Being a cheerful and glass-half-full sort of chiel, I always find myself looking at statues and graveyards whenever work or pleasure takes me to somewhere new. Sometimes, you can get a sense of a place just by walking among its dead or inspecting the virtues of a man (it’s always a man) which caused his fellow townsfolk to erect something in his honour.
If my city of Glasgow were to be judged by a cursory look at its stone heroes, only one conclusion could be reached: that the city has an obsession with warmongering, imperialist and dead Tory politicians and has an odd fixation with the lineage of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. It must also be an equestrian paradise. There are so many statues of dreadful old reactionaries on nags that you wonder why the city doesn’t have a horse peering out of its coat of arms and a Latin/Glaswegian motto such as Neigham Botherum.
A few years ago, the city fathers and mothers proposed doing something special with George Square, the beating heart of the city and the most important public space anywhere in Scotland. It is the location that anchors any route to and from the centre – “So, just head west along St Vincent Street from George Square and the boozer’s just two streets down on West Nile Street”. Something had to be done with George Square.
Lately, it had seemed that all those jollies to Tirana and Norwich had begun to distort that part of the councillors’ brains that governed their sense of civic aesthetics. Bit by bit, George Square was turned into a bordello as a scrofulous red tarmac was laid down and the space given over to cheap, seasonal bacchanals and fayres. Once, George Square was the home of political protest and rally; now, you can scarce attend a meeting without stepping round pneumatic machinery and temporary fencing.
None of the designs was deemed acceptable by the architectural experts that Glasgow is lucky to have sitting on its council and so a classic opportunity to imbue our square with some elegance and style was lost. And with it, too, the opportunity to replace the dreary and brooding old statuary that stands guard over the square.
I’m not saying that Prince Albert, Robert Peel, Queen Victoria, Lord Clyde and William Gladstone should all be put down or anything like that. Just that they could be moved to locations that might appreciate them more, such as Ruth Davidson’s back garden or the marching ground of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland.
Frank McAveety, the newly elected Labour leader on Glasgow City Council, seems to be an enlightened sort of chap with a promising personal narrative in the arts and culture. What better way to initiate his tenure than by giving George Square back to the people and by commissioning a collection of new memorials in and around this hallowed space and the city centre.
These would replace the old George Square dreadfuls and commemorate a new set of Scottish heroes. They would reflect the new, better Scotland and encapsulate the vision of all our political parties that upbringing, schooling and personal circumstances must not be a barrier to succeeding in Scotland.
The new statues needn’t be too expensive or massive. They could be made in all sorts of materials and colours: straw, wire, linoleum, rubber, glass, artex; you name it. Perhaps, too, they could come with their own set of castors, so that they could be moved around the city, as I wouldn’t want them all to stay in the one place. In this way, they would reflect the constantly changing nature of Glasgow and Scotland.
From time to time, the collection could be updated as and when we, the people, deemed it necessary. Importantly, it would provide a steady flow of work for our important Scottish creatives and designers. Most importantly, there would be women among them. Among the thousands of statues all over Scotland, barely a handful are of women and four are of Queen Victoria. What sort of message does that convey to young girls growing up in equal-opportunities Scotland?
So here are a few of my suggestions of those who I feel ought to be honoured and remembered in this special way:
Mary Barbour
She is one of the most influential women Scotland has ever produced. Organised tenant committees during the Glasgow rent strikes in 1915, which became a global template for resistance against landlordism. Some have said she’d have hated a statue but she would have loved its potential to inspire other women.
Margo MacDonald
Few other Scottish women embodied the concept of women being whatever they wanted to be. She fought against injustice all her life and she gave the impression that she knew and cared about every one of her fellow Scots (which she probably did).
Jock Stein
There is a statue of him at Celtic Park, but he belonged to Scotland. Like Margo, he showed how greatness can be achieved from humble beginnings. Last Thursday was the 30th anniversary of his death. During his life he made a lot of people happy.
Jimmy Reid
I don’t care if he is not known for much else other than the UCS work-in. At a moment in time he spoke on behalf of a nation and of the values that we think this country holds dear.
The Unknown Worker
This is actually a suggestion by Cat Boyd, the political activist and one of the founders of the new political party Rise. She said: “This would be a reminder that it was not philanthropists or industrialists who gave the city its character, but the men and women who toiled in the most extreme poverty, died in their workplaces and inhabited some of the worst slums in Britain, in order to build Glasgow. That they faced down tanks in 1919 in a fight for a reduction in the working week should never be forgotten.”
