Of Me and Others

by Alasdair Gray

  Like most who go to London without much money John survived there with difficulty for years before his work earned him a secure living, hence his cartoons deal with the ironies of great poverty and wealth. I heard that, when forced to spend a night with friends who lacked spare beds, he could sleep on a chair without his garments next day looking very crumpled or grubby – so a calm sleeper who did not sweat much, a self-contained, phlegmatic man. In 1956 I briefly met him in Alan Fletcher’s kitchen. We exchanged no words but I probably tried to impress him. When Alan referred to me on a later occasion, John said, “Alasdair Gray? That funny boy who sat by the fire saying wise things about nothing like an old Scottish shepherd?”

  POSTSCRIPT

  In the 1960s I taught art beside Connie Cochran, a lady with a sense of humour who had also been a friend of John and sometimes walked out with him. They would stop at a shop where John would order cigarettes, adding “...and a comic for the girl,” tossing her a Beano or Dandy, strip cartoon weeklys for the under twelves. She was a head and neck taller than him.

  Of Ian Hamilton Finlay

  This letter was printed by The Times, Scotsman and Herald 12 April I988, in support of Finlay on withdrawal of a commission by the government of France as a memorial to the 1789 Revolution’s 2nd centenary. A critic who had been keen on Finlay’s work had come to feel Finlay had not acknowledged his support, so began writing that Finlay’s love of weapon imagery from the Panzer tanks to nuclear submarines, plus his use twice or thrice of the Fascist lightning flash, showed he was one. In reply to this letter I got one from Finlay saying enemies were preferable to friends like me; he had read no books of mine, but that I was thought a writer of importance was added proof of how rotten Scots culture had become. He may have been right.

  SIR, WHEN NOT INSIDE THEIR own small mutual aid groups most British artists ignore each other. No wonder. A minority of us live by our work, so most feel miserable about it. Why enlarge our misery by envying the achievement of others or caring for their troubles? Even cheerfully comfortable artists can be envious. I took a sneaking pleasure in the news that Ian Hamilton Finlay, Scotland’s only landscape poet, had lost a big commission because a clique of critics told the French Government he was a fascist. It made me feel right not to have seen or thought much about his work. Then I remembered I had three times seen a great part of his work, and had thought it beautiful and good. I want to tell your readers this, before current publicity makes me feel I am a fascist because I enjoyed the flowerbeds, pools, twining paths and sculptures of Little Sparta, Mr Finlay’s home near Biggar.

  Mr Finlay’s garden shows that, like half the male sex, and all governments, and most folk born just before the second world war, he is fascinated by tanks, submarines and aeroplanes. A small lily pond holds a much smaller stone bird table shaped like an aircraft carrier, on whose flight deck finches land and feed. Other carvings recall equally threatening weapons, all ironically diminished and made into elegant, playful parts of a fine garden, itself an arrangement of small, intimate spaces. The effect is the reverse of that Great British chamber of horrors, the Imperial War Museum. No child exploring Little Sparta will feel a thrilling urge to join an army or privately attack those of another race, political party or religion.

  Only one detail of Mr Finlay’s work has been construed as antisemitic. A stone was carved with a double zigzag, the old Roman thunderbolt sign, which is now notorious as an SS badge. That sign was dreadful to millions the Nazis killed and wished to kill between 1933 and 45, as the crucifix was dreadful to millions crusaders, inquisitions and pogroms killed. But the cross has several meanings. By putting his double thunderbolt between two circles Mr Finlay made the Italian word for bone, clearly reminding us that the Nazis and Romans turned people into bones in horrible ways. Mr Finlay says for him the sign means the destructive force of unreasoning nature. One thing is certain. By withdrawing his commission because of the controversy this sign provoked, the French government again advertised it as the exclusive property of a vicious 20th century sect. Whoever wants to feel excitingly wicked without taking a risk can scribble two zigzags on a wall and believe they are threatening the jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals and the elected government of France.

  But there is more to Mr Finlay than his art and its symbols. Like many in the public eye he is sometimes invited, sometimes goaded into public utterance. On the radio last week he said he had no faith in democratic government. Leftwingers like me will hate this lack of faith, for we believe the world’s worst woes come from democracy not being practised. But Mr Finlay admires Robespierre and wants a revolutionary government of the rational French 18th century sort, with vigorous, high-principled statesmen cutting each other’s heads off in the cause of freedom. No Tory can like him for that. He increasingly resembles Hugh MacDiarmid, who was expelled by the communists for his Scottish nationalism and by the nationalists for his communism, and lived so determinedly where extremes meet that the majority of easy-going middling people found him a mockery or embarrassment. Mr Finlay, like Mr MacDiarmid, lives like a hermit in an old farm building near Biggar, and has been brought to his country’s attention by foreigners who think his art important and a press which cares nothing for it, but loves his fights with authority.

  I believe nobody can share or greatly understand Mr Finlay’s political stance. Why care for him? Because he is our finest landscape poet, and since David Harding left Glenrothes New Town, Scotland’s only practising one. He knows how to make any piece of ground, whether large or small, a beautiful thought-provoking place to linger or wander in. I wish the Strathclyde Region was not trying to tax his garden as if it was a shop, office or factory, just because occasional visitors see it, admire it, and give him work.

  A Radio Talk on Allegory*

  THERE IS NO SUCH TRAIN as that one in my play as I am sure you know. British railway carriages still have switches passengers can use to stop the train, the drivers stay in their cabins and are not equipped with guns. So why should a writer imagine such a carriage, fill it with imaginary people and contrive an ending which kills them? Many real people go on journeys by rail, ship or plane which end in unexpected and undeserved death. Why add an impossible imaginary accident to all these real ones?

  The simple answer is, for fun. Most of us are pleasantly excited by disasters which don’t hurt us and the people we know. We are shocked, feel sympathy, are a bit worried to find such things can happen in this world, but a nasty wee selfish bit feels, for a while, a bit more safe and superior because it has not happened to us. That is why most of the world’s stories, films and plays deal with warfare, crime and the breaking up of homes and families. Those of you who read Judge Dredd comics are accustomed to tales of crime and disaster in an imaginary future twenty years from now, in a world which is a bit like ours but much, much worse. You may have heard my play as a thriller, perhaps a rather dull one because people kept talking about clocks and money and cups of coffee. If it bored you, I apologize. If you enjoyed it as a thriller, I’m glad. If some of you start remembering it because you feel it is worth thinking about, then you are the listeners I most want. And I would also like you to discuss it with each other, and disagree about it, because a good play or story always means different things to different people, and the better it is the more they sometimes disagree. The best and strangest story in the world is the story of Jesus which is told in four short books in the Bible. Wars have been fought between nations who found different meanings in that story.

  However, my short radio play is a lot shallower than that. I am not going to tell you what it means to me, but I’ll tell you two stories which may be a clue. One is fact, the other fiction. I’II start with the factual.

  Fifteen years ago a serious accident happened in the United States of America, an accident which that government – like all governments of countries with nuclear power stations – had said could never happen. A nuclear power station was found to be in a dangerous condition. A nearby town was quic
kly evacuated, and for two days an explosion was feared which might have destroyed the life of a whole state. The experts, however, got the thing under control. While this was happening, of course, government spokesmen throughout the world appeared on television to explain why this could never happen in their countries. The British cabinet minister responsible for atomic energy explained that the American power station was using a gas-cooled system which was far less safe than the water-cooled system we British used, so we had nothing to fear. I will not tell you this cabinet minister’s name, or whether he belonged to the Labour Party or the Conservative Party because it does not matter – none of our large political parties is against nuclear energy as a source of power. So no matter who was in power, the person holding that job would have said the same, because at that moment his job was to stop people like you and me from feeling worried. A few months later the same minister announced that the British nuclear power stations were changing to a new gas-cooling system to be bought from an American corporation, because the American system was safer and cheaper.

  And now I’II tell you a fantastic story which nobody will believe. It is from a book called Gulliver’s Travels, and was printed in London two hundred and fifty years ago. Gulliver is an English seaman who is wrecked on the shore of an island peopled by men and women who are six inches high, but have a very complicated civilization. Politicians rise to power in Lilliput (as this kingdom of wee folk is called) by walking a tight-rope. If they fall off, they get the sack, because they’re usually too damaged to climb on again, but the more tricks a politician can do on the tight-rope, the more powerful he gets. The prime minister, who has been in power for a very long time, can not only stand, walk and run on the tight-rope but turn complete somersaults. In 1730 readers of Gulliver’s Travels were quite sure Lilliput was a funny but convincing picture of the Britain they lived in – that balancing on a high wire, then jumping round to face the opposite way, was very like what the politicians then ruling Britain did. Think about that. Could it still be true?

  ADDENDUM

  This talk followed my last radio play broadcast by the BBC, though three earlier BBC producers had turned it down. I wrote it in 1975 and sent it to Stewart Conn, who had hitherto produced five of my plays on Scottish BBC radio. He returned it saying London would not let him produce it. Some years later, learning that Shaun McLaughlin now worked for Bristol BBC I sent it to him. He wrote back saying he would gladly broadcast it, but must first do some “wheeling and dealing” with chiefs in London. Then he wrote to say London had refused permission, and I had no chance of that play ever being broadcast. So I stopped writing radio plays. More years passed, then a new director of Scottish BBC radio plays wrote to say he greatly liked my novel Lanark, so wanted to commission a new radio play from me. He was English, a son of Canterbury’s Archbishop, so I sent him Near the Driver. He heartily thanked me for it in a second letter, then sent a third saying that “the self-elected cognoscenti” of BBC London still banned it. In 1983 West Deutsches Rundfunk broadcast a German translation, Beim Zugfiihrer, then it was printed in the Scots literary magazine, Chapman. Another Scottish BBC radio producer read it there and told me she wished to broadcast it for schools. I told her, “London won’t let you.” She said, “But London doesn’t monitor Scottish school radio broadcasts.” So the play was broadcast to Scottish schools, along with my little talk in 1989, fifteen years after it was first rejected by the BBC’s special branch censor in London, who thought it unfit for adult listeners.

  * A talk on Scottish BBC Schools Radio, following my half-hour play, Near the Driver.

  A Friend Unfairly Treated*

  PEOPLE TRYING TO WRITE TRUE accounts (instead of entertaining stories) should first say who they are and what led them to write. I am a 55-year-old Glaswegian who trained at Glasgow Art School and afterwards worked at illustrations, mural decorations, portraits and landscapes. I liked representing familiar folk and surroundings, and my work became known to people in my native city who visited galleries, though not much known elsewhere. I subsidized my art work with part-time writing. In the spring of 1977 I was phoned by Elspeth King of Glasgow’s local history museum, in the People’s Palace, Glasgow Green. She asked if I would like a steady job as Glasgow’s first artist-recorder. Indeed I would.

  The job of artist-recorder had been invented by Elspeth, and is an example of how she solved problems thought insoluble by the People’s Palace’s former curators. Since the First World War our local history museum had received no funds to buy new artifacts or paintings. It was funded through Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, which had to pay the huge price of holding and preserving the Burrell Collection, so most of Glasgow’s 20th century and much of its late 19th century life was not represented. But the Government had now started a Job Creation scheme to reduce unemployment, a scheme which would pay the first three months’ wages of any worthy new job an employer proposed. On a 9 o’clock to 5 basis I made portraits of modern Glaswegians (some typical, some famous) in surroundings of their own choice, and painted cityscapes of buildings and streets soon to be destroyed or transformed. In return, I had a steady income, a studio in a well-lit part of the People’s Palace store, and a future for my work in a public collection.

  The job also brought me companionship. The store was where Mike Donnelly, Elspeth’s helper, assembled and cleaned stained-glass windows, ceramic panels, posters and documents he had salvaged from buildings scheduled for demolition. At that time a lot of Glasgow was being demolished. Elspeth sometimes gave Michael manual help with his salvage work, as none of their staff was paid to retrieve things from dirty, unsafe buildings. Neither, of course, were Mike and Elspeth, but being the only keepers of Glasgow’s local culture they felt bound to do it. The things they salvaged were the core of important exhibitions, exhibitions they set up at astonishingly low cost to the rate payer, as they had done nearly all the basic handwork and headwork themselves.

  The store was where some of the staff had their coffee breaks, so of course I heard about the Palace and its problems: dry rot in the main structure, and leaky panes in the winter garden conservatory. The first part was administered by Kelvingrove Museum, the second by Glasgow Parks department. These made decisions without consulting Elspeth King who did not officially exist for them. She had come to the Palace in 1974 to assist the former curator, Robert Wilkie. When he retired she had inherited his job, not his title, so was never asked to official meetings discussing the Palace’s condition or future. Newspaper reports indicated that the District Council were discussing a motorway through Glasgow Green which might leave the Palace awkwardly isolated. They discussed knocking it down and putting its contents in store until a modern museum was built. One councillor suggested the Palace was in bad hands because a display of Glasgow stage comedy material showed Billy Connolly’s comic welly boots. Perhaps the councillor thought Harry Lauder’s comic walking-sticks were devalued by the proximity. News of these talks disturbed Elspeth King, who was told nothing directly. She felt the Palace was in danger. She and Mike Donnelly identified with it and worked to save it by increasing the value of the exhibitions and making the place popular. They succeeded. Though a small local history museum it is now the fifth best attended in Scotland after Edinburgh Castle, The Burrell, the Scottish National Museum and Kelvingrove.

  In September 1977 I stopped being artist-recorder, became resident writer in Glasgow University and my regular connection with the Palace ended as suddenly as it started. I no longer worried how Elspeth and Michael were managing, as occasional visits to their museum showed they were doing well. To briefly summarize their achievements:–

  In 12 years she and her small staff put on forty-one special exhibitions, mostly done through work with local communities, sports and photographic clubs.

  The People’s Palace won the European Museum of the Year Award in 1981, the British Museum of the Year Award in 1983, and was a main feature in seven networked television films. When Ken Currie had become one of
a well publicized group of new Glasgow artists; in 1987 she commissioned from him a painted history of Scottish working life on eight panels round the inside of the People’s Palace dome. This was the biggest mural commission for a Glasgow public building since the decoration of the City Chambers banqueting hall almost a century earlier. Elspeth helped make other local museums in Rutherglen Park and Provand’s Lordship, but the establishment of Springburn local history museum was perhaps her biggest outside effort. The curator, Mark O’Neill, was chosen on her advice.

  Her main achievement was in re-organizing the Palace’s permanent exhibition. When she took over it had all the interest of a big lumber-room full of things too fascinating to throw away but which no other public places wanted: the domestic organ James Watt built, Lister’s carbolic spray, a regimental snuff-box made from a ram’s head. They had not been presented in a way which gave a continuous idea of Glasgow’s history. By 1990 Elspeth had displays about its religious foundation, the Reformation, trading and industrial growth until recent times. She was still not an official curator, but assistant to one who had retired years before.