London has been vandalised for the second time in the space of a month.
The words “doctrine of hate” and “architect of genocide” were found
daubed in red paint across the Grade I-listed monument in the north
London graveyard on Saturday.
The latest attack comes less than two weeks after the marble plaque
on the tomb was defaced by an apparent attempt to scrape and chip Marx’s
name off the marble slab with a hammer.
At the time the group who manage the cemetery said they feared the
memorial would never be the same again. Maxwell Blowfield, 31, who
visited the cemetery this morning with his mother admitted he was “quite
shocked” by the attack.
Blowfield who works for British Museum, said: “It’s a highlight
of the cemetery. The red paint will disappear, I assume, but to see that
kind of level of damage and to see it happen twice, it’s not good. I
wouldn’t like to say who or why someone did it but it was clearly
someone very critical of Marx and that part of history. I am just
surprised that somebody in 2019 feels they need to and do something like
that.”
German revolutionary philosopher Marx moved to London in 1849 and
lived in the city for the rest of his life. His theories became the
basis for communism before he died on March 14, 1883, aged 64. The
granite slab monument in north London, 12 feet (3.7 metres) tall and
topped with a bronze bust of Marx, was funded in 1956 by the Communist
Party of Great Britain.