By Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
During her recent visit to the Garden of Remembrance and Islandbridge in Dublin, the British head of state played an important role in the symbolism of the reconciliation between the two traditions on the island. We saw the monarch of the ex-colonial power acknowledging the legitimacy of the freedom struggle of Irish Republicanism.
It would have been hard to envisage those acts of respect and perhaps penitence being carried out by the Queen had she not been standing in the Garden of Remembrance in front of the Children of Lir.
Public monuments are important in any society. They can acknowledge a past deed or misdeed. They can be a meeting point for celebration or mourning, or a warning from the past.
All human societies throughout history have spent considerable amounts of scarce resources to erect monuments. This means they must provide some benefit, and some meaning.
The Holocaust memorial in Berlin, for example, is troubling and impossible to ignore. Just like the Shoa itself, the German nation has determined that it will not ignore this troubling spectre from its past.
Respect.
Glasgow is almost unique among the major receiving centres of survivors of An Gorta Mór (the Great Famine) in that there is no city centre memorial to those awful years.
Great cities such as Boston, Liverpool, New York, Sydney and Toronto all memorialise the humanitarian disaster of the Famine. Why should Glasgow be different? Currently it is different. Certainly the city was the reception centre for tens of thousands of Famine refugees.
The only argument against I have been able to garner is that any memorial would be vandalised by racist thugs.
Can you imagine the proposed memorial to Dr Martin Luther King not being put up in Washington DC because of what the good ol' boys of the Klan might do?
Of course not. Their time is gone and the reclaiming of the public space from the racists included taking down the Confederate flag from state buildings in the Deep South at the start of the new millennium. This is what mature, well-adjusted societies do about the traumatic events of the past.
Glasgow’s story cannot be told about the arrival of the Irish in such city-altering numbers. A glance at the Glasgow phonebook will tell you that the city of my birth has as many Irish names listed as does the one for New York.
Why, then, is the central act in the Glasgow Irish drama not acknowledged in the city’s public space?
The survivors of those cadaverous refugees survived and propelled the city into a powerhouse of Edwardian vigour with their sweat and their blood, but the only acknowledgement that An Gorta Mór has in Glaswegian life is the refrain of the racist Famine Song from some football fans.
Glasgow’s Irish community deserves better of the city that has given the world a unique part of the Irish Diaspora. All the public authorities need to do is to pledge the small footprint of ground, say on the Broomielaw or in George Square or at Glasgow Cross.
The site – as well, of course, as the design – could be put out to a competition. My own preference would be the Broomielaw by the Clyde. This is where boatloads disgorged tens of thousands of skeletal, disease-ridden Famine survivors. It would connect with the sculpture on Custom House Quay in Dublin.
However, that is merely my opinion. The judging panel would have representatives from the Irish community in Glasgow, historians who have researched An Gorta Mór and an input from the artistic world.
It would be my earnest wish that politicians wouldn’t be allowed in the room. They shouldn’t be allowed in because they are not going to be asked for any of the taxpayers' cash.
The only act of good authority that those in power should have to take is to grant the planning permission for something suitable tasteful, evocative, haunting and appropriate.
It would a memorial to the tragedy of An Gorta Mór, but it would also be a strong statement that Glasgow finally acknowledges and values the city’s Irish community.
– Phil Mac Giolla Bhain is an author, blogger, journalist and writer.
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