Labour turning Glasgow's historic George Square into retail outlet

Citizens in Glasgow are up in arms over a council proposal to transform historic George Square, into a corporate “retail-led” space with crass “public art”. Many rightly see it is an attempt to drive the political and social life of the city out of this important square

George Square has been the centre of struggle in the city from the 1919 uprising to demonstrations against the poll tax and Trident. Most recently, it was the site for the Occupy movement’s actions in Glasgow.

Without any consultation, the Labour-controlled council has unveiled six options, each more corporate than the one before, in a £15 million project, most of which will be borrowed against future business rates income.

The plans will ban protests and demonstrations from the space. No longer will councillors be within hearing distance of rallies outside their cosy offices. And people simply sitting and enjoying the space, eating their lunch or chatting with friends, will in future be surrounded with the pressure to buy more stuff, or driven out by barriers for big corporate events.

There has been an attempt to play the nationalist card, boasting that Victorian statues, for example of Sir Robert Peel will be removed. But this is a shallow view of history, which ought rather to be taken as a whole – including the fact that many grand buildings in the city centre were built out of the proceeds of slavery.

Virtually in secret, the council commissioned a PR firm to conduct a so-called consultation. When this writer asked under the Freedom of Information Act who was being consulted, and if she could be consulted, she was told that the council didn’t have the information, only the PR firm, and it was therefore commercially sensitive. This is a complete distortion of the meaning of the legislation.

It turns out that just 42 citizens were polled about whether the square should change. Apart from that, it was only corporate and city political bodies that were invited to comment, with the exception of the Scottish TUC who strongly objected to efforts to ban demonstrations from the square.

One of the Council’s notorious “arms length” organisations, Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (slogan: “Glasgow with Style”) is driving the plans. Its role is to “create customers”. Council leader Gordon Matheson is the chair with other councillors on the board. There is more about the interchangeable web of corporate politicians and political corporates that run Glasgow on the Restore George Square website.

None of these bodies have any concern for a genuinely sustainable economy that works for the people. There is no suggestion that serious number of jobs will result from these glitzy activities – just as events like the City of Culture and Garden Festival did not improve the city’s fundamental economic situation.

The question is who owns public space – is it the council and their corporate partners in civic crime, or is it the people?  This is part of the bigger question of what kind of democracy we have and who it serves.

Thousands of city council workers have already been made redundant, and there are plans to get rid of at least 1,000 more between now and 2015. The total will probably be higher because the council was told in September that it is facing a £50m deficit by 2015.

The council meets tomorrow to agree further closures of day services for people with learning disabilities and that is only one of many services that are being devastated by cuts. Meanwhile, youth unemployment in the city now stands at almost 25%.

We need to free ourselves from this system that operates solely in corporate interests and thrives off a repressive economy that benefits the ruling elite but has no benefits to offer the citizens.

Glasgow People’s Assemblies is hosting Assemblies for Change, where the nature of the changes needed, and the route to achieving them, are at the heart of an open discussion. Join us on Facebook and come to the next Assembly for Change event on January 26.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Assemblies taking off

The People’s Assembly Network (PAN) event held in London at the weekend took place against a dramatic background of mass actions against existing authorities from Wisconsin, USA, to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

In Cairo two demonstrators were killed by the military police and many more injured, while in Madison, Wisconsin, trade unionists and their supporters met in a people’s assembly. On a smaller scale, protesters camped out overnight in Trafalgar Square demanding the right to peaceful protest.

As a powerful greeting to the London meeting from the Wisconsin Wave People’s Assembly said clearly: “Like all of you, we understand the just cause and moral imperative of defending our democratic traditions, our people, and our principles against a coordinated attack by corporate elites and the politicians they own. And, like all of you, we know that we have to do much more than fight back. We also have to advance a genuine people’s movement that values every human being and insists on essential public services and human rights.”

This year, the message noted, opened with the toppling of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, which inspired the mass resistance in Wisconsin to the attacks on public sector workers and their union rights.

PAN co-convenor Mark Barrett, said that assemblies were “not unions, not parties or pressure groups but an inclusive organisational strategy - the means to build permanent, democratic, city-wide and rural structures in various communities around the world, which can have a multiplicity of functions. They can unite for a common alternative around the world – permanent institutions of the ‘common’.”

A researcher on social movements said it was important to see assemblies not only as “reacting” to the existing authorities but as a way to the assertion of a new form of power.

Others, including members of the Project for a Participatory Society UK, saw Assemblies as platforms for encouraging social participation and as a way of developing alternatives to the capitalist system of production.

A World to Win member said that the role of assemblies was to express the self-determination of people, to be a voice for the voiceless and to develop mass forms of leadership. “They are not a left thing or a right thing, but a democratic thing in the light of mass popular dissatisfaction with state structures and the absence of a democratic voice.”

London activist, Navid, said that assemblies could be structures for combining the ideologies of the left and forums for debating ideas about social transformation.
Tony Dines from Worthing Solidarity Network and Transition Town Worthing suggested that assemblies could draw in all people who are victims of the crisis of capitalism, including workers and small businessmen. They could be parallel organisations to local government up to a national level which aimed to replace the existing state institutions. The aim should be common ownership, not state ownership, he stressed.

The meeting was encouraged by a message from the Glasgow People’s Assembly which has already held three meetings at the Free Hetherington building which has been occupied by students since the beginning of 2011. A People’s Assembly/Convention is scheduled to be held in Lambeth, south London on May 21.

PAN participants will reconvene on Saturday May 7 at the Passing Clouds music and arts centre in east London. Meanwhile the website working group will contribute articles, blogs, news, photos and comments to the website and a new group was formed to develop connections internationally.

With the Coalition government in increasing disarray and the Parliamentary system offering no way forward, PAN’s boost for the campaign of building people’s assemblies is timely.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary