National Police Memorial

The Police Roll of Honour Trust is working closely with Mr Winner to ensure the names of all UK police officers killed in the line of duty are recorded at the National Police Memorial.

We shall be providing the Roll of Honour for inclusion in a book of remembrance to be on permanent view at the site.

We will also seek to have the names of the officers engraved in stone at the memorial.

Work has started on a national memorial honouring police officers killed in the line of duty, which is being constructed in central London.

The £2.3m project includes a large black wall with a glass cabinet displaying a book which names the officers, and should be complete in The Mall within four months.

It was organised by the Police Memorial Trust, a charity set up by Michael Winner following the shooting of Pc Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in 1984. Michael Winner has campaigned for it to be built for 13 years.

The film director, who put £500,000 of his own money into the project, said he was "absolutely delighted" that building work was under way.

He said: "I am highly hopeful that people will say: 'The police are out there, dying for us and leaving very distraught families'.

"Memorials to soldiers, sailors and airmen were commonplace. But the police fight a war with no beginning and no end."

Work began on the national monument, designed as a donation by Sir Norman Foster, on Monday.

Donations from individuals, companies and the Police Constables of London have totalled £300,000.

The Queen is expected to unveil the memorial when it is complete.

A national memorial to police officers killed in the line of duty is to be built.

Planning permission has been granted by Westminster Council for the construction of a national memorial to police officers who have died in the course of duty. The memorial designed by Foster and Partners in association with the Danish visual artist Per Arnoldi will be sited at Cambridge Green at the north-eastern junction of The Mall and Horse Guards Road in front of the Old Admiralty Building.

The permission to build the memorial follows a twelve-year campaign by the film director Michael Winner.

The cost is expected to be in excess of £1 million and will be underwritten by Mr Winner who founded the Police Memorial Trust in the wake of the death of Pc Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in 1984.

The Trust has since established 28 memorials to individual officers around the country.

The national monument, designed by Sir Norman Foster, will consist of two distinct elements.

A book listing the names of officers killed on duty will be displayed in a vitrine (glass show case) within a dark stone wall. This wall, which will also carry an inscription and the police’s badge of office, will form one side of a rectangular enclosure concealing the concrete London Underground vent shaft that currently occupies the site. The other three sides will be faced in the same dark stone and covered almost entirely in creeper similar to that covering the walls of the adjacent citadel.

Nearby will be a tall transparent wall of glass sited in a reflecting pool and gently illuminated with blue light. The glass wall represents the blue lamp once displayed outside every police station in Britain and still regarded as a symbol of the police and their readiness to serve. The glass wall provides a degree of shelter so that those visiting the memorial may do so in an appropriate setting for contemplation, and it also acts as a symbol for the project. The two elements are linked by Purbeck stone paving.

The project had the full backing of police forces and authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers, The Police Federation and Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr Winner said.

Mr Winner, 66, said he would personally turn the pages of the book from time to time so that some new names would be shown. When another officer dies their name will be displayed on a single page for a week or so.

Last updated 1st July 2004
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