The People’s Story as Rallying Cry for a Forgotten City
The closure of the People’s Story museum in Edinburgh is only the latest in a long process of marginalisation and erasure of local people from the city itself.
Like many people from Edinburgh I can’t afford to live in the city I was brought up in. A tiny house in the street where my son’s school sits is ‘offered’ at £1900 a month. This is the floor, not the ceiling. Air BnB has spawned a host of offshoot services for the rentier class, to clean and promote your gold mine. One such. ‘Houst’ (host/house – geddit?) promises the opportunity to ‘earn’ £2599 a month from a one-bedroomed property.
Estate Agents signs litter the city like money flags, doorways are clustered with locks to prize open the Air BnB flats dominating the stairwells. Whole neighbourhoods have been hollowed-out. Social cleansing has accelerated massively in recent years – people being moved out for more lucrative tenants: tourists, business folk, overseas students.
Two years ago the Evening News revealed that just fifteen registered landlords own around 5,300 private rented properties across Edinburgh. One landlord owns 1,010 properties while over a dozen others own more than a hundred properties each, according to a Freedom of Request (FOI).
While the article caused consternation much of it was of the “How could this have happened?!” variety there was scant awareness that this was a policy and a strategy that has been encouraged for years. The Scottish Government’s economic strategy is heavily weighted to growing tourism. In their tourism strategy, drawn up in conjunction with ‘industry partners’, ‘Scotland Outlook 2030: Responsible tourism for a sustainable future’ details plans for further growth. Tourism is viewed as an ever-giving ‘cash cow’: “In 2018, spending by overnight tourists and day visitors in Scotland was around £10.4 billion. This generated around £12 billion of economic activity in the wider Scottish economy and contributed around £7 billion to Scottish GDP”.
Edinburgh, is central to these growth plans, given it’s the country’s key ‘visitor attraction’. Both the Festival and Fringe have long acted as a tourism draw. Perhaps no surprise then that the Fringe boasts Airbnb as an ‘official partner’, and the city plan focuses on enabling further tourist growth.
The housing crisis the Evening News reports isn’t some mistake, some accident, it’s the logical consequence of that policy, it’s the plan. The “Super Landlords” aren’t an aberration they’re a class.
This is not a regulatory failure, it’s an ideological triumph.
There’s nowhere in Edinburgh where this has had a bigger impact than the Old Town, reduced now to little more than a theme park. The height of the tourist season used to be August but the crowds are pretty much constant now, swelling to a massive throng around August – but basically an ever-presence.
The city used to be a model of ‘split Scotland’, with historically the archetype of the Old Town as the backward-looking over-crowded slum sector, and the New Town as the enlightenment future, wealthy, Unionist and cleansed. Now that bifurcation persists but with the pesky residents of the Old Town replaced with Hogwarts enthusiasts, Stag Nights and tourists seeking the Holy Trinity of Greyfriars Bobby, Victoria Street and Princess Diana’s tartan store – and on the other side the New Town frequented by the well-heeled sons and daughters of the southern counties bracing the northern chill for their university years.
This social cleansing is the background to the announcement of the closure of The People’s Story, the last bastion of any semblance of local life, the last outpost of any idea that once a community lived here. That it would be jettisoned by Edinburgh Council as surplus to requirements is no surprise given their words and actions over years. Why would any of these people – elected to represent the people of Edinburgh – actually act in the interests of the people of Edinburgh? Any opposition to a pure unadulterated tourism strategy is treated like sacrilege, and the accusation of ‘nostalgia’ is thrown about. We know this because they told us.
Gordon Robertson, chair of Marketing Edinburgh, elected by nobody, has called for the “Disneyfication of Edinburgh” a process which is well underway.
In 2022 Robertson said: “Having been in Disney this year with my family, I’m not so sure Disneyfication is a bad thing? At least they’ve invested in their sites, they have a plan, it provides thousands of jobs, their well-trained staff provides a fantastic experience and they’re extremely profitable which is used to invest back into the product.”
Adam McVey, former leader, City of Edinburgh Council spells it out for you: “Nostalgia doesn’t create good policy. Nostalgia dragging you back to a year that is gone and a place and time that is gone doesn’t give you a good way of looking to the future. The only thing that gives you a good way of looking to the future is looking at what you want to achieve and taking meaningful action on how to get there.”
The closure of the People’s Story isn’t the only piece of cultural cleansing that preceded (and accelerated) the social cleansing. Edinburgh is due to celebrate its 900th anniversary, and if we are not careful, and angry and organised, it will be a celebration in which the actual people of Edinburgh are removed from history as we have been from the city itself.
The shutting of the People’s Story is a form of erasure, it’s a memory loss. Not unlike the memory loss that gaelic was never spoken here. The Old Town, the very heart of the nation’s ancient capital has been sold. In place of the people’s story are Kings and Queens (mostly Kings), landlords and businessmen, a glossy, faceless narrative of a medieval town now thronging with tourists imbibing Ghost Guides and spooky walks or eating haggis bon-bons and quaffing whisky flytes and buying tartan tat.
It wasn’t always like this, nor does it need to be. As Gary Smith (How ‘Disneyland’ Edinburgh is erasing its working-class past) has laid-out: “The abrupt and unexplained closure of the People’s Story is the latest insult to the city’s working-class but there have been many previous injuries. Profound social change is not unique to the capital but the chaotic demolition of swathes of the city centre in the Fifties and Sixties destroyed communities and literally marginalised those living there, driving them out to the schemes and estates.”
“In just two decades, the population of the centre fell by 43 percent as tenements were razed and neighbourhoods flattened. Holyrood, where the Scottish Parliament would be built, was, for example, home to 20,000 people in 1951 but less than half that 20 years later.”
Gentrification and over-tourism are not unique to Scotland. But other capital cities manage to find a balance between the tourist economy and the needs of local residents, for amenities such as housing, schools, nursery provision and open spaces. This take-over of public spaces and neighbourhoods becomes cyclical. Nurseries like High School Yards off of the Bridges, or Moray House Nursery were sold off by the council. Who needs nurseries if no-one lives there? The same can be said for community centres, youth services, libraries or football pitches. Visitors and students don’t need such things, therefore they are dispensable.
As Jim Slaven who has been leading the defense of The People’s Story has said: “To focus on the Old Town for a moment this latest closure is following a familiar trajectory. In recent years we have lost St Ann’s community centre in Cowgate (now providing services for homeless via Edinburgh University and NHS), South Bridge Resource Centre (soon to be Fringe Society’s new HQ) and the community centre in Dumbiedykes (soon to be reopened by the Charteris, a religious group in partnership with Edinburgh University). These are all social institutions gone. Public space that has become private space.”
Some say that the defence of the social history that the People’s Story represents is a wasted one. There is a sense that the city has long gone. To criticise any aspect of the vast money trough that the city fathers have created is to be denounced as a heretic. We are led to believe that despite the torrent of money that has poured through the city for decades there is not enough money for a tiny social history museum. Just as there is no money for Leith Theatre, or the Brunton, the reality is that much of the city’s Indigenous arts infrastructure stands on the brink of collapse. This is political gaslighting by a city elite that have been allowed to act as if the whole city was their own. This can’t go on. Instead of the People’s Story being a lost cause it is going to be a rallying cry, and a point of organisation for all of those communities who have been marginalised and replaced by the forces of capital and exploitation.
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Another Edinburgh Disgrace?!
Who precisely has decided that the People’s Story should close?
Which committee and when? And why?
Someone in the City Council needs to be held accountable for this, and justify (they can’t) why it should close.
I would be pleased to join any rally or action to help retain this extremely important museum.
Has John Swinney been told? Does he know?
As far as local residents and their economy is concerned, tourism is about the worst economic proposition.
The early, easily earned, income pales against the damage that soon works its way in to community, environment, lifestyles and work opportunities.
“..other capital cities manage to find a balance between the tourist economy and the needs of local residents, for amenities such as housing, schools, nursery provision and open spaces.”
So why has Edinburgh failed to do so?
I have no idea at present, but it is, perhaps, a mire important question than the closure of the People’s Story
This closure seems to me to be a move to return to a history of Kings, Queens, battles and dates of the kind I experienced and hated as a teenager, and reverse the trend to include the history of all classes.
The council constantly says it has no money but always finds enough for projects of doubtful value, like Spaces for People.
I am beginning to think of the council as the enemy of the people: There are a lot of complaints about them on Nextdoor and an attitude that whatever the people want the council will do what it wants, so maybe I am not alone in this. I am certain that the responses to the “consultations” they run are ignored.
The article, by the way, mixes tourism and private landlords and implicitly assumes all private landlords are big corporations with many properties and ignores the fact that some people have one or two buy to lets in order to supplement an inadequate pension. I am not sure such confusion is a good thing.
The relationship between over tourism and the boom in STLs is clear? I don;t confuse them. There is no confusion. As for the idea that “some people” just have “one or two buy to lets in order to supplement an inadequate pension”. I mean, good for you. The stats quoted here though are facts.
“….that some people have one or two buy to lets in order to supplement an inadequate pension.”
How TF do you end up with enough money to buy three homes, but somehow didn’t have the brains to save up or provide an adequate pension for your own old-age?
I call BS on this; “it’s jist fur ma wee pension ye ken?” garbage. You hear it all the time. Aye, right!
BTW. Please don’t tell me Professor Number-Bore is back!? OhFFS.
Sings:
You say either and I say either
You say neither and I say:-
“Originally, there were two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein’s thought—the early and the later—both of which were taken to be pivotal in their respective periods. In this orthodox two-stage interpretation, it is commonly acknowledged that the early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he provided new insights into the relations between world, thought, and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems. In more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a certain unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the post-later Wittgenstein.”
Lets call the whole thing off!
back in the day we used to say B&B stood for bum and boobs, so is airbnb jist the latest by wurd for durty wikenders nice logo in the snp colors jist tae demonise the scots cause
Heist. But you could just disclose the hidden safety records of airline manufacturers.
It’s called capitalism – in the 60’s large houses in the South Side were bought over to become privately owned ‘Old Folks Homes’ where residents paid hefty fees, hoping that their capital didn’t run out before they died. The Canongate, once a thriving working class community – and that’s the key word, COMMUNITY, has already turned into an area where a few can ‘screw’ more golden guineas.
Look around Edinburgh, weeds in gutters and pavements, holes in the roads the place looks dirty and unloved – contrasted by the cleanliness of other Northern European capitals. Where is the money from rates and tourism being spent?
The closure of this Museum is a disgrace – monuments to the poor, working classes a dirty smudge on capitalism’s fair face.
What would those proud names, looking down on the Canongate from the Martyr’s Monument , make of this shoddy event?
It’s a very good question. If the inward flow of hundreds of millions of pounds of tourist spending to a city doesn’t produce enough public benefit to be able to keep the streets clean the something is badly wrong with either the business model or the idiots running the council.
Puts me in mind of the research that shows that most countries which discover oil on their territory become poorer.
How is that ‘rallying cry’ going to be put out to help the communities organise against this?
I’m not the lead campaigner on this Jim – but I think plans for an organised campaign are being planned – to be announced soon.
Spot on, Mike!
It is a mad situation where those who point that out are themselves made to feel mad by powerful forces who control the acceptable window of debate. It strikes me that the way to try and change things is to continually remind people that wanting a city to be primarily oriented to the needs of those who live there, making it liveable for them, rather than visitors and large commercial businesses, is in fact totally sensible and the right way to run a city. This has had some effect elsewhere, though it remains to be seen if measures set will work (e.g. in Barcelona), but it needs direct action I think, an actual movement on the streets that makes headlines. I would not condone firing water pistols at tourists, but would not condemn it.
Hear hear.
Mind you it’s not the tourists who are the enemy but the City Fathers in the Cooncil who would allow this to happen!
I’m guessing that none of the Councillors who agreed to this important museum closing are from Edinburgh?!
I’d dearly like to know who they are and what their rationale IS for closure. They certainly do not appear to be at all in touch with the public who live and work in Edinburgh!
Well George there are those who suggest backhanders are a factor. I am the least conspiracy theory minded person, but Robin McAlpine has exposed some of this.
You are right that the tourists themselves mostly come in good faith (I have been one myself) and should not be scapegoated. The question is simple though, how do you reduce numbers, as that is the major immediate problem? The sad truth is, it will require disincentives but what bothers me about that is that often that is often financial so only the better off can afford to come.
See Norway for examples of planners actually taking efforts to reduce footfall. You can also shift the emphasis of your visitors by encouraging visitors by train not plan and by then encouraging them to walk and bike and train not hire cars or camper vans. None of this is impossible.
It is all doable Mike and what you say make sense for some places. But most visitors come to Edinburgh on the train already or get about on foot. The sad truth is you simply need less of them to come, especially at peak times in the summer. A radical plan from me would be hold the festivals every other year or even every three. They would genuinely be appreciated more then as well. Yearly events become very tired and predictable yet we seem rarely able to let go of that routine. Yes it would still mean crowding on festival years but that would be much more bearable with gaps and an economy and social structure would grow again for locals in the off-years.
Sure. I’ve proposed such before. The actual strategy is to grow the festival forever and to grow flights through Edinburgh Airport. Those people currently in charge of that plan won’t budge from it – so they will have to be removed is my thinking.
Yes, removal is often the only way. I have a microcosm of this where I work – the current ‘leaders’ will never change their approach and policies that are having a seriously bad impact on just about everything but unlike them, at least in theory, politicians can be changed by the electorate via a standard process. But it needs a group of them to stand up and say elect us and we will make the radical change needed.
Bear with here – A colleague left our workplace to go freelance. We all met up a year later, colleague was so busy he turned up to the pub late looking tired and pressured, and left early to do yet more work. He decided he couldn’t carry on like that, family life, socialising all suffered. He decided to double his charges. He lost nearly half his income. Disaster? No, he increased his income and had more free-time
Edinburgh is finite (like my friend). Licence all Air B&B type rentals at a fairly exorbitant charge. Lose half the tourists. The place will be more pleasant for residents and the remaining tourists. Council income will increase A Lot. Spend the money on cleaning the place up. Limiting the number of visitors is vital before the whole infrastructure of the city collapses. Stop stacking Edinburgh high and selling it cheap. Quality not quantity.
PS if you think Edinburgh closing a small museum is cultural vandalism (it is), take the train through to Glasgow and check out the state of Macintosh’s Glasgow School of Art building. (While you’re there, have a swaatch at the architectural vandalism of its replacement across the street from the GSOA.)
Hi Alan – thanks for this – couldn’t agree more – and I’m aware that these issues aren’t confined to Edinburgh but are part of a wider problem. The GSoA is a tragedy.
“Licence all Air B&B type rentals at a fairly exorbitant charge. Lose half the tourists. The place will be more pleasant for residents and the remaining tourists. ”
The market will not bear a 50% price hike.
Which will make Edinburgh a city only for rich tourists. The council will sell more historically valuable property to hotel developers to demolish as demolition is cheaper than rebuilding, and the lower end of the accommodation market (guest houses and B&Bs) will collapse leaving a lot more people on benefits, a guest house IS a business after all) and/or moving out to somewhere cheaper.
Proposals like yours should be subject to the “How WILL things go wrong?” test, or even a premortem, not “what could POSSIBLY go wrong?”. The law of unintended consequences always rules.
When I was young (a long time ago) everybody that I knew in Scotland went to Blackpool (Glasgow on Sea) for their holidays. The UK was then full of resorts exclusively built for tourists (Blackpool/Morecombe/Whitley Bay/ Scarborough/Silloth etc etc.
These are now some of the most deprived areas of the UK as very few people want to go there anymore.
Nobody would have dreamt on going on holiday to Edinburgh or any other major UK city.
People were happy with a nice fry up in the morning, a day on the beach getting pleasantly pissed finished off with fish and chips in the evening.
We’ve all got too rich and middle class!
Something in this. Our family holidays were always in a caravan somewhere on the coast or deep in the countryside. We just wanted out of the city, my parents needing some relaxation. Life was paced more slowly perhaps, there was no rush or need for much material satisfaction – the countryside, woodlands, nature and coast itself was enough (and I loved it as a child). The idea of going to another city seemed ridiculous (and miles too expensive, unaffordable in fact). It was the middle classes proper who went to big cities because they wanted ‘culture’ and had the money and maybe did not experience that workaday drudgery and burnout that required a simple caravan on the hill above the bay, the paddling, rock pools and fish and chips. Mind you, it did get a bit much when it pissed down.
I’m reminded of the wretched yuppie Caltongate venture, backed by the New Labour mob in the City Chambers.