1. What would you like the Union to do?
Phineas Bar, run by Students’ Union UCL, has been an important part of student life at UCL for many years. The bar is named after ‘Phineas Maclino’, a life-sized model of a fictional Scottish Highlander soldier in the Black Watch regiment and our former mascot.
Explaining our past
As the Bicentennial of UCL approaches we are proposing to explain the history of Phineas by restoring him to his case in the bar, explaining the origins of the name, the role of the statue in student life, and the decision to remove them as our mascot to better reflect the student body we are today. This exhibition would include the original model with informational panels acknowledging the history of the artifact and how they are viewed in a contemporary context.
Phineas was banished after a previous UE vote in 2019. This would reverse the ban. I believe the previous ban wrongfully focused on one of the first times Phineas was touted by students (during celebration of the Boer war) in the 1900s and not the student icon all students knew him to be for the rest of his life. Removing Phineas entirely from UCL raises a much more complicated issue- that erasing history instead of acknowledging the position of a large, historical, educational institution will inevitably hold throughout the ages is inherently much more problematic. In the words of the Times who reached out to the SU at the time “We have learnt that Phineas has an identical twin statue at a South African university that is also positioned at the university's student bar and has been the prized mascot there for many years.
Specifically, the statue - called Phineas III - is up in Wits University in Johannesburg, which currently has a research partnership with UCL.
Here are photos of the statue: https://www.flickr.com/photos/witsalumni/albums/72157686537357401
Wits university Vice Chancellor, Adam Habib, has urged the UCL Students' Union not to remove the original Phineas over its links to the Boer War as doing so risks "cleansing history", he says. Mr Habib also told us that he doesn't see a significant link between the UCL Phineas and the Boer War. He added that if the union think there is a strong link then it should add context to Phineas with a plaque to "tell the story" of the Boer War, instead of removing it and renaming the bar.”
Georgina Brewer, who has previously written extensively on student life at UCL, and regularly teaches about Phineas in the OBL, is happy to write the final plaque statements. Below is a draft excerpt of what the panels inform students of.
“Initially adorning the front of Catesby’s, a department store on Tottenham Court Road, the Phineas statue was stolen in 1900 by UCL students celebrating the relief of the besieged town of Ladysmith, South Africa, during the Boer War. It went on to be stolen on many more occasions at moments of celebration for our student community.
Slowly but surely, Phineas became the official mascot of the Students' Union and UCL sports teams, and a pawn in the collegiate rivalry with King’s College. It was eventually donated by Catesby’s to the Students' Union where it was encased in glass and given pride of place in the bar. There it remained until 2019, when the Union Executive began to reconsider: is it still appropriate to have a military figure, especially one originally stolen during the Boer War, as the mascot of a diverse international student community?
In 2019, the Students’ Union Executive decided to remove the Phineas statue from public display and demote it from its position as the Union’s official mascot.
Later, a consultation with students found that Phineas, as a student mascot, was largely disconnected from colonial connotations – with most students unaware of its historic ties. However, the Students’ Union and the UCL community at large recognised that having a military figure as mascot felt disconnected from the values of the community. Phineas was later loaned to the Object Based Learning Lab where students could learn about UCL’s history in relation to contemporary ideas of justice and decolonisation.
In 2025, the Phineas statue was returned to Phineas Bar to recognise its role as the long standing emblem of UCL's student community and in an effort to educate students on the Union and UCL’s history.”
2. Why would you like to do this?
Please see above.
3. How will this affect students?
There were three votes regarding Phineas in 2019.
Rename the bar - no decision
Remove Phineas as official mascot - passed
Don't put Phineas back in the bar - passed