May 31 2020
Winter Gardens event, January 1989
As reported by Angus Calder in the London Review of Books
Just seventy years after Friday, 31 January 1919, when troops and tanks stood by to quell a mass rally, in Glasgow’s George Square, of West of Scotland workers campaigning for a forty-hour week, the event was remembered in the People’s Palace, the museum of labour history on Glasgow Green.
A bronze bust of Willie Gallacher by Ian Walters was not so much unveiled as proclaimed. It sits at the top of the building, in the room where Ken Currie’s controversial Rivera-style murals of working-class history can be seen around the ceiling: but the speeches were made in the Winter Garden downstairs, where heavy rain dripping through the glass roof and a chill which gnawed one’s bowels did not dismay the two hundred people who had gathered to honour the man who from 1935 to 1950 was Honourable Member for West Fife (Comm.), and an activist long before that on the Clyde Workers Committee. Continue reading
Mar 09 2020
Messages on our birthday
People’s Palace 122nd birthday, 22 January 2020
Messages from people who could not be with us:
From actor John Cairney and his wife Alannah O’Sullivan. Both were very active in the 1990 campaign to help the People’s Palace.
Unfortunately, Alannah and I can’t be with you.
We genuinely wish you and all at the People’s Palace a deserving 122nd Happy Anniversary! The People’s Palace for me growing up nearby in the East End made it a very special place indeed, and I was grateful for it. It still belongs to the People of Glasgow as it speaks for all of us, not only by its longevity and continued credibility, but for fully representing the beating heart of the city.
Yours,
John Cairney
Jan 16 2020
Palace’s Birthday
To mark the 122nd anniversary of the opening of the People’s Palace/Winter Gardens, the Friends of the People’s Palace, Winter Gardens and Glasgow Green will be holding a commemoration event this Wednesday:
11.00am to midday, Wednesday, 22nd January 2020,
at the People’s Palace, Glasgow Green.
There will be a designer-cake for the event, plus music and short contributions from speakers. If you’re free, please come along.
Keep an eye out for further details on our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Friends-of-Peoples-Palace-Winter-Gardens-Glasgow-Green-100373718106010/
Dec 01 2019
Seven facts about Glasgow Green
Aerial image from GlasgowLive.co.uk
Glasgow Green was featured in this great article on ‘Glasgow Live’ on 30/11/19.
They list seven intriguing facts you might not know about the 146 acre public space next to the River Clyde, which attracts around 2 million visitors per year, and has played host to some of the most important historical events in Glasgow.
Nov 18 2019
Meeting – November 2019
The next meeting of the Friends of the People’s Palace, Winter Gardens and Glasgow Green will take place at 6.30pm on Thursday 28th November 2019 at Calton Heritage, 423 London Road, Glasgow.
Nov 01 2019
Glasgow Green Timeline
13 January, Feast of St Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow who first named the settlement Glas Chu, ‘the dear Green place’.
17 January, birthday of Matt McGinn of the Calton (1928-1977) whose ashes rest in the Winter Gardens
19 January 1736 Birthday of James Watt
22 January (1898) opening of the People’s Palace ‘for ever and ever’.
17 March, Feast of St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland. People went to Flesher’s Haugh to gather shamrock.
4 April 1817 Birthday of Hugh Macdonald (1817 – 1860), author of Rambles Round Glasgow; monument on the Green Continue reading
Nov 01 2019
Glasgow Green in the News
A look at coverage of the Green in the news archives, from 1853 to 1899
Glasgow Constitutional 16 July 1853 Glasgow Fair on Glasgow Green
Hylton’s Royal Menagerie, Glasgow Fair. 10am – 10pm. Lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, hyenas and howling wolves, with birds,beasts and monsters of the deep. + brass band. Pro bono publico
Paisley Herald 27 March 1858 Glasgow Green in Danger
Letter from IRLG against coal mining on the Green. ‘The old Unreformed Town Council would have been ashamed to have anything to do with such a job….the present Council…the only one in the kingdom capable of perpetrating such a barbarism as wilfully spoiling a public park, and that park the ancient Green of Glasgow, used by our forefathers for ages back.’ Continue reading
Oct 31 2019
Glasgow Green Film Night
7pm, Thursday 7 November 2019
Glasgow Green is Scotland’s oldest public park and not surprisingly, there are many songs, poems and stories about it.
On this special evening, we will be looking at films supplied by the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive at the Kelvin Hall. These include two full- length short films: From Glasgow Green to Bendigo (1961, on the world-wide operation of Templeton Carpets) and The Green of Glasgow (1962, produced for the Schools Museum Service and used as a teaching aid on the history of the Green up until the 1990s.)
Admission is free, so bring your popcorn and enjoy a great Glasgow night out!
Duration: 90 minutes
A Friends of the People’s Palace, Winter Gardens and Glasgow Green event
Venue: Calton Heritage and Learning Centre 423 London Road, Glasgow, G40 1AG
7pm, Thursday 7 November 2019
Having quietly endured almost twenty years of managed decline, writes Hailey Maxwell, it is crucial that we consider the possibility that the Peoples’ Palace on Glasgow Green – a valuable civic asset and monument to Scottish history and working-class life may presently be at real risk of being neutralised, misappropriated and entirely co-opted into a neoliberal agenda. Spaces and places which were once public are being repurposed and reimagined not for the benefit of the citizen but for the property developer, the multi-national corporation and the tourist.
Continue reading