Royals, relatives and Rastafari attend unveiling of Haile Selassie statue

RELATIVES of the last Ethiopian Emperor (above left) joined members of the Seligman family and Rastafari from across London at the unveiling of the restored statue of Emperor Haile Selassie (1896-1975) in Cannizaro Park on 22 October.

Friends Chairman Tony Matthews welcomed more than 80 visitors, and Merton's Mayor, Councillor Judy Saunders, cut the cloth to reveal the 69-year-old statue following its facelift in the old Tennis Court Garden. They are shown above right.

Guests included the Emperor's cousins, now living in London. Present too were descendants of  the late Hilda Seligman, the artist who created the statue in 1936. Hilda and her family had hosted Haile Selassie at their Wimbledon home when he was forced to flee his country - then known as Abyssinia - following its occupation by Mussolini's Italian Fascists in October 1935.

Hilda and a group of supporters including Sylvia Pankhurst, the former Suffragette, had campaigned against the appeasement policy of the British Government of the day and supported the Emperor as he appealed for international support against the occupation. Years later after he returned to power during World War 2, she became well known in Ethiopia for her humanitarian work.

Among the guests in Cannizaro Park were Hilda's son, Sir Peter Seligman, and his two sisters-in-law: Rosemary, widow of Hilda's eldest son, Adrian, and Nancy-Joan, widow of the youngest son, Madron, with her own son, Dominic. It was she who had approached the Friends of Cannizaro Park a year before to appeal for the restoration of the statue. She is pictured left with it before the work was carried out. Eventually, Merton's arts development officer, Maureen Pepper, had persuaded the Council to fund the project, supported by the Friends. 

Sir Peter recalled the Emperor's time as a guest at his parents' home, Lincoln House, which once stood in five acres of grounds on Parkside, opposite Wimbledon Common. His father,
Dr Richard Seligman, had been a leading metallurgist and entrepreneur in Wandsworth. Rosemary, still a Wimbledon resident herself, spoke of her visit to Haile Selassie at his palace in Ethiopia in the early 1970s, shortly before he was overthrown by a military coup. She remembered his stable of Austrian Lippizaner horses.

Today, the Emperor is best known for his revered position at the heart of the Rastafari faith, and the unveiling ceremony drew representatives of several Rastafari groups from across the capital. The visitors burned incense and sang to celebrate the restoration of the stone statue. One of their number afterwards thanked Tony Matthews saying:

"Words can never express that gratitude that I would like to say to you. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the invite to HIM’s unveiling. You will never know the feeling of joy I felt to be present at such a gathering. To hear your opening words brought a joy to my heart. To be in the presence of some one who has met the KING in the flesh, was also a joy.

"As simple as the ceremony might have been, it really meant a lot to us who love the KING. As the Bible says, 'it's the simple things that confound the wise'. To hear someone else talk of the virtues of HIM gives us strength and encouragement. May the lord bless you, and keep you all. May he also bless all of your endeavours."

The Ethiopian Embassy was unrepresented at the unveiling ceremony although it had been invited to send a spokesman. 

Costing around £1000, restoration work on the statue involved pressure cleaning, chemical treatment, and repairs of hairline cracks and some facial deterioration. It was carried out by Holden’s, the company that also restored Cannizaro Park's marble statue of Diana the Huntress earlier this year.