The protests continue – “The Hidden Tribute”

If the council thought that the protests would end with the unveiling of the statue, they must have been sorely disappointed. As far as can be ascertained opposition to the Fountain Gardens site has carried on almost unabated right up to the present day, whilst the statue has continued to receive plaudits from around the world. In 1905, a copy of the statue was erected in Sydney, Australia, and in April 1903 a picture of the statue was chosen for the cover of an issue of the “The Bookman” magazine which featured articles about the poet’s life and bibliography.

"The Bookman" April 1903

Edward Goodwillie’s famous book “The World’s Memorials of Robert Burns” was published in 1911, in which both the original and the Sydney copy received fulsome praise. In 1921 a further copy was unveiled in Auckland, New Zealand by the Prime Minister A.F. Massey.
It is a tragic fact that while these copies are today greatly admired, the remote, forgotten and vandalised site of the original means that most of the Paisley Public for whom it was purchased are totally unaware of its existence.
This sorry turn of events has been the fuel for many campaigns over the years aimed at having the statue moved to a more appropriate spot in the town centre. These campaigns appear to be legion; every investigation turns up more, and many more no doubt remain to be discovered.
In the early thirties, just a few years after the statue was erected, the Paisley Burns Club made a determined and almost successful attempt to have the statue moved. A later minute of their club records that the choice of the Fountain Gardens “…has not proved to be a popular one…”
In 1948, during another campaign, the council went as far as to erect a plywood replica of the statue at the end of Cotton Street in order to assess the area as an alternative site.
In 1977, Bill Williamson of the Burns Federation started a campaign, widely reported in the local press, and in 1978 councillors Frank Carlin and Willie Darroch started yet another campaign, which was announced in the Paisley Express under the heading “Rabbie’s Statue Starts a Stir”.
The article states that “The Fountain Gardens have been a long-time haunt of down-and-outs”, and goes on to quote councillor Darroch as saying “…a lot of people don’t know the statue exists…” and “The statue should not be in a Paisley backwater”. In a later article he asks “… what the thoughts of tourists would be on seeing the spray painting on the plinth?” This campaign encapsulated many of the issues that have troubled concerned individuals over the years; lack of awareness by the general public due to the statue’s isolation, unsuitability of the site, and repeated vandalism.
Many other campaigns have been started over the years; in 1986, in 1995 (when a youth fell to his death from the statue), in 1996, 1999, 2000 and January 2003 to mention just a few.
It is worth quoting a few lines from a Paisley Express article written in support of the 1986 campaign by Peter Westwood, the publicity officer of the Burns Federation. The article, entitled “The Hidden Tribute” leads with the words:
“For almost a century Robert Burns has been hidden away from the people of Paisley.
The town’s superb statue in memory of the bard has stood in the comparative remoteness of the Fountain Gardens almost totally neglected, periodically vandalised and largely forgotten.
The site has never been universally accepted. Even before the monument was erected in 1896 there were bitter disputes about its location and the echoes of those arguments from the Victorian era have reverberated down through the years.”