Glasgow and the Slave Trade. A Secret History?

In Glasgow the part of the city nearest to the old medieval centre is branded as the Merchant City, celebrating the merchants and tobacco lords whose wealth led to the rapid growth of the city. Watching the film "12 Years a Slave" at the cinema recently I was struck by the fact that whilst the characters in the film were labouring away in the sugar fields and cotton plantations, their produce was then traded to the great and the good of my city. We have streets named in honour of the tobacco lords, but I struggled to find any mention of the role of the slaves in creating this wealth. I decided to try to write down here what I have found out on the subject, which seems so absent from the city history as to almost amount to a denial that it happened. 

At the end of the 17^th century Glasgow was not a large place. It was centred on the High Street where a cathedral had by then stood for 500 years. The nearby University of Glasgow, founded in 1451, was already 200 years old. However over the next 100 years the wealth and importance of the city would explode. Firstly driven by trans-Atlantic trade then manufacturing, invention and engineering. By the time of the Victorian era Glasgow would be known as the “second city of the Empire”. The medieval heart of the city, from Glasgow Cathedral down to the banks of the River Clyde would come to represent the shabby, ramshackle past and a new town would be built westwards by the wealthy merchants, laying out new streets running down from their mansions. Eventually as industrialisation encroached further into the old town even the University would up sticks in 1870, whilst Lord Kelvin was still teaching there, and follow the growth of the city west to Gilmorehill where it still stands. In the 18^th and 19^th century Glasgow was supplying doctors, soldiers, engineers and innovation to all corners of the Empire.

The old aphorism that “Glasgow built the Clyde and the Clyde built Glasgow” reflects the fact that Glasgow created a navigable channel for the larger sea-going vessels into the city to meet the demands of trade, and this river became the centre for industrial Glasgow with shipbuilding and associated industries meaning that a city of 77,000 people in 1801 had by 1939 grown to a city of 1.2 million citizens. So whatever way you look at it, the trade of the 17^th and 18^th century kick-started the growth of the Glasgow’s embryonic infrastructure. Firstly with sugar, then tobacco, cotton, linen and locally manufactured goods. When you look at that list it all seems quite innocuous, until you reflect on where the sugar, tobacco and cotton came from that generated the vast fortunes for the merchants. The clues are in any Glasgow map with its Kingston Bridge, Virginia Street and Jamaica Street. Trade, initially using the satellite ports of Greenock and Port Glasgow and then later with the deepening of the Clyde, the Broomielaw in Glasgow itself, built the city.

One of the many merchants' gravestones in Ramshorn Kirk 

I have visited the International Slavery Museum in the Maritime Museum at Liverpool, and I understand that Bristol’s Museum marks the city’s major role in the slave trade. In Glasgow we have large signs marking our Merchant City, but nary a word about what these merchants traded. In Scotland we tend to see ourselves as the oppressed colony of the English, without reflecting much upon our role in the “triangular trade” or as overseers and masters on the plantations. Robert Burns had already put down his nine guineas deposit for passage on the Nancy in 1786 as a job awaited him, a 3 year contract as bookkeeper on an estate in Jamaica. But for the success of the poetry of his Kilmarnock edition that autumn, our national bard would have earned his crust on a plantation in the West Indies.

Site of the Easter House sugar refinery, 138 Gallowgate, Glasgow

Until the Union with England in 1707, Scotland was theoretically banned from trading with the English colonies. However covert trading links were established, especially to Virginia, New Jersey and Carolina. Forced emigration, many of them Covenanters, in the 1670s and 1680s led to many Scots moving to Virginia and Maryland and family connections played an important role in the growing trade links. The level of trade at this time led to four sugar refineries being built in Glasgow between 1667 and 1700. Two of these were soon producing rum from the molasses they produced, others specialised in sweets, candy, treacle and syrups.

Map of Candleriggs from 1760, Wester and North Sugar Houses near
Trongate at the bottom and Ramshorn Church at the top

With the collapse of the Darien scheme and the signing of the Act of Union in 1707 the Scottish merchants now had access to new trade routes. One part of this was the "Triangular Trade" between Britain, Africa and the colonies where each of the three stages of the route could turn a profit. Until the 1690s the workers on tobacco and sugar plantations were largely people in indentured servitude, usually working for a fixed number of years to pay for their passage. Often convicted criminals, political prisoners or religious nonconformists would be sent to the colonies as a workforce too. The increased demand for workers was met firstly in Jamaica and Barbados and later in the Americas by bringing in slaves from Africa. Ships left Britain with goods such as iron wares, textiles, copper and iron bars. This was then traded for captured Africans. In horrific conditions they were transported across the Atlantic. An estimated 11% of all Africans in these ships died in transit. The slaves were traded in the Caribbean and American colonies for rum, sugar and tobacco which was taken back to Britain and traded on again for a profit. Estimating the number of ships participating in the "Triangular Trade" from Glasgow is complicated by these ships often heading to Rotterdam first on their "out" trip. Whilst Liverpool's docks recorded 1,011 slave voyages, Glasgow records show 27. Even this seemingly small number of trips accounts for about 3000 slaves. Between 1710-69 British ships transported around 1.5 million slaves from Africa. Many more of these ships may have departed from Glasgow as the Port Books from before 1742 have not survived.

A larger part of Glasgow's trade with the colonies was in trading locally produced goods - ploughs, pots and pans, rough woven "slave cloth" for the plantation slaves to wear were traded for tobacco and sugar. As 15-20,000 Scots emigrated to the Caribbean between 1750-1800 they worked at every level of the slave trade, as overseers, financiers, suppliers, bookkeepers and as slave and plantation owners. Research on the compensation paid out by the government to absentee proprietors after the Emancipation Act of 1833 shows a disproportionately high representation of Scots, getting 15% of the compensation money for a country with 10% of the British population. By the early 19th century Scots owned a third of Jamaica's plantations which supplied the huge sugar warehouses at Greenock.

Broomielaw today, with the Kingston Bridge now where Kingston Docks used to stand

Tobacco became the most important good brought in from America and Glasgow's position on the west coast meant a trip from Glasgow to Virginia could be completed 20 days faster than a trip from London. This resulted in almost half of the tobacco coming into Europe being distributed through Glasgow. It was then exported on to England, France, Holland and Germany. The increase in slave labour transformed the scale of the tobacco trade. However the Clyde was poorly equipped to deal with this increased trade, which largely came via Ayr, Dumbarton and Irvine. A deep water harbour and warehouses were created at Port Glasgow and a new harbour built at the Broomielaw to where smaller boats transferred the goods to Glasgow warehouses here. In 1768 the river was deepened and further docks developed. The goods traded back meant that when Jamaica Street was planned out in 1761 it soon had a custom house, shipping office, sail-cloth company. Leather works, glass works, breweries, potteries, producers of ropes and sails sprung up about the Trongate area too with the increased trade. Cotton was coming into Scotland too, supplying new industries all over the west of Scotland, with the goods produced here then sold all over the world. The new Glasgow infrastructure was financed by these merchants, and their growing international trade links.

Jamaica Street, Glasgow today

The merchants new found wealth was frequently put on display for all to see, often commissioning new churches or building the most fashionable, conspicuous mansions. The rising urban population was given a new church, St Andrew's in the Square, built from 1739-56, funded by the merchants. Here they showed off their wealth with its extravagant spire, imported Spanish mahogany furnishings and delicate plasterwork inside. The square laid out around it became a fashionable place to live.

St Andrew's in the Square, Glasgow

Another church was built between 1750-52 beside Glasgow Green. St Andrew's-by-the-Green became known as the "Whistlin' Kirk" as it was the first church in Glasgow to install an organ for worship. Although it is no longer a church a nearby pub still carries the Whistlin' Kirk name. It was built in the style of the villas of the time. The Oswald family were involved in the construction of this church. They made their money from tobacco, sugar and wine traded in Virginia, the West Indies and Madeira. Nearby Oswald Street bears the family name and they also had estates in Balshagray and Scotstoun, land stretching from the River Clyde west of Partick, up as far as Great Western Road. Richard Oswald (1705-84) was in the second generation of family members in the business. He purchased plantations and traded in tobacco, sugar, horses and slaves. He was one of the owners of Bance Island, off the coast of Sierra Leone, one of the busiest trading forts for slaves. This market place allowed merchants to bypass the local African slave traders. One ludicrous feature of Bance Island was a two hole golf course where captured Africans were clad in tartan and made to act as caddies.

St Andrew's-by-the-Green, Glasgow

The Oswald family were not treated as pariahs for the business that they operated in. They in fact are the only merchant family given the honour of a burial spot within Glasgow Cathedral. Ironically a later member of the Oswald family, James Oswald (1779-1853), a nephew of Richard Oswald, was an MP for Glasgow and a key supporter of the abolitionist cause. A statue of him stands in George Square.

Stone marking the Oswald family plot in the nave of Glasgow Cathedral

Few of the villas of this time survive in Glasgow, but one can be seen nearby in Charlotte Street and the similarities with the St Andrew's-by-the-Green Church are obvious. This was a street stretching between the Gallowgate and Glasgow Green that was once home to the "father of the cotton industry", David Dale. This street was laid out in 1779. Later it was where St Aloysius College was founded and home to a Mr Paterson, whose claim to fame was creating "Camp Coffee", the world's first instant coffee.

The last 18th century villa on Charlotte Street

One of the earliest mansions built by the wealthy merchants in Glasgow was Shawfield Mansion at the top of what is now Glassford Street. This set the template that later grew into the city centre grid street layout, with these mansions facing a street that ran straight down towards the Clyde, with premises being developed down the street to generate more income. Shawfield Mansion no longer exists, but was built in 1711 by Daniel Campbell, an early slave trader in Virginia who owned several sugar warehouses.

Top of Glassford Street where Shawfield Mansion used to stand

Nearby was Virginia Mansion, at the top of Virginia Street where the Corinthian now sits. This was built by Andrew Buchanan of Drumpellier, a tobacco importer who also laid out Virginia Street. A plaque on Virginia Street marks the spot of the Tobacco Exchange where sugar and tobacco were traded in the 18th century.

Top end of Virginia Street, site of Virginia Mansion

Andrew Buchanan, the nephew of Andrew Buchanan of Drumpellier, bought the land for the street that took his name and Buchanan Street would have been on the periphery of the city at that time. With the continued westward growth of Glasgow Buchanan Street is now the central shopping street in Glasgow. The family's Virginia trading companies later folded due to the changes that occurred with the American War of Independence in 1777. Like many other families much of their money had been re-invested in land speculation and estates. One step down the rung from the Oswald's in the way the church honoured them, the Buchanan family earned a burial plot just outside the door of Glasgow Cathedral.

Buchanan family plot outside Glasgow Cathedral

Andrew Buchanan himself was buried amongst many other merchants in the most fashionable and expensive graveyard of 18th century Glasgow at the Ramshorn Kirk, although since the road was widened, his burial plot now lies under Ingram Street.

Ramshorn Theatre, formerly St David's Church at the top of Candleriggs

John Glassford (1715-83) came from a more traditional mercantile family in Paisley, but made his fortune in tobacco. He bought Shawfield Mansion in 1760 and his family portrait, which is on display in the People's Palace, shows them all sat in one of the rooms there. Research has shown a black servant in one corner of the picture, who appears to have been painted out at a later date. It has been estimated that about 70 black slaves were brought back to Scotland by families involved with the plantations, usually working as personal servants.

Glassford family portrait from The People's Palace, Glasgow

John Glassford ended up in debt after the collapse of the Virginia tobacco trade following the American War of Independence. He too is buried in the graveyard of the Ramshorn Kirk. I went in to try to find his grave, which lies in the south west corner of the graveyard and was amazed at how big it is. Despite passing the front of the church on Ingram Street a hundred times I had never looked in behind it before.

Many merchants are buried in the graveyard behind the Ramshorn Church

The next street west from Virginia Street is Miller Street, laid out in 1770. Number 42 Miller Street clearly has the features of an 18th century villa and became known as the "Tobacco Merchant's House". It is now home to the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust. This is the last merchant's villa standing in the Merchant City. In 1780 it was sold to Robert Findlay, a tobacco importer, who lived there until he died in 1802.

Tobacco Merchant's House, Miller Street, Glasgow

Alexander Speirs of Elderslie (1714-82), who came from Edinburgh, married into the Buchanan family and worked in the family businesses.  He bought the Virginia Mansion in 1770 and despite his business being founded on the work of slaves is remembered with a stained glass window in Glasgow Cathedral.

Window in Glasgow Cathedral commemorating Alexander Speirs

However, surely the prize for the most ostentatious mansion goes to William Cunningham, who died in 1789. From Ayrshire he had interests in tobacco and in sugar, owning a plantation in Jamaica and 300 slaves. He built Cunningham mansion, which later became the Royal Exchange. I quite liked the fact that when I tried to take a photograph of it earlier today a bus got in my way, emblazoned with a Pepsi advert proclaiming "Maximum Taste, No Sugar". Without the work of his slaves in Jamaica on the sugar plantations, this building which now houses  Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), would not have been built.

Cunningham Mansion in Glasgow, built on the profits of sugar

The nature of the slave produced goods traded through Glasgow was changing. The trade in sugar with the West Indies became increasingly important to Glasgow after the problems with the tobacco trade. Between  1790 and 1805 sugar imports to Glasgow rose threefold, and cotton imports quadrupled whilst tobacco imports fell to a tenth of what they had been in 1790. The West Indies was also a growing market for Scottish exports. In 1769 over 60% of all linen exported from Scotland went here. There was also a growing disdain for the principles and practices of slavery. In 1807 parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and in 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act (although slaves in British territories were still indentured under the apprenticeship system to their former owners until 1838). Much is made in articles on Scottish links to slavery on the important work of those Scots campaigned for its abolition. Many Quakers and those in the church were outspoken on the subject and frequent petitions to parliament were organised in Scotland, a way for the many people of the time who could not vote to express their opinion. However there were also those arguing for the continuation of slavery in the plantations. Glasgow merchants who traded in the area in 1807 formed the Glasgow West India Association. In the 1820s they complained about the way the British public had been "excited and deluded on the subject of slavery". Once slavery was abolished they successfully campaigned for compensation for their losses and the government awarded £20 million to owners of West Indian estates. Analysis of the wills of Glasgow merchants with interests in the West Indies shows that they were investing some of their money in Scotland in railways and cotton manufacturing.

After emancipation sugar imports dipped for a while, but soon picked up again as the merchants sought sugar from other sources. the value of sugar imports to the Clyde increased almost five-fold between 1857 and 1867. Cuban and Brazilian sources were becoming increasingly important. Of the twenty sugar refineries in Scotland in 1868, fourteen were in Greenock, one in Port Glasgow and three in Glasgow.

New industries were being developed around Glasgow. I cannot help but think that much of this was founded on the profits made from businesses with slave labour at their heart. So next time you come out of Buchanan Street subway station, wander down Glassford Street, see an exhibition in the GOMA or take in a concert at the beautiful St Andrew's In The Square take a moment to ponder where these things came from. I hope that Glasgow can find space somewhere to acknowledge the debt that the city owes to the men, women and children "stolen from Africa" to produce our tobacco, sugar and cotton.


Addendum Nov 2015. There is an excellent new book out on Scotland's connections with slavery in the Caribbean, which I would recommend to you if you are interested in this topic. (Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past. The Caribbean Connection edited by T.M. Devine). In his chapter titled "Did slavery make Scotia great?" Prof Devine concludes that "...the story is a complex one, but even when all the qualifications are taken on board, the central argument remains that the Atlantic slave-based economies can be considered key factors in Scotland's eighteenth-century transformation." Nowhere is that more evident than in Glasgow and the city is sorely needing public acknowledgement  of this fact in some way.


Sources

• It Wisnae Us. The Truth About Glasgow and Slavery - Stephen Mullen
• Glasgow Street Names - Carol Foreman
• Scotland and the Slave Trade. 2007 Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act - Scottish Executive
• An Elite Revisited : Glasgow West India Merchants 1783-1877 - Anthony Cooke
• Tariq Kataria blogpost

New Exhibitions in Glasgow: Sarah Lucas, Toby Paterson

Sarah Lucas. Tramway, Glasgow

Toby Paterson. Modern Institute, Glasgow

Filthy Granny, Sarah Lucas

Until the 31st of March, 2014 the main exhibition space of the Tramway will be taken over by a major exhibition by the artist Sarah Lucas. Known as one of the "Young British Artists (YBA)" who came to prominence in the 1990s her work is often more provocative, humorous and in your face than her contemporaries so it is great to get a chance to see it in Glasgow. She often featured self-portraits in her work, such as in the well know photograph of her lounging back with two fried eggs on her T-shirt. On show at this exhibition the first image that greets you when you come in the door is her "Self-Portrait With Cigarettes" (literally made with cigarettes). Cigarettes to the fore again, drooping from her mouth in a wall of black and white photographs, "Fighting Fire With Fire" as she scowls in the macho pose familiar from mug shots and James Dean posters along one wall. However what really catches the eye when you enter the hall is the huge, pink fibre glass "Wanking Arm" which mechanically rises and falls like some weird fairground attraction. It feels uncomfortable standing alone in a gallery trying to nonchalantly ponder such a thing or the wall behind it, huge photographs of her ex-partner lounging back with a variety comestibles lying in his lap over his genitals, generally meat and two veg. The unsettling and embarrassed feeling of looking at these things did make me reflect on the way the female body is used throughout art, and in popular culture. I can give no clearer example of the way women are routinely portrayed in art than by referring you to the Jack Vettriano exhibition which has been drawing large crowds at the Kelvingrove art gallery. This is emphasised by the tabloid newspapers which feature in several of the works, such as "The Man Who Sold The World", an HGV cab where the walls are completely covered in yellowing page 3 pictures, whilst a smaller version of the "wanking arm" rocks up and down in the driver's seat. The point of the representation of women in popular culture is well made, but the HGV cab and the shed plastered with tabloids nearby feel like too easy a pop at caricatures of working class men.

The Man Who Sold The World, Sarah Lucas

More nuanced was the stuff in the other half of the hall, although nuanced may seem like a strange word to use when you are faced with a couple of totemic 8 foot long concrete penises. It's all sex and death. Cold urban spaces are conjured up by the furniture about the exhibition made from breeze blocks, crushed cars and the unsettling wall of huge photographs ("Concrete Void"). It shows a dimly lit multi-storey car park and with all the sexual images about it is hard not to fear for what has been going on in the car park. The crushed cars here amongst the enormous cocks and marrows, one beside a neon coffin ("New Religion") make you think of the common saying of men with big cars making up for their small penis.

New Religion, Sarah Lucas

I particularly liked the Volvo (a car which has the male sexual symbol as its logo) with the glass smashed and lying, glinting on the floor, "Islington Diamonds". The way the windscreen has been smashed makes you wonder about whether someone had been knocked down by it, or whether it has just been vandalised. I also remembered a friend (who shall remain nameless) who vandalised her boyfriend's car after he had cheated on her, the coup de gras being the two bananas she shoved up the exhaust pipe. Actually now that I think about it, that car would have felt quite at home in this room.

The exhibition is excellent. It did make me squirm, giggle and ponder. The leaflet for the exhibition talks about this being some of her "seminal work" without really reflecting on the use of that word. They have asked that all children attending the exhibition are accompanied by an adult. From the evidence of the children running about it all with their parents whilst I was there they seem to take it all in their stride, but I hope I've given you a heads up of what to expect if you fancy making a family trip of it. ("Yes dear, it's a big hand waving").

The biggest collection of pricks on display in Glasgow since....(supply your own punchline).

The Modern Institute is a wee gallery hidden down Osborne Street that always has interesting stuff and I often pop in if I'm heading to Monorail to pick up some Monday morning CDs. They have a new exhibition by Toby Paterson on just now, "Soft Boundary". This features his sideways look at the urban landscape with a mixture of paintings, reliefs and painted pallistrades in the gallery. I guess you either like his stuff (I do) or you don't. Worth popping in ifr you are passing. Not a phallus in sight.

Toby Paterson at the Modern Institute

Celtic Connections: Mogwai and RM Hubbert

RM Hubbert and Mogwai, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. 28th Jan 2014. Live gig review.

Mogwai have been producing their guitar based, post-rock tunes for almost 20 years now and I've seen them play various venues in that time, including a gap site in Glasgow city centre last year. I hadn't ever really expected to watch them play in the civilised surroundings of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall though. However, there they were last night performing a sell-out show in the 2500 capacity hall as part of the annual Celtic Connections festival.

Despite the longevity of their career, they seem to be going from strength to strength and continue to produce new and interesting music. Perhaps they show that if you keep banging away at something you believe is good, eventually the rest of the world will catch on. Certainly their fabulous, unsettling soundtrack for the French television series The Returned/ Les Revenants has exposed a lot of new people to their music. That album also demonstrated the atmospheric, storytelling quality to some of their instrumental music. Their latest album, Rave Tapes, has given them their first ever entry in the top ten but has all the familiar elements of their quiet/loud music, with explosions of guitar noise mixing with more prominent keyboard sounds. Like a lot of their music, hearing the album is one thing but seeing it played lived is another thing altogether. That was one question I had about the concert tonight. How would their music cope in a big airy room designed for orchestral music rather than the dark, sweaty Barrowlands?

First up to test the acoustics of the building was RM Hubbert, winner of last year's Scottish Album of the Year award for Thirteen Lost & Found. Since then he has released Breaks & Bones filled with his Spanish guitar playing and also more singing from the man himself. I've seen him umpteen times before, but in smaller venues, intimate gigs where he talks away to his audience like a man at confession. He himself admitted to being a wee bit nervous playing on this broad stage, out their alone with his guitar ("I'm shite-ing myself" was the way he put it). However he soon got into his stride. His music carried to the back of the auditorium as well here as it does in smaller clubs, as did his self-deprecating humour. The set was as good as I've seen before, with a broader range of stuff from his three albums to call upon. Although Mogwai were the main draw, it was almost a shame when he announced his last song, with Aidan Moffat coming on to provide the vocals for "Car Song" as his finale.

The concert hall was set up as I've never seen it before. The stalls seating was all taken out at the front half of the ground floor, creating a large standing area, whilst we sat upstairs in the comfy seats. There were also lots of people standing behind the seated areas in the balconies. From the opening chords of Mogwai's set we had suddenly shifted from quiet plucked guitar strings and jokey chat, to full throated electronic guitar noise, an exaggerated example of the quiet/loud dynamic you would expect at a Mogwai gig. Set up as usual with no front man, a crescent around an empty front of stage, they launched into "Heard About You Last Night" from Rave Tapes. The new material worked so well on full volume here, the acoustics of the hall carrying every reverberating sound around the room. "Remurdered" stands out from the new stuff with its hints of techno keyboards building up and becoming more menacing as it goes on. Three tracks from "Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will" showed the high quality of their recent output, particularly "Rano Pano". A brief technical hitch brought the "Mexican Grand Prix" to a crashing halt, but a quick joke from Stuart Braithwaite as the marshal and they were off again. Always serious, but never po-faced.

They finished the encore with "Mogwai Fear Satan" which, even though I knew it was coming, made me jump out of my seat when it blasted into raucous life two thirds of the way through.

The volume was still up there with anything I've seen, but I didn't leave the gig with the tinnitus I sometimes have done with their shows. Maybe it was the venue, or my seat upstairs instead of standing in front of the amps, but I enjoyed being able listen to the more subtle bits in there. Also they are a fantastic live act and one I would encourage anyone to try and see.

Bowling Along Around the West End of Glasgow

On jogging around the west end of Glasgow over recent months I am surprised how many wee bowling greens there are dotted about, wee oases of impeccable lawns amid the housing. So to do my long, weekend run, I set myself a challenge. This saves me from getting bored and makes me run that wee bit further if I've got an aim. Starting at Kelvingrove bowling greens, recently renovated as a venue for the Commonwealth Games bowling competition, I planned to run a 10-12 mile loop whilst passing as many bowling greens as I could think of. As someone who has lived in Whiteinch, Maryhill, Knightswood, Woodlands, Hyndland and Partick over the past 40 years I am quite familiar with a lot of the back streets around here so was confident that I knew where plenty were hiding. I'm not talking about the American version of skittles here, but proper lawn bowls, where you roll a lopsided ball towards a smaller jack to see who gets nearest. Every country has its own version of hurling a ball at a target and in Britain bowls has a history going back to the 12th century. The home of "World Bowls" is actually in Edinburgh and it holds a special place in the hearts of many (usually a wee bit older) Scottish people.

Candleriggs in 1760,the bowling
 green lies where City Halls now stand

In Glasgow bowling is first mentioned in 1595 when it was banned on the Sabbath. Public bowling greens were first laid out in Candleriggs in 1695. 

Bowling clubs are the centre point of many people's social life, to play the game or just take advantage of the cheap bars these clubs usually run. Bowls has been played at the Commonwealth Games since the inaugural Empire Games in 1930 (apart from the 1966 games in Jamaica) and has been a source of gold medals for Scotland. Everyone of a certain age can probably name a Scottish champion in the sport, Willie Wood, a glowing example of our nation's sporting prowess, who has competed in numerous Commonwealth Games between 1974 to 2010.

I have played bowls on 3 or 4 of the council run greens in Glasgow over the years, just messing about really. I've even snapped a croquet mallet playing that game on the greens at Kelvingrove. I've also been in other bowling clubs for birthday parties and the like. The council run greens are now free to play on during the sort of May to October season. The Glasgow Life website is quite secretive about which parks have bowling greens and unfortunately is a bit out of date (reporting that the greens will re-open in May 2012). Many of the other clubs have, or at least had, links with employers and factories in Glasgow. My great-grandad could be found often in the Fairfield Bowling Club in Govan, long after leaving the yards and the club still bears this name despite their no longer being a Fairfields shipyard.

Anyway, how many greens do you think I ran past?

Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls, with Glasgow University behind it

So starting at Kelvingrove Park at the end of Kelvin Way we see the most scenic of Glasgow's Commonwealth venues, with the Art Gallery and University in the background presumably featuring prominently in photos and TV pictures from the city during the summer.

St Vincent Bowling Club

It is only a hop, skip and a jump to the next greens that I knew, as I've ran past them many times. Passing the site of Partick Thistle's 1876 home at Overnewton Park, you come down to St Vincent Crescent. What I didn't realise was that there are actually a row of three bowling clubs here, beside one another. So after only a short distance I had my total up to 4. Firstly you come across the St Vincent Bowling Club, who say on their website that the club (originally a bowling and curling club) was founded in 1859.

 

University of Glasgow Bowling Club

 

Next door is the University of Glasgow Bowling Club (who knew?), a club open to staff at Glasgow Uni which was founded in 1953, and isn't much of a looker. Next along the street is  what looks like a young upstart with its raffish yacht on the badge, the Corunna Bowling Club, founded according to their sign, in 1961.

Corunna Bowling Club

From here it was up and over Park Circus to the bowling club opposite the Dram pub on Woodlands Road to the Burnbank Bowling Club in its nice looking building (a lot of them go for this look). I like the wrought iron gate on Woodlands road of this one, and founded in 1866, it's another oldie.

 

Burnbank Bowling Club

I remember that there is a bowling green that you pass when on the bus through Cowcaddens into town, marooned amongst the modern flats, but I thought there would be more to be found by heading westwards from here. So it was straight up and across Byres Road to Dowanside Road and the leafy situation of Willow Bank Bowling Club. It makes a good case for being the oldest bowling club in Glasgow. It can be dated to 1835, although a bowling club of that name can apparently be traced to before this, it was in that year that its rules and constitution were established. Originally on Elmbank Street, then Willowbank Crescent in Woodlands (where Willowbank Primary now stands) it moved to its current location in 1896.

 

Willow Bank Bowling Club

From here it was a longer stretch up across Great Western Road before I came to the next club I had targeted. Kelvindale Bowling and Lawn Tennis Club isn't the easiest to find, hidden behind a row of houses on Baronald Drive. I only know about it as I stumbled down this way on a jog once trying (unsuccessfully) to find a different way from Cleveden Road through to Maryhill. By now the Glasgow weather was deteriorating and I was seriously thinking of chucking it and heading home, but this is where setting this route for myself encouraged me to stick with it and to keep going.

Kelvindale Bowling Club

Going back up to Cleveden Road I then headed west again along the canal towpath towards Temple. The next club I was aiming at was one which I have been in at a party. It took me about 3 goes to find it that night, and it was the same again today as I got lost in the housing estate that wasn't here when I was at school. In those days the land around here was occupied by the engineering company Barr and Stroud, who manufactured optical equipment. Originally based on Byres Road, they moved into premises in Ashton Lane and came to Anniesland when the company expanded in 1904. When I was young my dad and uncle used to come up here to train at the Barr and Stroud running club. The factory closed its doors here in 1992, but the Barr and Stroud bowling club is still going strong.

Barr and Stroud Bowling Club

Carrying on down Fulton Street I came past Netherton Community Centre, where my primary seven class walked to our swimming lessons. Here I came to my first council run bowling green since the first one at Kelvingrove Park. Sadly Temple Bowls looks in a sorry state and I am not even sure that it is still used (again, as I said the Glasgow Life website doesn't list its greens, does this mean that some are closing?) Maybe it is just looking this way in the middle of winter and next summer a pristine, flat lawn will be apparent. It made me curious to see in what state I'd find the one I used to mess about on in Knightswood Park during the school summer holidays. So I decided to carry on a bit further than planned and go visit it.

Before that I ran through what used to be Knightswood bus depot, but is now a housing development. In Knightswood Secondary School during PE we would sometimes be put on a "cross country run" which meant running along Anniesland Road to the cross, then along Great Western Road to Knightswood Cross and then down Knightswood Road, back to the school. Once the teachers had stopped tagging along a huge corner could be cut off of the route by juking through the bus depot along this road. Today it brought me out on Anniesland Road opposite Yarrow Recreation Bowling Club. Again I can only presume this was one time associated with Yarrows shipyard. When I ran past on a Saturday morning, although we are in the middle of winter it had obviously been a busy night at the bowling club as the empties were being chucked out from the bar.

Yarrow Recreation Bowling Club

So it was head down into the wind and rain which was falling again to get to Knightswood bowling greens. We stayed opposite Knightswood Park for about 8 years and in school summer holidays you could go play golf or the nearby pitch and putt, go on the boats in the pond, play football on the red blaise pitches, bowls or tennis. I was glad to see that most of this was still on offer, although the football pitches are in a bit of a state just now. The bowling greens looked in good nick though.

Knightswood Bowling Greens

 

It was time to try to meander back to the beginning again, but first I remembered one more set of council run bowling greens opposite Knightswood shopping centre. Danes Drive bowling greens definitely look as if they are no more, and are now a wee park for residents of the Kingsway high flats to walk their dogs by the look of it.

 

Danes Drive Bowls





So along Danes Drive and then down to Dumbarton Road to Victoria Park bowling club (again I've been at a birthday party in this one). Nice wrought iron gate again, proclaiming the club's foundation in 1903.



Victoria Park Bowling Club

From here it was into Victoria park proper to the council greens there. (I can see why Daft Limmy is so upset about the state of the paintwork on the fences of the park, oh yes.) Victoria Park is a lovely proper old park with a duck pond, bowling greens, putting, basketball courts(?), lovely floral displays and, of course, some fossilised 330 million year old tree stumps viewable in summer at the Fossil Grove. Sadly the crazy golf is no longer a going concern, but you can still clamber about its crumbling course.

 

Victoria Park, Glasgow

So from here over Crow Road to Jordanhill Bowling Club (founded in 1899), squeezed in between Broomhill Primary School and the nearby allotments.

 

Jordanhill Bowling Club

 

The rain was torrential now and the thought of playing any outdoor sport in this country on a day like today seemed unrealistic (although St Mirren vs Partick Thistle did go ahead later on at 3pm). I was for wrapping things up, but had three more clubs to pass before getting back to Kelvingrove Park. Going through Hyndland train station and onto Queensborough Gardens I found Hyndland Bowling Club, founded 1904.

Hyndland Bowling Club

I suspect Partickhill Bowling and Tennis Club share the same painter as Hyndland, as their club houses look a surprisingly similar shade of green. This club is situated on Partickhill Road, at the top of the hill off of Gardner Street. It was established in 1905, twenty years after Patrick Thistle had vacated their home at Muir Park at the bottom of the hill as the land was sold for housing development.

 

 

Partickhill Bowling and Tennis Club

I took the easy option for my tired legs by going down Gardner Street to Partick Bowling Green beside the West of Scotland Cricket Club, founded in 1845.

Partick Bowling Green, Fortrose Street

So from here it is just a short trot along Dumbarton Road, back to the start at Kelvingrove Park. There are over 100 bowling clubs registered in Glasgow. In my 19km/12 miles (a bit further than I planned to go) I managed to pass 18 bowling greens. I am sure that there are several greens which I have overlooked, or to which I could have detoured towards, but to be honest I could hardly see through my rain speckled spectacles and by the end of this was looking for a nice warm bath. I guess this is why bowls is only played in the summer...although now that I think about it, there is that big Whiteinch Indoor Bowls Centre down on South Street.

Damn, I missed one.

Visit Kilmarnock: Football Away Days Kilmarnock vs Partick Thistle

With Partick Thistle back in the top tier of Scottish football I wasn't expecting to see some great leap forward with regards to the football on offer (and in that respect my expectations have been met) but one thing I was looking forward to was re-visiting some grounds that I haven't been to for years. Already this season it has been nice to re-acquaint myself with Easter Road and also with St Mirren's new ground. One other old rivalry I was looking forward to re-visiting was with Kilmarnock FC. The earlier fixture at Firhill ended 1-1 with a Kris Boyd equaliser in the second half. However since then both teams have struggled to pick up points so I (naively) fancied our chances at Rugby Park.




I wasn't just wanting to pick up a Killie pie and a Killie bunnet when I was in town (that's the Alexander Brothers singing the Big Kilmarnock Bunnet song above). Another reason I was looking forward to this wee jaunt down to Ayrshire is that one wing of my family comes from down Kilmarnock way and I fancied trying to have a wander around the town to see what it has to offer. The Visit Scotland website isn't exactly bursting with suggestions of what to look out for so I thought I'd start by trying to track down any addresses in town inhabited by my ancestors which are still standing. A few years ago I got quite into tracing the old family tree and found that at the end of the 1700s my great-great-great-great grandfather, a weaver from Paisley, moved to Kilmarnock. His son worked in the town, also as a weaver, but as industrialisation moved on apace his son left that trade and was a coal miner in the local pits. In the 1860s he was living at Back Street, which I found was bulldozed to lay out Portland Street. His wife, an immigrant from Ireland, according to a census of 1861, helped make one of Kilmarnock's famed products which featured in the Alexander Brothers' song, as she was a bonnet knitter. Their son married Lizzie Jane Hay, a domestic servant from nearby Hurlford, so I started there.

Railway Tavern at Riccarton Road, Hurlford

She lived on Riccarton Road in Hurlford and this is a postcard she sent home once when visiting relatives there. Although the town was once home to Jimmy Knapp of the RMT Transport Union, there hasn't been a train station in Riccarton since 1955 and Riccarton Road today was less picturesque than it was 100 years ago, although the children did appear to own shoes nowadays.

Riccarton Road going under the railway line, Hurlford today

One thing which Hurlford is known for is its junior football team which plays at Blair Park and it has a reputation as a "football nursery" with professional players Ian Bryson, David Calderhead, William Goldie, Jack Picken, Sandy Turnbull, Arthur Young and Colin Douglas all calling Hurlford home at one time. I have a couple of old photographs of my Kilmarnock ancestors in football teams but can find no trace of Kilmarnock Hillhead Victoria FC now.

Blair Park, Hurlford

So as there were nothing standing of the places my family used to live in Hurlford maybe I'd have better luck if I headed into Kilmarnock. My great grandfather when he married lived at number 5 East Netherton Street in Kilmarnock in 1906. This house is still standing, no longer a family home, but a dental surgery.

5 East Netheron Street, Kilmarnock

Later they moved around the corner to 14 High Glencairn Street, which I was also able to visit, and order some chips and curry sauce from their old front room, as it is now a Chinese takeaway. Underneath the "Ocean Sun" frontage you can clearly see there is a good, solid, old house there. A lot of Kilmarnock seemed to be like that. There are swathes of the town centre flattened as industries have come and gone or brutalised, such as with the concrete monstrosity of a shopping mall which lies beside old buildings at Kilmarnock Cross. The nearby winding streets struggle to show their former handsome selves.

14 Glencairn Street, Kilmarnock

Harland and Wolff shipyard workers, Govan, Glasgow. "Moulders"

Climie Place, Kilmarnock

Like the character in the Kilmarnock bunnet song, my great grandfather put on his bunnet (maybe one his mum knitted him as it was her occupation) and headed to Glasgow, where he worked as an iron moulder in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. He is in the photo above, the guy with the bunnet on. One of his brothers stayed in Kilmarnock, Robert Climie, working as a draper's clerk. Then he worked as an engineer in the Britannia Engineering Works in Kilmarnock, owned by the Dick, Kerr Company, which made locomotives and tramcars. There he became active in the trade union movement and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In 1914 he became chairman of the Scottish TUC. His obituary mentions one of his successes in getting £50,000 in back wages for the women workers of the Singer Manufacturing Company. He worked for many years on the town council and stood in parliamentary elections for Kilmarnock and represented the town as MP in 1923 and 1929. I've a great photo of him standing beside Keir Hardie in another blogpost here.  He has a short street in the town named after him for his efforts, so a quick visit to Climie Place was my next destination.

 

A lot of this information here I gleaned from previous visits to the archive at the Dick Institute and now a lot of this old archive is stored at the Robert Burns Monument Centre where a statue of Robert Burns looks out over Kay Park.

Robert Burns Monument, Kilmarnock

 

Another association Kilmarnock has is in the phrase "Kilmarnock Edition". Robert Burns's most famous work "Poems Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect" was published in Kilmarnock in 1786 (around about the time my relatives moved to town) and is more commonly known by that phrase. A swanky online edition of the book is available here. The success of the Kilmarnock Edition of his poems lead the famous son of Ayrshire to abandon his plans to go to Jamaica and continue his writings in Scotland. The Dick Institute (titter, titter) is the town's museum. I found it a bit of a hotch potch, with the library and temporary exhibition space on the ground floor given over to a thing on Jacqueline Wilson. All the olde Kilmarnock stuff I was interested in was a bit of a jumble in one rooms on the first floor, gathering dust, with wobbly display cases and old photographs curling off of their mountings. It was a sad collection of now departed industries from the area, from coal, through to the Saxone shoe factory. They did have a printing press of the type used to produce Burns's work. Here I learnt that the case holding the movable type letters had two drawers to it, the capital letters held in the upper case, the lower case letters held in the....you see where this is going?

 

Another famous son of Ayrshire associated with Kilmarnock is a chap called John Walker. A grocer, he started selling his own whisky in his shop as "Walker's Kilmarnock Whisky". After it became legal in 1860 to sell blended whisky his son and then grandson expanded the enterprise and renamed their whiskies Johnnie Walker, and it is now the world's best selling Scotch whisky. The wee man striding across the label is known everywhere. When ANC activist Zola Zembe (who I've mentioned before) was staying with us in Maryhill in the 1970s he was delighted to see that there was a familiar figure on the advertising hoarding across Maryhill Road from our flat. He called the man "Walking Johnnie" and when he was in South Africa to him this was such an archetypal image of Scotland, that he was delighted to see Walking Johnnie out of our windows in Glasgow. On the wall of the goldsmith's shop on King Street is a plaque telling you that this was John Walker's original shop, where he started selling his whiskies. I think the plaque means that shop and not the ugly Claire's Accessories shop next door.

Site of Johnnie Walker's original shop

Johnnie Walker now has annual sales of 130 million bottles. That must be great for the town, no? Well, no. The distiller Diageo that now owns the brand closed down the Kilmarnock bottling plant in 2012, at that time the biggest employer in town, ending 192 years of association between Kilmarnock and Johnnie Walker's whisky. I went to an old graveyard off Saint Andrew's Street to see if Mr Walker was spinning in his grave - I can confirm that he was, poor chap.


Johnnie Walker's grave, Kilmarnock

Leaving the churchyard I then headed for Rugby Park to watch Kilmarnock vs Partick Thistle. Despite dominating the match for almost the entire 90 minutes Thistle spurned numerous chances and let Kilmarnock score two sloppy goals. Sadly this is becoming the familiar shape of our campaign. Largely playing with a slightly weakened version of last season's First Division winning squad we were always going to struggle. Despite a neat goal from Kris Doolan, it's a poor day when a Killie pie is the highlight of the match.

A Killie pie at Rugby Park

"In memory of John Walker, merchant"

Kilmarnock Water

Nelson Mandela: My Part In His Release

I wasn't going to write a blog about Nelson Mandela, who died at the age of 95 on Thursday, as there has been a lot already written but a couple of things changed my mind.

Yesterday afternoon I stood to give a minute's applause with a crowd of 10,000 people at a football match in Edinburgh, marking the passing of a man once derided by our government as a terrorist. This just struck me as a pleasing, but bizarre, situation. I thought back to the annual sponsored walk around Pollok Park that we used to do as a family when I was a child, raising money for the Scottish Committee of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The sum total of people who seemed interested in the wellbeing of Nelson Mandela at that time seemed to consist of my dad and his friends in the organisation.

Edinburgh and EOS Jags fans going to yesterday's game
alter their flag to mark the passing of Nelson Mandela

The other thing was that unbeknown to me, Conservative Party Central Office seems to have been a secret hot bed of campaigners against oppression in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, despite those all expenses paid "fact finding" trips to the country they took and the notorious "Hang Mandela" posters. Marina Hyde covers this nicely in the Guardian today.

So if David Cameron now wishes to reposition himself on the right side of history, then to paraphrase Spike Milligan's title, I feel I can share the story of my part in Mandela's release. By doing so I only want to make sure that the people who did work tirelessly to raise the issue of apartheid in South Africa are not overlooked. This is something Janey Buchan was keen to do in a letter to The Herald newspaper 20 years ago when Mandela visited Glasgow (although the main point of her letter was to say that it was all her idea about the Freedom of the City, not Michael Kelly's).

Those of us who were present at the ceilidh to celebrate Mandela's visit were pleased that, at last, the consistent support and hard work over long, long years of John Nelson, treasurer of Scottish Anti-Apartheid, was finally marked in a speech by the equally hard-working chairman of Scottish Anti-Apartheid, Brian Filling. Everyone got to their feet. It was absolutely in character that, when this salute was made, John was not in the hall -- he was outside selling T-shirts and pamphlets. Now, that's a punter. That's consistency and commitment, and when the necessary fund-raising and supportive action gets under way for the free and fair elections in South Africa we will know that the John Nelsons of this world will not be found wanting. 

Janey Buchan, MEP, Herald letters, 21 Oct 1993

 This just nicely encapsulates my memories of the Anti-Apartheid Movement I knew as a child. Brian Filling out front doing the speeches and John Nelson, with his wallpaper table as bookstall, tartan shopping trolley full of pamphlets, books and badges on the side trying to raise money and spread the word. My parents, my aunts and uncles were all involved too. My dad was very active in it and I think worked more alongside trade unions in Scotland to promote the Anti-Apartheid agenda. The bookstall in the shopping trolley was often taken around by my dad too, and that was where I first saw the face of Nelson Mandela. The chubby-faced photograph of a young man on the front cover of "The Struggle Is My Life" was burned onto my memory, so that I was really shocked when the tall, thin, grey-haired old man emerged from prison in 1990.

It just seemed weird that a country was allowed to treat the majority of its people in the way South Africa did. As a child I could understand that injustices were going on in South Africa, how education, housing, medical care, sport, all aspects of life were segregated along racial lines. I knew that a black man was never going to be able to get the same wage there as a white man, or be able to cast a vote. It just was not fair. Why was this allowed to happen? It couldn't happen unless other countries were allowing it to happen, that was obvious to me. However it had only been a few years since America had finally decided that maybe it wasn't acceptable for black people to have to sit on a different part of the bus from whites. So maybe what struck me as a bizarre way to run a country was more acceptable to others. The fact that my parents and their friends campaigning against apartheid were often trade unionists and communists (although many were not "political" and the church was very active in the campaign) maybe provides a clue to the British and American support to apartheid South Africa. They saw it as a bulwark against communist influence in South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola. Many in the ANC who campaigned for justice in their country saw communist ideas as a way to bring the equality they sought.

So even before freeing Nelson Mandela was made a focus for the campaign, trying to bring attention to him and all the other political prisoners in the country, there were plenty of people like us who never bought Outspan oranges or banked with Barclays (who did a lot of business in South Africa). Thatcher and Reagan made sure that no biting boycott ever rocked the financial stability of South Africa and I'm sure the fact that Denis Thatcher had business links to South Africa had no influence on her thinking. I also made judgements on musicians and sportsmen on whether or not they supported the boycotts of South Africa, and ultimately it was from these boycotts that some of the biggest worldwide pressures began to be applied. My mum travelled down to the Borders to picket the travelling Springboks rugby team. This fact later earned her pariah status when she worked in an office in that area when she explained why she had been to the town before. The England cricket team were a bunch of individuals that it was easy to dislike even before they toured South Africa, but it meant I could dislike them from the moral high ground. Ian Botham rose in my estimation as he did boycott the tours, struck by how his friend Viv Richards would be treated in that country. Again it is easy to be sniffy at Elton John and Queen, but when you know that they were happy to take the Krugerrands and play at Sun City, you can feel that you were correct in your musical judgement.

Amandla UK tour programme 1985 and album of songs by Mayibuye

 

The ANC plan wasn't all cultural boycotts. South African trade unionists, speakers and musicians were often in Glasgow trying to draw attention to the plight of people in their country, such as the musicians of "Mayibuye". In the sleeve notes of their album they note that as the ANC has been banned since 1977 "in South Africa today there is no road to freedom except the armed road." When these people came to town they were often put up in our flat in Maryhill. Due to the various campaigns that my parents were involved with there were often people passing through our place in Maryhill. As children we heard first hand stories from Palestine, Iran, Portugal (which was still run as a dictatorship into the mid-70s) and South Africa. Of all of these temporary lodgers the most memorable for my brother and me had to be Zola Zembe. Like his name (an adopted nom de guerre) he had a zip and a zing about him and I was delighted to see him looking so well when being interviewed on ITV last night, talking about Mandela. He now uses his real name again, Archie Sibeko. He told us stories about beatings he had had in South Africa from the police. But he also told us stories about how rhinos were evil buggers who had poor eyesight but would wait for hour after hour at the bottom of a tree if you had fled up it, ready to trample you as soon as you came down. He had been charged alongside Mandela in the "Treason Trial" and shared a cell with him, before fleeing the country and was at that time trying to organise trade union support in Western Europe. One effect of his trade union work brought two Irish woman to stay with us as they made a speaking tour in Scotland. They wanted to make people aware of the picket by Dunnes shopworkers in Ireland. When two young workers in a Dunnes store in Dublin were suspended for following union advice, refusing to handle South African fruit, they were suspended. This lead to a 2 and a half year long strike at the shops and the eventual banning of fruit and veg imports by Ireland from South Africa. Bizarrely I bumped into the same two Irish women when I was in Moscow in 1985 as a 14 year old and had a good old natter.

The focus of the Anti-Apartheid campaign shifted towards the treatment of the political prisoners, using the 60th birthday of Nelson Mandela in 1978 to draw attention to the issue. We sent postcards of support to him in prison and when the Labour group at Glasgow City Council proposed offering Nelson Mandela the Freedom of the City, the campaign was finally making it onto the front pages. Although the editorial line of the Glasgow Herald initially sneered at the council getting involved in the plight of a man 6000 miles away, by the time he was awarded it in absentia in 1981 their line had changed. Tory councillors in the city continued to deride him as a terrorist. When Jerry Dammers and the Special AKA released the single "Nelson Mandela" in 1984, and covered the back of the sleeve with information on the situation in South Africa and contact details for the Anti-Apartheid Movement, momentum seemed to be building. Steve Van Zant organised others in America to declare that they weren't gonna play "Sun City". By the time the "Freedom at Seventy" campaign came around in 1988 people were queueing up to add their names to the campaign and a concert at Wembley in London generated huge publicity. The Free Mandela March from Glasgow to London that year too was criticised by the Daily Record and letters to The Times still called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, but the tide was turning. In Glasgow 30,000 people turned up to a rally in Glasgow Green to see the marchers off. A Gallup poll showed that 77% of people in Britain had now heard of Nelson Mandela and 45% of the population felt that our government wasn't doing enough. The campaigns also positioned the ANC as the representative of the South African people in people's imagination making it impossible for the South African government to bypass them.

When Nelson Mandela was released in February 1990 from prison it still felt unreal, that years of campaigns and protests seemed to have succeeded. We had a party at our house to watch it on TV and I think there was some delay as I can remember it feeling like it was never going to happen. This was just a step on the road to achieving a more equal society in South Africa. In the 1950s the ANC collected the "freedom demands" from the disenfranchised people of South Africa and produced their "Freedom Charter." They demanded land for the landless people, free and compulsory education, living wages and shorter working hours. Two weeks before his release from prison in 1990 Mandela wrote that "The nationalisation of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC and change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable."

Two months after his release from prison whilst negotiations were ongoing over a new constitution in South Africa I travelled to London with my brother to see Nelson Mandela at a tribute concert in the same Wembley venue the "Freedom at Seventy" concert had been held two years earlier. (Much as it was a great event, Simple Minds were bloody awful at it.) At the time there was great uncertainty what was going to happen next and this felt like our one chance to see the man himself. The programme declared that "Now, after 78 years of struggle the ANC is preparing for the leading role in a democratic South Africa".

April 1990, programme from "An International Tribute Concert for a Free South Africa"

Whilst campaigning for the upcoming presidential elections in South Africa, Nelson Mandela came to Glasgow 1993. The city had raised his international profile when he had been granted the freedom of the city in the 1980s. In a delightful move the city elders had embarrassed the South African consulate in the city by changing the name of the street their offices were on to "Nelson Mandela Place". I am sure that they endeavoured to find a way to avoid having the address on their stationary. Many of my friends and family were involved in organising the events in Glasgow that day. Whilst my uncle Ronnie, my brother and myself were roped in as "security" at the front of the stage, my dad and cousins were manning stalls. My aunt and my mum were on stage with Mandela in George Square and at the Royal Concert Hall as part of the Women's Socialist choir, Eurydice, welcoming Mandela to our city. It was a special day for everyone present, a long cherished ideal suddenly and unbelievably made real.

Programme and my backstage pass for Mandela's visit to Glasgow, 9th Oct 1993

 

Nelson Mandela at the podium in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
with my mum and others from the Eurydice choir behind him

Mandela went on to become elected as the president of South Africa but since then the lot of many ordinary, black South Africans has not improved in the way that they had hoped. Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock Doctrine" dissects the problems faced by the ANC in the chapter appropriately titled "Democracy Born in Chains." When a new constitution was drawn up before Mandela became president, the ANC were soon to discover that they got the state, but without many of its powers. The constitution made them unable to redistribute land as a last minute clause in it protected private proprty rights. Signing up to the GATT had made it illegal to subsidise factories and create jobs. Signing up to the WTO protected the intellectual property rights of the major pharmaceutical companies making them the only source of expensive AIDS drugs. An IMF deal before the elections landed the new state with a massive debt built up by the apartheid regime of which they were no part. Currency control was banned and South Africa's central bank was to be removed from state control and run as an autonomous entity, its independence written into the new constitution, its directors the same people who had run it in the days of apartheid.

The ANC inherited a state in which the ruling National Party had already passed the reins of control to "the markets", following neo-liberal ideology and shrinking the state. "Increasing the public sector in strategic areas through, for example nationalisation" was part of the ANC election manifesto, but within a few years they were selling off state assets to service the national debt. The wealthy mining companies and multinationals who for decades had profited from the apartheid system now positioned themselves to profit under the new regime, whereas it could be argued they in fact owed a debt to the state.

The government of the ANC agreed to service the state debt of the apartheid regime, of which they were no part, to the tune of 30 billion Rand annually, money which otherwise could have been used to build a new nation. Here it is important to see that though Nelson Mandela was a great and inspirational man, he was part of an organisation who seemed to be wrong-footed just as they finally grasped power.

Ian Bell recently wrote that the words of Norman McCaig in his poem "Praise of a Man" summed up Nelson Mandela perfectly. I read the poem this afternoon and have to agree. I cannot add anything to those words so have a look at McCaig's poem and I will leave it there.