TEMPLETON CARPET FACTORY DISASTER 1899 at the MITCHELL LIBRARY

Bill Black presented a lecture about a largely forgotten incident that resulted in the deaths of 29 young Woman due to a massive structural fault in the design of one of Glasgows most famous landmarks.The story is surrounded by a lot of myths and downright erroneous information that has seeped in considerably into the "official" narrative , especially the false notion that "repeated design proposals had been rejected by Glasgow Corporation".In fact there is only a very small desultory sentence that appears in the records of the Glasgow Corporation of the time which suggest planning consent ( such as there was at the time) was given to Templeton for the building on a passing nod without any consultation or in-depth consideration from the planning authorities.

This blog contains some artifacts and newspaper illustrations of the reports of the disaster at the time.

This report from the Evening Times Newspaper gives an update about the restoration of a monument from the ladies that died in the disaster.

"The names of the 29 workers who died live on mirroring the tender ages of Victorian Britain's workforce: sisters Elizabeth, 17, and 21-year-old Agnes Broadfoot; Margaret Arthur, 20; Margaret Blair, 16; Helen Bradley, 21; Margaret Cassidy, 18; Lilias Davitt, 19; Agnes Dickson, 16; Jane Duffie, 20; Janet Gibson, 16; Dinah Gillies, 19; Jean Glass, 20; Sarah Groves, 22; Ellen Wallace, 23; Margaret McCartney, 17; Minnie McGarrigle, 24; Agnes McGregor, 17; Martha Mackie, 20; Elizabeth McMillan, 15; Rose Ann McMillan, 21; Jeannie Marshall, 22; Jemima Morris, 23; Grace McQuillan, 19; Margaret Shields, 22; Elizabeth Sinclair, 25; Mary Ann Stewart, 16; Annie Strathearn, 19; Mary Turnbull, 15 and Annie Wilson, just 14."

This blog entry gives some stories from the relatives of the victims

"I have an old bible that was presented to my Gran, Catherine Dunsmore in around 188?.
It states that it was presented to her because of the calamity that occurred in Greenhead, Glasgow in 188?. Couldn't find any old records of an incident around that time ............
I found out about the Templeton Building through your website. I had been looking for an answer to a message in my Gran's bible which gave her sympathy for the Greenhead Incident in 1889. She was only 13 and must have been a survivor.
Thank you for solving a mystery for me."

CHRISTY MOORE at the ROYAL CONCERT HALL GLASGOW

Went to this concert with a friend who was going for the first time to a Christy Moore concert.Sometimes we take for granted just how good he is having seen him so many times over the years so it was refreshing to see someone gobsmacked and in awe like the first time i was seeing him.He was so moved he brought two live CDs right away and talked about very little since.

There are no really decent videos of this concert available , none that do justice to the raw emotion and power only those who have seen him live can feel and know all about , though im glad my friend has joined the list ,but the two below are about the best.

Cliffs of Dooneen


and Ordinary Man

TOM LEONARD : MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN at AYEWRITE

Tom Leonard has navigated the very treacherous ( they are no socialists! , he cries) waters of the Bertolt Brecht Foundation to create a moving , current , Scottish version of the classic play written around the beginning of WW2.According to the Amazon blurb"the Thirty Years War becomes the War on Terror and Mother Courage is a working-class woman from the West of Scotland speaking the racy working-class nonstandard language of Glasgow. The rest of the cast speak varieties of English language subtly shaded for irony, accent and all the social hierarchies carried by diction and regional language in a land where diction is an index of class."

The original Mother Courage comes from a Novel of the 17th Century dealing with the horrors of The 30 Years War which claims over a quarter of the population of the present day Germanic lands ( a total that would amount to about 25 Million souls using todays populations)and led to the current and entirely understandable concern Germany has even today about any conflict in Europe being a potential catalyst for major upheavals within Germany itself.Even in surveys carried out in 1955 ,when the pain and loss of WW2 was still barely a decade old, still considered the events of 1618-1648 as the most traumatic and destructive period of German history.

The talk contained many segments from a select group of actors who had done a rehearsed reading of the play at The Tron the night before.If and when it does get permission to be an official stage production it promises to be a very moving piece that would capture and enhance the original conception by Brecht.

An entry from his journal blog gives a good indication of the immense amount and thought had has gone into this four year project to do justice to the original and add to the theme of the play which is that "the war" never does seem to go away , especially not for the poorer classes which either have to fight it or suffer the costs and depredations of the intervening periods, it is always with us to a lesser or greater degree depending on where we wage it , to that end Tom made the very pertinent observation that if the pullout from Afghanistan happens it will be the first time in over a 100 years that Britain has not been engaged in some form or another in military action , though the prospects of some form of "Humanitarian" campaign before the pullout may continue this very inglorious record.

"Talking with the actors about Mother Courage and her Children on Saturday and Sunday, I mentioned that in the middle of translating I bought the print books of  the Scottish artist Muirhead Bone’s series The Western Front that he made for the War Office in 1917. It seemed appropriate whilst I was as it were travelling across the desolate war terrain of Mother Courage’s Europe, to travel visually with Muirhead Bone—whose work I have always liked—on his journey through the devastated war terrain of France.  
It struck me as no more than my getting “mental atmosphere” as I wrote, but after  listening to the end of the play on Saturday and Sunday  

it struck me that the translation in the last line had of course been triggered at the back of my mind by the famous recruiting poster of those days YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU. The last line is a kind of bitter parthian invocation to the audience.

I put up two of the Muirhead Bone posters on my journal while translating the play in July 2010. This one below is another in the series, the foreground including, according to its accompanying description, old trenches and dugouts."

Curiously Tom refers to a very Celtic connection he feels towards Mother Courage and her attitudes to the trials and tribulations of her life and family tragedies.This may not be far from the truth as in T.M Devines book about the Scottish role in the Empire  from 1600-1815 gives details of many Scots mercenary soldiers and sometimes their families travelling the German and polish lands selling merchandise when not employed for military service in the very manner that Mother Courage plies her trade.Ironically there were so many Scots in Poland under-cutting the locals and cornering semi-skilled trades that many Polish Cities enacted laws to prevent Scots taking the local Poles jobs.How things have turned around in the last four centuries.

SUN SHUYUN at the AYEWRTE FESTIVAL

Sun Shuyun followed in the footsteps of Xuanzang, a 7th century monk who travelled over a period of 18 years ( 13 spent studying at a famous seat of Buddhist learning in India) from Central China to India and back to bring Buddhism to China, his travels inspired the classic novel called Monkey. Shuyun’s journey presents a hero whose achievements should be better known in Modern China yet alone the world, whilst examining the current state of the regions in which she travels.

This review from The Guardian captures the Book and the talk given by the author. 

"It's hard to think of a western equivalent: if you combine Marco Polo and St Columba it gives some idea of Xuanzang's range. But when Sun was growing up, Xuanzang had been usurped in the popular imagination in China by a magical monkey. He was never exactly a household name in the west. Only in the countries that he visited and documented so meticulously is he remembered with gratitude and appreciation. To them he left, in many cases, the only - and in most, the best - descriptive account of their countries. He was an intrepid pilgrim, an extraordinary travel writer and a cultural ambassador whose determination and courage were second to none.
After several years of study, Xuanzang had become dissatisfied with the doctrinal contradictions of the competing schools of Buddhism. He resolved to travel to India in search of the authentic message of the Buddha. As darkness was falling one evening in August 627, he slipped out of the Western Gate of Chang'an (present day Xian) and set off."

It was a testimony to the great faith of her Grandmother that Shuyun wavered many times on the brink of breakdown in a greety-face show of remorse and guilt for the way she , her family and the state treated a woman of great dignity and reserve , surely a metaphor for us all.

GLASGOWS OPIUM WARS at AYEWRITE FESTIVAL

Attending this event was as close as we are likely to feel as the German youth of today would be bewildered , baffled and horrified at the utter inhumanity and barbarity of their forefathers in dealing with other races , the difference being the Germans have recognised , apologised , atoned , gone a long way to rectifying and vowed never to repeat their actions in this or any other generation.While we have never apologised or even accepted culpability in a crime that claimed up to 12 million ( though no one ever bothered counting) lives , more than twice the number of the Holocaust.

What frightens even more is that this was a very Scottish holocaust inflicted on the Chinese with Glasgow playing an infamous role in what must still rank as the very worst poison of the lethal cocktail of imperialism, colonialism , international man-made mass murder in what can only be called the perfect storm of Capitalism laid bare for all to see.

Glasgow has been slowly , far behind Hull,Liverpool and Bristol, dealing with its history of slavery and exploitation in the Caribbean. But there are other conflicts less well known and equally important. In association with the Confucius Institute, Stuart Kelly and Brian Holton discussed the role Glasgow and Scotland played in the 19th century Opium Wars, from the burning of the Peking Library to the “industrial espionage” of tea cultivation, as well as belated one-sided moves towards peace and reconciliation.The positive aspect of this event was the interest attracting a large audience which made the organisers have to move it to a larger hall which was to capacity.

Like India before it fell sway to British Influence , China was one of the worlds richest economies , self-sufficient and only trading in silver with the european powers.It was also technologically advanced to have superior yields of agricultural production than Britain achieved even after the Industrial revolution had transformed the British country side to produce foodstuffs for the expanding cities.All indices about disease prevention were also superior to the UK at the time.

Tea was a vital resource for the British exchequer , a tenth of all duties came from tea , enough to found the Royal Navy for six months of the year.Nearly half of Europes gold flowed into the Chinese treasury , a crippling amount that Britain could not afford over a long period.Hence the desire to discover the secret of Chinas tea production and make it on British dominated lands in India.Another problem was what could be sold to China instead of Silver , the answers came from Scotland , the very British mixture of one of the biggest acts of Industrial espionage and the most blatant and grotesque Wars to sell narcotics ever waged.

This article from The Scotsman tells of the scottish connection to the Opium wars.

"A great proponent of Adam Smith, Matheson saw in China the obvious necessity for free trade.
"Did not the laws of nature," he asked, "oblige all people to mingle freely with each other?" His conclusion was obvious. China must open and he believed Britain would do it.
So began a process which historian and broadcaster Saul David considers to be one of the most unforgivable acts of empire, saying:
"It was one of the blackest marks in the Imperial story, capitalism and mercantilism at its worst.""

This segment of a BBC documentary gives a synopsis of the conditions prior to the Opium Wars


And the video below has the Global Launch of the Book "The Opium War" by Julia Lovell



This article by Mark Sutherland-Fisher puts to rest the notion of Scots being the first victims of the English rather than the architects of British Imperialism and Colonialism which historians are finding to be the case.

"In truth the wealth and grandeur of Glasgow and some other places in
Lanarkshire and West Central Scotland were funded by some of the darkest
activities of Scots in the past 300 years. However remember we cannot impose
on our ancestors the moral high ground we consider entitled to in the early
21st century. Probably in 300 years our descendants will look back and be
equally disgusted by things we have done or have sanctioned today.

If you are lucky enough to be in Glasgow on a day when it is not raining,
then just walk around with your eyes open and upwards, admire the stunning
architecture, visit the world famous galleries and see the impressive
exhibits. Just don't ponder too long on how they were paid for and the
manner in which they were acquired!
Mark"

MILES JUPP at the CITIZENS THEATRE GLASGOW

When i saw him a few years back Miles Jupp was starting out , carving a name for himself as a caricature of a snob mocking the antics and lifestyles of the poor , the irony being he was actually mocking the outlook of the snobs.

Many years later he has fully developed and honed his talents , the act becoming more powerful as it gets subtler.

The review perfectly captures the act he performed at the citizens.

"From his plummy accent and hapless self-deprecation to his total ignorance of modern youth culture, there has always been an element of Bertie Wooster about Miles Jupp’s stand-up. He tends to give the impression he’d be more at home in P.G. Wodehouse’s world of cosseted young bachelors than among the more humdrum realities of 21st-century life."