Gibson Street Gala - Cowardice Leading Culture

Gibson Street - Minus Bigotry

It's not well known but the leafy West End of Glasgow has a dirty secret. Look past the posh uni, the awful accent and the overpriced coffee and there is a shocking past which most try to ignore. Yes, Rangers Football Club was founded in the west end. I know. Terrible. It was in Kelvingrove Park in 1872 that the founders walked and discussed forming a club despite not owning kits, a ball or enough players for a team. Yet from that a club grew that would come to define half the city and shape the world game in it's own way. The history stretches beyond that with the club playing it's first Scottish Cup final at the famous West of Scotland Cricket Ground and one of the founders living on Gibson Street (pictured above). It is a story told well by the Founders Trail which is tour based off extensive research done into the founding of Rangers. The open top bus tour takes you around Glasgow looking at where the founding occurred and what the early history of the club was. It's done with no malice, partisanship or bigotry. Simply telling the history of the city. It's one which Visit Scotland has been happy to promote and integrate into it's tourist message. The acceptance by Visit Scotland speaks to the Founders Trails aims, namely moving away from being associated as a Rangers event and looking to be more broadly accepted.

Gibson Street hosts the Gibson Street Gala, which is a set of stalls and events designed to celebrate community and culture in the area. Part of the wider West End Festival it brightens up the area and offers family friendly fun. The Founders Trail participated in the West End Festival to popular acclaim, promoting it's own aims but also raising money for Erskine and Yorkhill. It then was accepted to the Gibson Street event last year and again was highly successful. However this year the stall was refused a place at the Gibson Street Gala amidst claims of controversy and how it's aligned with a bigoted organisation. Apparently the complaints consisted of two phonecalls and two emails. They have since given interviews and spoken of how they refused the Founders Trail simply to avoid controversy despite the fact that they agreed they were a good group, with fine aims and that they were a success the previous year. This disgusts me.

Generic West End Shot - Poverty Gap Not Pictured

You can think what you want about Rangers as a club however the fact remains that the Founders Trail is a historic organisation that does it's job with no hint of malice, hatred, bigotry or anger. The tour is light hearted, family friendly and open to all. It has a place at events such as the Gibson Street Gala. The discussion and preservation of history in Glasgow is central to any cultural event and indeed central to the city as a whole going forward. You only have to look at the city centre and the bland, homogenised planning to see what happens when you don't aim to keep history at the centre of city growth both culturally and architecturally. The Founders Trail has done nothing wrong except be about football and be about Rangers. Those who complained should have been ignored or shouted down.

Yet they weren't. And the fear of controversy drove the organisers to refuse the application. The most important characteristic of a cultural leader is bravery. They must strive to show what is important regardless of pressure. You will always have people seeking to shape culture and history for their own aims but the cultural leader rises above that to show what is needed. To refuse the Founders Trail is to deny that history, deny the links between Rangers and the west end and even deny the links between football and the west end. If it attracted controversy then surely the debate it worth having and will add to the area through intelligent discourse? The organisers agreed the aim was admirable and that the group did well at last years event yet still showed little appetite to fight for what they believed in. Yet they would try to lead culture in our city and convince you that they show the best of local community at their event.

What a sad city we have ahead of us if cultural leaders bow to pressure so readily. If every controversial piece of cinema, art and music is ignored for fear of what people may say. A city more dedicated to consumerism than culture where we will cheer the opening of a new shopping mall rather than promote anything that dares to speak to what we once were or what we may become. The west end is the cultural centre of Glasgow filled with writers, artists, students and academics. On this evidence I fear it's a hollow centre.

George Square and Maggie Thatcher

Yesterday various news outlets reported that there were two hundred or so people on George Square having an impromptu celebration following the not death of Maggie Thatcher. People blew up balloons, did conga lines, held up banners, sang songs and reveled in the shared taboo of it all. You celebrated the death of a human being, aren't you terribly edgy. The fact that I called her Maggie shows what I think of her. Mrs Thatcher and Baroness Thatcher implies a respect I don't want to give her. Her education and economic policies decimated the part of Britain I was born into. She showed no concern to those she thrust into poverty and she abandoned a section of the population. The latter is a sin for any politician.

In my younger years (and I'm hardly a elder figure) I leaned closely to communism. I was studying the history of Russia and I believed there was something of worth there. I steered clear of the young bearded men and women on campus who would call each other comrade and I certainly didn't sport t-shirts with Stalin on them. I saw the follies of the system and the horrors it produced but capitalism certainly isn't squeaky clean. If capitalism could move past it's problems and reform why not a socialist society founded on the principal that all should strive to be equal? Such is the naivity of youth. I gradually grew more moderate before eventually settling on broad socialist principals. That's not to say I don't have my right wing moments but on the whole I tend to the left. Despite this I've never entered into any of the socialist groups or joined a socialist protest.

Maggie Thatcher couldn't kill socialism in Glasgow. It's too engrained in the city. We are after all the city which had tanks in the streets to fight a feared uprising of the people. She did something much more destructive though. She became the icon which socialists defined themselves against. You weren't a socialist if you didn't despise that woman. They demonstrated against her rather in their own desire. It was genius from Thatcher, whether by design or accident. When she left socialists in Scotland had little to define themselves. The unions were long gone and all that was left were sporadic groups and the shambles that was the Labour party. They were so used to acting in reaction to Maggie that growth was no longer possible, independent thought neutered by the departure of their muse.

Never was this more apparent than on Monday. Who were the public figures of the socialist response to Thatcher's death? Frankie Boyle cracking jokes and George Galloway stomping his feet for attention. The b-list best of Glasgow were out in force chuckling and smiling alongside those political kids so brave that they hide their face behind scarves. Was the public demonstration a call for change? A show that her time was over and ours was here? No. It was a shrieking and childish sign that socialism in Scotland is as stuck in the 1980's as the Conservative party is. It was filled with those too young to have lived in the era yet who have been handed down the doctrine that this is how we behave. Those and people now stealing it for their own political agendas. I cringed when I saw the pictures.

 But what can I expect. That is what socialism is now in this country. We no longer display in the parliament because it's so ill-formed and petty that the only place where it belongs is in displays like that. Thatcher defined an era and her enemies defined themselves by her. Her death is a beginning of the end for socialism in Scotland. Because amidst all the singing and dancing few in George Square would have admitted the obvious. She won. Socialism is reduced to celebrating the death of a senile old woman.

Looking in and I wonder if I can call myself a socialist any more. I used to believe it stood for something. It meant I saw people around me and that I believed society to be important enough that the state should take care of it. I believed it stood for caring for those who need cared for, speaking for those without a voice and representing all regardless of gender, colour or creed. Perhaps I'm just as stuck in the 1980's as the rest of the movement if I believed that. Because Monday was a brutal display of where we truly are. If being a socialist means standing along side the kind of people who were in George Square then I no longer consider myself to be one. I hold the same principals, the same beliefs and the same views as ever but I stand apart. My only solace right now is that such small minded people will never show the ambition or the grand thinking required to actually shape this country in their image. They will be never look outside of their comfort zone, created in the 1980's by M.Thatcher.

J

"Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men." Quintus Ennius