Put Josephine Butler on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square.   Here’s my pitch for the BBC Radio 4 “Making History’ competition.  It was broadcast on Tuesday Sept 20th, 3.00 pm. Podcast link:    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07vs2h4#play   Scroll to 23.20 minutes for this item.

“So who was Josephine Butler? She was a Victorian wife and mother who chose to dedicate her life to the cause of abused women and girls.  Incensed by new laws which allowed the police to abuse any woman they chose to arrest, she began a campaign to repeal them. Can you imagine how difficult that was for a respectable Victorian woman?  Yet Josephine was so determined that she actually succeeded.   She went on to expose child sexual abuse in London, leading to the raising of the age of consent to 16.

There are no statues to Josephine Butler. Let’s put her on the plinth in Trafalgar Square.  The patron saint of prostitutes.”