The other stands over 4,000 miles and an ocean away at the foot of St Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; a plaque honouring the 600 protesters who were trampled, truncheoned and teargassed by Alabama state troopers while demonstrating for the right of black people to vote on March 7 1965.

Stuart Melchor, 35, was left with seven deep bites on his thigh, and several wounds to his head after the incident outside a wholesaler, Blue Gem, in north-west London.

In his Barbour jacket and tartan tie he strides around, canvassing for the local candidate in this Thursday's byelection for the Scottish parliament, with the confidence of man apparently oblivious to the oblivion which has been inflicted on his own party in recent elections north of the border. "We haven't seen a favourable reaction like this for a Tory candidate for some years," he says. "You can sense that the mood is changing."