KEITH Bruce’s timely article ("Politicians letting cultural riches fall into disrepair", Herald Magazine, November 10) has much to commend it but only if those responsible are identified. In the case of the People’s Palace, as many of your older readers will recall the neglect goes back a long way.
I remember vividly the launch of an exhibition to mark the 80th birthday of Hugh Macdiarmid in l972 when the palace was so unwanted and unloved that only specially invited guests arrived for the opening. As the opening time came and went and the attendant waitresses rattled cups and saucers on the empty tables it was obvious that we had been snubbed by the Labour council and in order to allay our sense of embarrassment and rescue the occasion I asked the guests to record their impressions of the great Scots poet for posterity. A tape recording was made and included contributions from Winnie Ewing, Harry McShane, Oliver Brown, the Rev Alex Borrowman and Robert Blair Wilkie. Wilkie, Curator of the palace and former editor of the Scots Independent, was then fighting a campaign to prevent the demolition of the (at that time closed) Winter Gardens.
It was not until January 1978 that it was possible to hold an exhibition opening in the Winter Gardens, Alasdair Gray’s superb one-man exhibition, The Continuous Glasgow Show. We thought that we had won the battle and the palace complex was saved, but we were wrong. A report of the planning department into listed buildings in Glasgow’s East End (1977) revealed that “the museums department envisage at least another five-10 years' use – although it could be closed sooner by the Firemaster because of inadequate means of escape and no money to carry out precautions”. The Labour council had chosen to prioritise the housing of the art collection of Sir William Burrell over the needs of its own municipal collections.
Having failed to get rid of the building the curators were obviously to blame and the full-blooded attack on the palace was resumed during the Year of Culture in 1990 with the loss making “Glasgow’s Glasgow” sponsored by the Labour Party under Pat Lally and Frank McAveety. None of this can be laid at the door of the SNP and the recent bogus petition launched by Richard Leonard on behalf of the palace has all the moral authority of a Donald Trump tweet.
Michael Donnelly,
Flat 1/2, 343 West Princes Street, Glasgow.
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