Short talk given on 2nd June, 2014 to the Irish Federation of Local History Societies.

Speaker: Marie Davidson, assisted by Richard Binns with drawings

As Secretary of the Glasgow & West of Scotland Branch of the Historical Association may I thank Mr Breen for inviting me to speak to you this evening about the history of Glasgow.   

I would like to talk about aspects of Glasgow's history drawn to my attention since our Branch started to make a programme to introduce children to history in a new way.  Since then we have worked out connections between local and national history we hope  relevant to young people and the public to-day.

Before starting may I say that you really must see the finds from the Antonine Wall in the Hunterian Museum.  The wall ran north of Glasgow, the bas reliefs, statues, ornaments and inscriptions are vigorous and suggest the vitality of the Romans' brief occupation.

The castle on Dumbarton Rock not Glasgow was the centre of the ancient British kingdom of Strathclyde.   Many people in the area believe St. Patrick was born in Dumbarton.  There is absolutely no evidence for this but it is a firm belief.

We first hear of Glasgow when it was a small settlement in Strathclyde. At that time St. Mungo arrived to teach and baptise by the Molendinar burn.   We know that he was visited by St. Columba.  And it is said that our saint gave Glasgow its motto, which is not "Let Glasgow flourish," but "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word."  He also called Glasgow "The dear green place."

But thinking of your visit to Glasgow,   I have to draw your attention to the fact that most of it has been destroyed.  For example, the fine Renaissance buildings of Glasgow University near the cathedral were knocked down to make way for the Castle Street Railway Goods Yard, long gone and now a car park.

‘The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde' is true.    But this is 2014.  Glasgow has been around for a long time.  I'm not going to give you a potted history.  There have really been three main phases of Glasgow's development.

Mediaeval to late mediaeval

Eighteenth century

Victorian nineteenth century

The 19^th century demolished most of the mediaeval and the eighteenth century buildings.  You are going to Stirling Castle tomorrow where you will see the fine renaissance addition by James 1V and therefore appreciate what Glasgow has lost.     So we are going to look mainly at 19^th century Glasgow, because the 19^th century was the apotheosis of Glasgow.

St. Tomas Aquinas said, "Man cannot understand without images."  Like St. Thomas, we are going to try to understand through images our local to national history. So what do we look at to appreciate this apotheosis?

Firstly, there are the place names that have resonances with the past.

Secondly, we will move on to the George Square statues, which create a template of 19^th century history.

Thirdly, the Necropolis, city of the dead, commemorates those who made Glasgow the second city of the Empire in wealth.

From the top of a double decker sight-seeing bus, you can see the names of streets called after people and places that have played an important part in Glasgow's more recent history.   When you are in O'Connell Street in Dublin, everyone knows who the liberator was.   Some of these street names are clearly surnames, others are places.

The heart of Glasgow has Glassford Street, Oswald Street, Buchanan Street, Tobago Street, Virginia Street, St. Vincent  Street, Jamaica Street.

Why were streets named after these people?   Because they were important.   Why were they important?   Because they were rich.   Why were they rich?  Because they made fortunes from the tobacco trade in Virginia and sugar in the West Indies.   At that time, Cork was equally prosperous trading with Virginia and the West Indies, but did not achieve the same lift off as Glasgow (‘Why' is not relevant to speculate here).   The West of Scotland owned much of Jamaica.  Tobago and St. Vincent came from the French.  I used to think St. Vincent was named after the battle. 

The tobacco merchants were called the Tobacco Lords.   They were famous for wearing red cloaks and strutting with gold topped canes along the Trongate.  The Tobacco Lords lasted until the American War of Independence broke out in 1776, when many of them did not only lost their cloaks but also their shirts!         

At school we were told that Glasgow had clean hands regarding slavery.   As no slave ships sailed up the Clyde and no markets were held as in Bristol and Liverpool, the fruits of the slave trade were held at a decent remove.   Nobody knows any more the names of the slave traders.  Recent scholarship has uncovered the secret history of Glasgow's involvement in the slave trade and its abolition.   Richard Oswald with two partners controlled Bunce Island on a river in Sierra Leone, where several thousand slaves were held for onward transmission - just like all the whisky bonds you'll see in the West of Scotland.  He died the richest man Scotland had ever seen worth half a million pounds.

To-day the street names of these traders are their only memorial.  For long, Glasgow did not acknowledge that the sugar and tobacco plantations were run on slave labour. The traders expected their legacy to be the vast mansions from their profits.  "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree."   But what happened?   Their descendants ran out of money, their houses fell down or were demolished.  Only one remains the Cunninghame mansion, now the Museum of Modern Art, in front of which stands the statue of Wellington.

Another image from street names is of Glasgow as a city of the Union which saw itself later as the city of the Empire:  Union Street, Hanover Street, North Frederick Street, West Regent Street, George Square, Queen Street.

Glasgow rejected Bonnie Prince Charlie when his Jacobite army occupied the city in 1745.    The unionist and Hanoverian street names set the context for George Square,

which links the old town in the east with the new town in the west.  These street names celebrate Glasgow's identification with the Union: Glasgow was Unionist and Hanoverian, but this enthusiasm morphed into enthusiasm for the British Empire.

The collection of 19^th century statues in George Square all relate to each other in Glasgow's history and help us to understand the British Empire.    The statues fall into four groups: monarchy and politicians, soldiers, writers and scientists.

Now it's dead white males time!   Two years ago the council decided to remove the statues and revamp the Square.   For a while it looked as if the people of Glasgow were to lose their history. At least this plan re-kindled an interest in the history of the 19^th century statues that was about to be lost like the mansions of the Tobacco Lords.   I was asked to speak to a Consultation Committee about the statues as part of Glasgow's heritage.  Ostensibly, this was a process of democratic consultation, but I was only given three minutes to defend the twelve statues.   I said that I was going to talk about only one person who - metaphorically speaking - had fallen of the radar of consciousness.

Lord Clyde: the inscription refers to him as a field marshal and peer of the realm, now totally unknown to the public, arch-type of the dead white male - irrelevant to-day?

Born a stone's throw from George Square, the son of a carpenter living in John Street, his father was a Mc Liver, whose grandfather had been out in the 45' and forfeited his estates.   The 45' was put down with great viciousness in Scotland.  Fortunately, his mother's brother, a Campbell, got him a commission in the army.  He got it under the name of Campbell, not McLiver - an unusual name that might have identified his Jacobite origins.  Campbell's military career ran for more than fifty years, a history of the British Empire at its apogee.    His statue with its tropical props of palm tree and pith helmet suggests he was revered as the saviour of India in the mutiny and for getting the women and children out of Lucknow when his highlanders played "The Campbells are coming."   And that's my three minutes!

Colin Campbell's military career ran from the Peninsular War to Balaclava and the Indian Mutiny.    One reason we know so much about Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, was that the Irishman William Howard Russell, first and greatest of war correspondents, was present to record his triumphs.    We know how Campbell defended Balaclava from Russell's account of ‘the thin red line.'   But in fact Russell wrote "that thin red streak tipped with a line of steel."     Russell also covered the siege of Lucknow.   

Campbell triumphed at Lucknow because of the vital intelligence brought by another Irishman Thomas Henry Kavanagh.    In Lucknow,  Kavanagh found himself left with four possibilities: death by the insurgents, death by starvation, death by disease.   But if he survived these three, he faced disgrace and dismissal from the East India Company for borrowing from an Indian moneylender.  Kavanagh - with nothing to lose - hit on the idea of disguising himself as an Indian and travelled by night to Campbell's lines with plans of the insurgents' dispositions and the best approach to attack the fort to get out the women and children.     Probably, Campbell could not have succeeded with only 5,000 troops against an enemy of 60,000 without Kavanagh's plans.   Kavanagh got the VC personally from Queen Victoria and a pension.

What do the 19^th century statues of George Square reveal, when you are walking round the statues?  

Most of the statues have resonances to the present day in small details.

Wellington for his wellie boots

Gladstone for his bag- the original used to be held up by the Chancellor.

Scott without whom we wouldn't be here: he created the tourist industry..

Burns - in his love poems e.g. "My love is like a red red rose" created an appetite for romance - hence chocolates and red roses on St. Valentine's Day.

Peel for the Bobby on the beat - and what do you call the Gardai?

Watt when you switch on a light.

Victoria for the Victorian Age and Victorian values.

Albert for the Albert Hall.

Graham for the loose change in your pockets: as Master of the Mint he withdrew the old copper coinage, substituting bronze - although we still talk about coppers.

Thomas Campbell for his phrases that have come into our language, like

"Full many a fathom deep,"

"Spare woodman spare the beechen tree,"

"Tomorrow let us do or die,"

"Britannia rules the waves,"

 "Distance lends enchantment to the view."

Colin Campbell of the ‘thin red line,'although nobody knows to-day what it means.

Moore for the poem about his death which for the next one hundred and fifty years we all had to learn at school was written by an Irishman Charles Wolfe.               

The question is do the statues tell the truth?   We all have preconceptions and see what we want to see.  

When we walk round the statues, let's look at them like an archaeologist uncovering the truth. Is a statue's image true or false?   

The answer is YES and NO.                                                

The first ‘No.' When we walk around Oswald's statue, we see the typical Victorian gent, top hat, cane, frock coat, etc.    He is the only distinctively Victorian figure in the Square.

Oswald's statue is positioned at the opposite corner to Peel, suggesting equivalence.

When we look at the statue again, we see from a closer look Oswald leaning on his malacca cane with the other hand delicately holding his frock coat over his embonpoint.

The image of Oswald is not that of a great man like Albert or Wellington nearby.

We find out that it was Oswald's friends who insisted on him being placed at the other corner of the Square from Peel.  So clearly, this is a work of propaganda.    Also his friends commissioned a statue from Marochetti who had already been involved in the tomb of Napoleon at Les Invalides and created Wellington, Victoria and Albert nearby.

On Oswald's watch over twenty years as an MP after the Great Reform Act, the average age of a Glaswegian fell by five years, as did real wages.   Oswald was constantly asked to sponsor factory legislation that Glasgow urgently needed.  But he refused and did little for twenty years.  Finally, he inherited his slave trading relative's, Richard Oswald's, Auchincruive Estate and fortune.   Whilst Oswald became MP for Glasgow, only four per cent of the working class got the vote.

Oswald's friends could buy Marochetti's services as a sculptor, but they could not buy his integrity.   Marochetti sculpted the man and his sculpture for Oswald's statue reflects what he saw an image of dapper deportment, not a great man. 

The second ‘No.'   Victoria advancing on her horse, cleverly placed alongside Albert reining back, showing her precedence and the balance of power.  

In fact, Albert took the important decisions and ruled through Victoria.  For example,

Albert altered one of Palmerston's dispatches that could have led to war with America.                                                            

The third ‘No.'   Walking around Queen Victoria the image of her in her diaphanous dress with her long neck as in a Winterhalter portrait appearing like Titania, the fairy Queen, is a romantic vision of the nineteenth century.   But Victoria was no fairy queen!            

Look at the wedding photograph of her and Albert - a true likeness.

Now for the first ‘Yes' with a statue that overturns preconceptions.  Watt whom everyone thinks of in connection with steam power is sculpted by his friend Chantrey in the act of invention holding in his right hand a pair of dividers and in his left a pad with a drawing of a steam engine.  Why?   The dividers symbolise the accuracy of measurement that underpinned his inventive genius and the achievement of technical efficiency in thermodynamic engineering.   For understanding the symbolism of the dividers, I am indebted to Professor Marsh, Professor of Engineerring at the University of Glasgow.

The second ‘Yes.'  Burns' statue seen as sculpture in the round challenges the sentimental view of the poet.   Burns is from the front a romantic poet, but look at his bowed back from toil on the land- you can see why he only lived till he was thirty six.  

The sculpture's image echoes the two sides of Burns' poetic voice: the romantic and concern for the human condition in " A man's a man for aw that."

The third ‘Yes.'   The image of Campbell, Lord Clyde, is of a fighting soldier.   At the time shown in his fighting togs - patrol jacket, corduroy breeches, no plumed hat, no dress uniform, no gongs - because that is what he was a fighting soldier for fifty years.  Look at his slightly bowed legs.   The newspapers criticised the statue for having the body of a younger man.   But again thanks to William Howard Russell we have his description of Campbell in India before being made a field marshal and created a peer of the realm as having a "vigorous" youthful body - suggested in his alert look and energetic step forwards.

The fourth ‘Yes.'  Lastly Peel.   At first sight from the front Peel's image is of a confident man, holding a piece of paper, perhaps a parliamentary order paper.  But walking round Peel, we feel a sense of contradiction in the tension in his back.  Why? 

Research suggested that the front view is of the Peel who repealed the Corn Laws.   But his enemies were on his own side behind him, ready to bring him down.    Benjamin Disraeli was the leader of the pack!   

Finally, the Necropolis.   When I was a child looking at the green hill of the Necropolis rising above the cathedral, I thought of the hymn, "There is a green hill far away without the city walls."     There were those who had streets named after them, those commemorated by statues, others got the freedom of the city.    But for those who wished to buy a bit of immortality, merchants and manufacturers all new money could purchase a plot on the Necropolis.   

The merchants memorials on the Necropolis take the form of temples in all styles: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Moorish, Renaissance and Gothic.   Collectively, the memorials on the Necropolis reflect the wealth acquired in Glasgow with objects from different civilisations.  In 1832 the Anatomy Act was passed, taking away the fear of body snatching, making possible the Necropolis in 1833.

One statue on the Necropolis connects with the rest of Victorian Glasgow: it is that of Sir Charles Tennant sitting slumped looking ill.   Ironically, he looks like one of his workers who died as a result of the fumes and processes in his St. Rollox chemical works, the largest in the world at the time.

To conclude, the collection of nineteenth century statues in George Square mirrors an age that is still inspiring in Scotland to-day for its sheer energy and inventiveness - whether in Scots engineering, military feats, politics and literature.   These images remind us of our past and give us reference points to start our researches to find out what happened and why.   I don't know what the future holds for Glasgow, but it is vital we hold on to our awareness of history.