ONCE again the People’s Palace Museum and Winter Gardens (one not two institutions) is under attack as a result of the carelessness and mendacity of the Labour Party.

I understand that Richard Leonard has approved, and general secretary Brian Roy has issued, an online petition blaming the current crisis on the SNP.

Let no-one be in any doubt that the two re-glazing projects of the 1980s and 90s were carried out under the Labour Party. The disastrous changes carried out to the Palace under Julian Spalding and Mark O’Neill were sanctioned by Pat Lally and Frank McAveety.

Lally is gone and unlamented but McAveety is still in office, and as convenor tolerated the destruction of most of the museum’s most popular exhibits. He also permitted the reduction of the museum’s central role as the museum of Glasgow’s social history by confining its exhibits to post-1750.

This decision meant Lally and he were able to facilitate and justify the asset-stripping of the museum collections, thereby avoiding and eliminating such awkward subjects as the War of Independence, the 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts, the Scottish Reformation and the Union of 1707.

What remains of the pre-1991 presentations is an anodyne collection of disjointed artefacts which obscure rather than interpret the role of Glasgow as a great imperial city.

The hard-won and carefully restored room settings of the Stockwell Mansion with their rare marbled decoration were simply torn apart and dumped, as I witnessed at the time. The carefully restored effigy of Robert Wishart, the patriot bishop of Glasgow and stalwart supporter of Wallace and Bruce, was as badly stored and damaged. This gross mismanagement did not only affect the pre-1750 display but extended to the very rare printing press of John Mennons of the Glasgow Advertiser, precursor of the Glasgow Herald, when it was moved from its panelled room setting rescued from the last Palladian mansion of Robert Dreghorn. It was later seen by me in the Mitchell Library in a dismantled condition.

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Of the 19th-century displays, the collections of Glasgow and Scottish stained glass were removed entirely, also the displays on cast iron and the Togneri Cafe from Duke Street, now dead and unloved in the Riverside Museum. The Victorian bathroom from Blythswood Square was likewise exited, as were the flanking busts of RB Cunninghame Graham and

James Keir Hardie. In a recent crisis McAveety had Hardie resurrected, but Graham – being a nationalist as well as a socialist – remains in purdah, as does Matt McGinn.

The picture collection including the historic works of Crimea Simpson and John Knox, and the contemporary works of Alastair Gray, Peter Howson, Andrew Hay, Alexander Guy, Avril Paton and Virginia Colley are conspicuous by their absence.The historically important mural cycle of Ken Currie is atrociously lit and hidden by a clutter of irrelevant hangings. Currie’s other major works on War and Peace have not been on show since 1990.

This museum was once capable of attracting more than half a million visitors a year, long before the current refurbishment and use of the Green for concerts and events.

I fear that not only the fate of the building but the restitution of its deliberately scattered collections will depend on the goodwill and determined support of the SNP if the glory days are ever to return. We must not forget that Glasgow’s museums, libraries, archives and art galleries are now run by a quango (Glasgow Life) headed up by Bridget McConnell.

Michael Donnelly
Glasgow