“Like Noah’s Dove”

On April the 5th another petition was handed to the council “…asking them before anything final is done in this matter the opinion of the ratepayers be ascertained by public meeting.”
At this point the council were unable to ignore their electorate any longer and the Provost reluctantly agreed to hold a public meeting on 10th April to discuss the matter. This meeting (limited to 2000 constituents) eventually took place, with a number of councillors present. At the end of the meeting attendees were allowed to vote on the various sites under discussion and when the votes were counted the councillors were left in no doubt that the proposed site in County Square was very unpopular. The meeting was almost unanimously in favour of the originally intended site at the centre of Dunn Square. Predictably, this result was greeted with cheers!
The resolutions of the meeting were (in précis):

1. The “ratepayers and inhabitants” reject the County Square site.
2. The town council are requested to rescind their grant of County Square.
3. If the grant of County Square is rescinded, the meeting is in favour of the central site, Dunn Square.

So that no doubt remained, these resolutions were published and sent by letter to the council. A leader appeared in the Paisley Express suggesting that it would be “difficult” for Sir William Dunn to ignore the wishes of two thousand constituents.
Apparently now “playing for time” the council decided to arrange another “special public meeting” on April 21st to discuss all of the matters arising. At this meeting (although according to Sir William’s deed of gift and his subsequent letter they could have resolved the problem at any time by offering the originally agreed site), the council surprisingly refused to take any personal responsibility for the fiasco, but instead appeared to lay all of the blame on Sir William whom, they said, had placed “…. the council in a very peculiar position.”
During the meeting when the resolutions were discussed and while they were still in front of their electorate, many councillors spoke in support of a motion by councillor Brown that they “….agree to the expressed wishes of the people.” In the end, however, employing a time-honoured tactic, they once again ducked the issue by recommending a delay for “consultation.”
Later, however, when out of the public gaze at the council meeting proper, the council, whilst agreeing to rescind the grant of County Square also carried a motion that the centre of Dunn Square would not be granted! This act of betrayal was made even worse by the fact that the seconder of this motion (Councillor Clark) was one of the councillors who had previously spoken in support of the motion that the councillors “….agree to the expressed wishes of the people” at the public meeting!
This disastrous decision meant that with just 3 months to go until the proposed date of unveiling (the anniversary of the poet’s death on 21st July), the statue committee were left without any site whatsoever on which to erect the fruit of their labours.
The humorists, who had previously made fun of Paisley because of the council’s inability to agree an appropriate site, now had a field day. A humorous Burns statue “skit” had been performed at a visiting circus and on 26th May the Paisley Express carried an article on the Tannahill Club supper at which a poem, “The Colloquy of the Statues”, was read out. It contained the lines:
 “Poor Burns is left like Noah’s dove,
No e’en a window sill…..”