Skwerr Go...

George Square in Glasgow has been in the news quite a lot recently, particularly with the news of the #Occupy movement taking up tented residence, the subsequent rape of a young woman and the campaign rather meekly assenting to Glasgow City Council's request that they move to Kelvingrove, so as not to interfere with the impending rampant consumerist madness, called Christmas that they're supposed to be opposed to in the first place...

  

I've always had a soft spot for the square. As kids we were dragged in to 'ooh' and 'aaah' at the Christmas lights after shopping in John Lewis's, whilst the parentals lubricated themselves for the drive home via the Horseshoe bar. My wife and I would meet there as teenagers, indulging in post cinema Kia-ora and chips, joined by street philosophers from the nearby soup kitchen, who were willing to share their life experiences for the price of a cup of tea or a bus fare to a forever lost home. Later on we'd play dead as part of campaigns against nuclear weapons, (nein danke) or as students against the move from grants to 'loans'. Other times found us sitting/sleeping on the benches cooling down after a night of musical frenzy up the hill at Strathclyde Uni. Hogmanay was always special, long before TV discovered that filming a few washed up bands and comedians saved them the cost of producing an October Hogmanay. A pre-midnight stroll into town from whichever southside or westend bedsit we were living in, would find a similarly disparate group of folk out for an impromptu ceilidh as the bells rang out. Magical times, Asian tourists, African students and Clydeside Eldorado soaked mendicants all belting out Auld Lang Syne, arms linked. There was always an air of safety and bonhomie about the square, long before the arrival of CCTV.

I only really began to notice the built environment of the square in the late eighties, when for a short time half price cocktails in the Copthorne Hotel became part of Friday evening life. Looking out to the City Chambers, I could mock a distant relative who had became mired in Labour's brown envelope politics. In return for a massive contract to sandblast the municipal buildings he offered to gold leaf the spire atop the city chamber dome. He came unstuck when a trainee surveyor miscalculated the height, and cost him tens of thousands in brown envelope liquidity. Sitting in the Copthorne Hotel half way through a Tequilla Sunrise, we had a great view of the life in the square, as its inhabitants, waited, checked watches, preened themselves for a night of raucousness or as happened too often, young men with bad perms and catalogue jackets looked around forlornly, sighed, shrugged shoulders and jumped on a bus home. It took me a while and a few drinks, but gradually I began to notice that the overall look of the square with its statue of Queen Victoria astride a horse, her German consort Albert on his gee gee and the cenotaph to the dead of world war one was really no more than a pantheon dedicated to commercial Glasgow and its willing expression of the ideas of war and conquest of imperial dynasty.

I was aware of the modern history of the square, accounts of the 1919 Battle of George Square, when Bolshevism was roaring through Europe, that Scottish troops were confined to barracks, whilst troops were brought up by train from the north of England to suppress the protests for fear that Glaswegian troops might join the dissent, the stories of tanks and Churchill were still relevant in the dying days of Thatcherism amid poll tax protests. My  abiding memory of the square is of an impromptu party in George Square, with, amongst others, a future leader of SLAB, on the day Thatcher demitted office. I suspect there'll be a few folk in the square on the day she shuffles off her demementor cloak.

The genesis of the square is interesting, the city fathers inspired/envious of Edinburgh's new town, purchased the land which was part of a croft called Rameshorn. The Square was marked out in 1781. By 1801 it was described as  a “hove” or “hollow, filled with green-water, and a favourite resort for drowning puppies and cats and dogs, while the banks of this suburban pool were the slaughtering place of horses.”

General Sir John Moore. Not so popular with the weans.

As the merchant classes grew wealthier through the trade in slavery, tobacco and cotton, so mansion houses began to spring up around the square and a veneer of opulent respectability was slathered on. Glasgow,firmly embracing the mantle of being the second city of Empire and  the fourth most populous city in Europe after London, Paris and Berlin was struck with monarchist patriotic fever, hence the plethora of royally named streets George Street, Duke Street (after the Duke of York), Frederick Street, Hanover Street, and Regent Street culminating in George Square after the mad King George III.

A look at the 12 statues that adorn the square, shows that they are mostly devoid of artistic value, particularly the 88 foot high memorial to Walter Scott.

Then again they are subject to the fashions of their time. The Scott monument was erected in 1837 and prompted Edinburgh to try and outdo Glasgow by building a gothic spaceship in 1840 to honour the novelist and poet.

This has been quite a circuitous route I've taken to get to the point I really want to make. George Square is symbolic of an Imperial past that modern Scotland is finally moving away from, the easy bucks route from partnering up with a bigger bullying neighbour no longer work, they no longer appeal and are finally realised as damaging to those you wish to exploit, as they are to yourself. Yet George Square remains chock full of these symbols of Empire, there are 12 statues in the square. I can see that Burns and Scott have to be there as their work is immortal. James Watt, absolutely. Thomas Graham, how many of us know about him and his work that led to the dialysis machine? However, we have to ask of what relevance in contemporary Scotland are the equine statues of Queen Victoria and her husband looking down on the people of Glasgow? Do we still celebrate Field Marshall Lord Clyde for his sterling work in suppressing the Indian mutiny? Or General Sir John Moore and his brave work in the Peninsular wars? What about the Liberal and Conservative Prime Ministers Gladstone and Peel do we still praise them or their contemporaries Clegg and Cameron today? Or Glasgow MP James Oswald, who's been standing in the square for 135 years? Is poet Thomas Campbell more worthy of his place than an Edwin Morgan, Hugh McDiarmid Muriel Stark or Joanna Baillie?

Where are the statues to celebrate the Scottish men and women who lived, died and achieved in this century and the last one?

Not that statues and sculptural work are all about people and past glories...Look at the shoddy way sculptor George Wyllie's work has been treated. Revered by curators in Europe and America, George now living in a care home, is mostly ignored by Scotland's art establishment, too long a whimsical thorn in the side of their small 'c' conservatism. His exclusion from the Sculpture Show, a survey of the history of modern sculpture from 1900 is to be held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh next month, has no place for a Wyllie. As a fan and a friend of the man, I'm dismayed that the Scottish art establishment is too outward looking, and incapable of looking around it's own wee patch just once in a while...

There are council elections in May 2012. The SNP have set their sights on taking control of the City Chambers. Prior to May's Holyrood elections, you would have been accused of living on cloud cuckoo land if you had said the SNP could take the city. Yet, we hear tales of panic, of Labour culling the old  guard in a desperate attempt to shore up the last bastion of Unionism in Scotland. Glasgow has become a city in state in paralysis, led by leaders wary of adopting positive change that has emanated from the Scottish Government, lest they show them in a good light.  The Evening Times,'Ripped Off Glasgow' campaign, driven by Labour politicians came to naught. Everything is up for grabs. Perhaps one of the first things that a new SNP city council might look at is a slight rearrangement of their front door garden, George Square. Remove a few of the old Empire adoring statues and replace them with work that best represents Scotland's place in the contemporary world.