THERE may be hope. The quality and type of municipal administrators and mayors we have had of late in Pakistan, during the eleven years of democratic government, the freely and fairly elected lot, are somewhat comparable in their ignorance of history to the present Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

Livingstone was born in Lambeth in 1945, at the end of World War II, and was educated at Tulse Hill Comprehensive School, where he presumably was taught history in the same manner as the children of Pakistan are now forced to study a compulsory subject known as Pakistan Studies, guaranteed to keep them fully ignorant of any historical or current facts about their country.

After leaving school, Livingstone worked for eight years as a technician at the Chester Beatty Cancer Research Institute in London. He took to politics in 1971, became a member of the Lambeth Council and then of the Camden Council. In between he decided to take up teaching and entered Phillipa Fawcett Teacher Training College, qualifying in 1973, and that same year became a member of the Greater London Council, a body that was later abolished by Margaret Thatcher just to get rid of Livingstone who was then heading it.

In the 1987 general election he became Labour MP for Brent East and was re-elected in 1992. At the last general election in 1997, he increased his majority with a 14 per cent swing from the Conservatives. Following a high profile campaign, in September 1997 he was re-elected to Labour's National Executive Committee (of which he had been member in the late 1980s). The rules governing the elections to the NEC were changed in 1997 to prevent Members of Parliament standing in the constituency section. Ken was chucked out of the Labour Party last year for standing against the official candidate for Mayor of London, Frank Dobson, whom he trounced in the election.

Affectionately known as Red Ken, Livingstone writes a weekly column every Wednesday for the Independent newspaper, a regular column for the left weekly Tribune, and a regular restaurant column for the London Evening Standard (free meals?).

He is a former vice-president of the London Zoological Society, so even if ignorant of history, apart from being a man of the people he is a lover of animals, and hopefully a kind and good human being. Earlier this month, Mayor Livingstone, during Mayor's question time at the London Assembly, remarked on two statues which have stood in Trafalgar Square for over a century, both of generals who served their country with distinction in India. "I think that the people on the plinths in Trafalgar Square in our capital city should be identifiable to the generality of the population. I have not a clue who two of the generals are or what they did."

When it was explained to him that One was very good in the Afghan War, Livingstone replied, "Precisely. I imagine that not one person in 10,000 going through Trafalgar Square knows any details about the lives of those two generals.

It has been indicated to me that we could move the two generals that no one has ever heard of."

One general, Sir Henry Havelock, distinguished himself during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 relieving the British residency at Lucknow. He died soon after of dysentery. With the other general, we here in Sindh, are very familiar - General Sir Charles Napier.

Napier was a veteran of the Peninsular War (1808-1812), he fought in the United States in 1813 when it declared war upon England. In 1839, back home, whilst commanding the northern district, he ably handled the dangerous dimensions of the Chartist movement averting a possible bloody revolution in Britain.

He was sixtyone-years-old when in 1843 he fought and won the great battles that made Sindh a part of the British Empire - Miani, Dabbo, and the storming of the impregnable fortress of Imambargah, the last according to the Duke of Wellington 'one of the most curious and extraordinary of all military feats.' He was appointed the first governor and commander of the forces in Sindh.

Karachi owes Napier much. He saw that a regular supply of water was conveyed to the city from the Malir River, he developed housing and roads, drainage and sanitation facilities, all of which served the city well until Pakistan came into being. He installed a powerful lighthouse at Manora Point, and planned to make Karachi a free port by widening the entrance to the harbour, constructing docks, and connecting the island of Keamari to Karachi.

He introduced into Sindh a police system far in advance of any other in India, which became the model for most of what was good in subsequent reforms of the Indian Police.

In 1847, his health failing, he tendered his resignation as Governor of Sindh and sailed away home to England where he died in 1853. An obelisk of pink Aberdeen granite was raised in his commemoration that year on the Napier Mole by the people of Karachi. The inscription upon its plinth read : "From this spot on 1st October 1847 was fired the farewell salute to His Excellency Lt General Sir Charles Napier GCB. On his retirement from the Governorship of Sind being the extreme point from which at that date wheel carriage had ever passed along this Bunder, a work planned and executed under the Government of His Excellency and thus far completed at the date of his departure from this province."

Let us follow the fate of the obelisk. After partition, a callous chairman of the Karachi Port Trust had it removed and dumped in the municipal graveyard of monuments erected by the Raj.

In 1975, Hayat Sherpao, Bhutto's chief minister in the NWFP, was murdered. To commemorate his death, the old Karachi polo ground, then known as the Bagh-i-Jinnah, was renamed Sherpao Gardens and Bhutto ordered that a monument be instantly erected therein to commemorate his murdered minister. His flunkies scrounged around the municipal monument graveyard, found the old ruined and wrecked obelisk, resurrected it, and hastily stood it up in the Sherpao Gardens. The lead filling of the engraved portion was gouged out and an etched brass plaque commemorating Sherpao screwed upon the damaged portion. This plaque was removed in 1978 after Bhutto was deposed and the name Sherpao Gardens consigned to oblivion.

The damaged defaced obelisk still stands on the old polo ground, with no plaque, no inscription, only the remains of an undecipherable damaged indentations to mark it. Close to it, in the nameless garden, now stands Nawaz Sharif's monument to the testing of his nuclear bomb and his subsequent downfall - a botched replica made of unrecognizable material representing the radiation-stricken hill at Chaghi. We must hope that no future desecrator of Pakistan renames the garden (which has grown and flourished despite the park commissioners this city has had) after our atomic wizard and dubs it Bagh-i-Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Back to London. A descendant of Sir Charles Napier wrote the editor of The Times (London) responding to the news item on Livingstone expressed intentions on the future of the Trafalgar Square statue of his forebear. As to Mr Ken Livingstone's concern that he is not a well-known national character, anyone viewing his statue can at least learn something from the inscription on the plinth : "Erected by Public Subscription, the most numerous subscribers being Private Soldiers."

And, as another correspondent put it, "The purpose of a statue is either to remind us, if we have forgotten, or prompt us to inquire, if we do not know, of the deeds considered at the time significant enough to commemorate."

As remarked the chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, removing statues commemorating national heroes is a bizarre and foolish idea, for Trafalgar Square has to be judged in its historical context and the figures represented there are relevant to a particular era and also part of British history.

How many statues are on Red Ken's list? Will Nelson still stand safely on his column?