Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Parliament Square

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." He had previously created the statue of the Queen Mother, the RAF Bomber Command Memorial, and the statue of Bobby Moore. Financing for the statue was by public donations and through sponsorships. 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. ==Design==

The statue is 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. ==See also==