by both thegovernment of the Soviet Union and the Foreign Office.[6]
The memorial was repeatedly vandalised and was irreparably damaged after being cut in two by an electric stone-cutting saw in the autumn of 1982.[7] An appeal for a second monument was launched and Conner soldlithographs for £50 each depicting scenes of brutality against refugees to help raise funds. Conner's second memorial for Yalta,Twelve Responses to Tragedy, was dedicated in the same place as the previous memorial on 2 August 1986 by theBishop of Fulham,John Klyberg.[2] Reviewing Conner's recent work inThe Times in October 1986, criticJohn Russell Taylor wrote that the memorial "hardly rise[s] above the level of kitsch".[8] In 2013 the memorial was described as being in a poor condition.[9]
The original memorial showed a sphere kept in perpetual motion by jets of water.[10] The present memorial consists of a stone column upon a brick plinth; upon the column sits a bronze bust of 12 conjoined heads of men, women, and children.[11]
On the south side of the memorial at ground level inscription on stone reads:[9]
THIS SCULPTURE/ WAS DEDICATED BY/ THE BISHOP OF FULHAM/ ON 2ND AUGUST 1986 TO/ REPLACE THE PREVIOUS/ MEMORIAL DEDICATED BY/ THE BISHOP OF LONDON/ ON 6TH MARCH 1982 WHICH/ WAS LATER DESTROYED BY/ VANDALS TO WHOM THE/ TRUTH WAS INTOLERABLE
An inscription on a curved stone plinth on the east side of the memorial reads:[9]
THIS MEMORIAL WAS PLACED/ HERE BY MEMBERS OF ALL PARTIES/ IN BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT/ AND BY MANY OTHER SYMPATHISERS/ IN MEMORY OF THE COUNTLESS/ INNOCENT MEN WOMEN AND/ CHILDREN FROM THE SOVIET UNION/ AND OTHER EAST EUROPEAN STATES/ WHO WERE IMPRISONED AND DIED AT THE HANDS OF COMMUNIST/ GOVERNMENTS AFTER BEING/ REPATRIATED AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR/ MAY THEY REST IN PEACE
The inscription on the memorial was personally approved by Margaret Thatcher during her tenure as Prime Minister.[5]The memorial has been described as awar memorial as it was created in response to events that arose out of the conclusion of the Second World War.[9]
