“Rescue Rabbie”

In April 2003, the Renfrewshire and Inverclyde Association of Burns Clubs decided that the situation could no longer be tolerated and started their own campaign to have the statue moved.

Joe Harkins, Iain Shaw and Iain Skene - President, Past President and Vice President of the Renfrewshire and Inverclyde Association of Burns Clubs

Following a newspaper article highlighting the campaign on May 9th, the association wrote on 14th May to Provost R. Burns of Renfrewshire council asking for a meeting with both him and the council leader to discuss the issues involved. Today, more than three years later, to our great surprise and disappointment and despite continual reminders and articles in the local and national press, this meeting has yet to take place.
To date we have employed every means at our disposal to speak directly to anyone on the ruling Labour group, but our efforts have been met by continual stonewalling tactics. Worse still, when our campaign has been reported in the local press they have continually stated that “they have listened carefully to all (our) arguments!”
Such is our concern at this unexpected turn of events that the association decided to raise a petition (PE880) at the Scottish Parliament regarding the “accessibility of local elected representatives”, in order to try to prevent this situation occurring to anyone else. Details of this petition, which is currently under consideration, can be found on the Scottish Parliament Website at www.scottish.parliament.uk under “view open petitions”.

The Paisley Burns Trail

Over the three years that the campaign has been in place we have employed a variety of devices to try to obtain a hearing with the Labour group in order to achieve our aims. These aims are:

1. To remove the Burns Statue to a prominent and fitting position in the town centre, as originally intended
2. With the impending “Scottish Year of Homecoming” in 2009 uppermost in our minds to feature the re-positioned statue as the centrepiece of a “Paisley Burns Trail”, using Burns’s connections with the area as a tourist attraction and as a means of improving the town’s prestige
3. To ensure that the heroic contribution made to the town by the Tannahill choir is recognised in a much more appropriate and visible way

We feel that, under the circumstances, these aims are very reasonable, but bitter experience has taught us that concern for the welfare of the town does not guarantee that your case will be heard by the Labour Group on Renfrewshire council and, as many council employees have already told us, nothing can be done without having the Labour Group on your side.
Here is a short list of the methods we have employed to try to gain a hearing:
 Firstly, we have written several times to the Provost and have attempted to phone him on other occasions. The only time he agreed to take our call was on an occasion when the SNP were about to raise a motion to look into the feasibility of moving the statue and, in keeping with our determination to keep our campaign non-political, we telephoned to assure him that their motion did not originate with us. After our explanation we asked that the subject be given a free vote. The Provost, however, made it perfectly clear that if any other group within the council raised the matter it would be automatically voted down. Ultimately this is exactly what happened; the Labour group raised and carried a counter motion that the statue should not be moved.
Then, we enlisted the help of the Burns Federation who wrote to the Provost, again with no positive result.
Next we conducted a press campaign, pointing out the isolation, the constant vandalism and the history of the statue. This had no effect on the council, except to force them to trot out their favourite catchphrase saying that they “had listened carefully to all of our arguments.” What!?!
When this failed we appealed to Burns enthusiasts around the world to write expressing their support. This produced a flurry of correspondence from home and abroad. In one letter, from the “Bendigo and District Caledonian Society” of Australia the writer tells of the reverence afforded to their own Burns memorial and expresses regret “…that in his home country the Bard’s statue is not being treated with the respect that it deserves…” Once again, this material went to press, but no positive response came from the Labour group. Clearly we were not going to shame them into talking to us! Later, articles on the statue appeared in “Scottish Memories” and the “Scots Magazine”
Again we tried a new tack. We wrote to every councillor on Renfrewshire council and to leading council employees (including the Chief Executive) asking them to attend presentations giving a short history of the statue and explaining our plans for a “Burns Trail”. Predictably, representatives of every political grouping on Renfrewshire Council attended these presentations, apart from the Labour group. One of the attendees expressed amazement at the history, as he was previously unaware that the town actually owned a Burns statue. This is precisely the point of our campaign.
This approach having produced no result, we arranged to give a shortened version of our presentation to a local Labour group out with the council. As with all other attendees at these presentations they appeared to be impressed by our case and resolved to write to the Labour group to ask that our case be heard. At first there was no response whatsoever, but eventually a meeting was arranged for us with local tourism chiefs. Predictably, no Labour councillors attended this meeting and following a now familiar course the tourism chiefs assured us that nothing could be done without the Labour group being on our side.
This left us in a true “Catch-22” situation. We cannot move the statue without the Labour Group being on our side. The Labour group absolutely refuse to meet us to hear our case, and will automatically vote down any proposal from anyone who has heard our case!
This then is the attitude of the council, 100 years on from the original debacle. Like their forefathers they appear to have turned evasion into a highly polished “black art” and appear to feel able to make decisions with absolute impunity on the basis of very selective consultations. Why have the Labour group gone to such elaborate trouble to avoid hearing our case?
Is it that they simply can’t be bothered to take the trouble, or are they worried that they might find themselves agreeing with our point of view despite themselves? Perhaps there is some darker force in play that they do not wish to reveal. Who can tell.
Our initial correspondence with local MPs and MSPs produced little response until Wendy Alexander (the only Labour politician to be of any assistance whatsoever!) suggested that we raise a petition with the Scottish Parliament.
When we followed her suggestion we found that we were very quickly heard by the Public Petitions Committee. It is ironic indeed that we have found it much easier to get a hearing from our National Parliament than from the Labour Group within our own council.
The petition initially produced a flurry of interest in our campaign. The local press, Radio Scotland and Q96 Radio carried articles, and Q96 broadcast an interview that we had given.
Our presentation to the Scottish Parliament was received with interest and sensibly one of the suggestions made by the committee was that local administrations should have a similar petitions system to their own. The transcript of the presentation of the petition can be found on the Scottish Parliament website mentioned above.