Beyond just Saving the People’s Story Museum
The Edinburgh People’s Story museum has been saved from closure and will re-open in December. The uturn represents a dramatic victory for local campaigners and has revealed a shocking state of affairs in how Edinburgh Council is run.
Jim Slaven, who has been the driving force behind the campaign told Bella: “Edinburgh Council have made the correct decision to overturn the disgraceful closure of The People’s Story. We welcome that. This is only the first step in reversing decades of neglect and disinvestment in the city’s working class history museum. There is now a consensus that The People’s Story matters. That the stories of workers and communities in the city must be told and respected. To do those stories justice, to turn the museum from a neglected afterthought to a world leader, is going to take a lot of hard work. A collective effort. The reopening of the museum has created space and a positive backdrop to commence that work. Edinburgh Council now has to show a willingness to change the management structure of The People’s Story to allow for new ideas, energy, enthusiasm and investment in working class spaces. All things Edinburgh Council are famous for not having. If the political will exists we can turn this crisis into an opportunity. Not only for change in The People’s Story, but across the city.”
It’s true that the museum needs not just re-opened, but cherished, funded and promoted. But what’s also true is that the issue of the closure of a small museum has revealed major problems in accountability, transparency and basic democracy at Edinburgh Council. Writing for Edinburgh Live, Donal Turvill reported: “While welcoming the u-turn, councillors questioned why their approval for the shut down was only requested at a committee in October — two months after the museum’s doors were closed.
A report tabled at that meeting said as a result of a recruitment freeze there had been “instances of reactive museum closures as staffing levels have dipped below the minimum required to maintain a full service”.
Deputy Lord Provost Lezley Marion Cameron said: “I know that there was a keenly felt sense of frustration across the council that regretfully the temporary closure of the People’s Story was taken without consultation with elected members.”
Green councillor Dan Heap said: “I think we need to look again at how we got to this point.”
“Why is it we had a museum dedicated to the working people, not the great and good of our city, why was that not invested in really meaningfully at all since it was set up in the late 1980s?
“Why was there such poor communication with the public and consultation with the public and also with councillors?”
The crisis adds fuel to the speculation that Edinburgh is in fact run by clandestine interests and that much of the time elected officials are not fully empowered or informed to make the sort of decisions they were elected to make.
The museum will re-open to the public on December 2, but major questions remain live.
- How are decisions made in the council, and how often are decisions made on the quiet, behind closed doors, without the involvement of elected councillors. If elected councillors are not the ones making decisions, who is?
- What commitment is going to be upgrade and support the museum after years of neglect?
The issue comes to the fore as the People’s Story has become a lightning rod for anger at the way in which the city is run, and for the widespread perception that it is run for the benefit of visitors, for short-term lets and short-term interests and for the same elite of people who benefit from the city’s massive over-tourism. By mistake, the issue has shone a light on the powers that be within the council, and has already led to the resignation of the Director of Culture and Wellbeing, Joan Parr, who had previously worked for Creative Scotland.
Council leader Cammy Day said: “I extend my very best wishes to Joan as she embarks on this exciting new chapter of retirement, filled with time for family, friends, and travel.” Mr Day said: “Joan joined us in 2021 and brought a wealth of experience from various sectors with her, and played a crucial role in revitalising our cultural venues and communities in the wake of the pandemic, as well as leading on our year round festivals. I’d like to thank Joan for her ongoing commitment to our city and the positive impact she has had.”
We were not informed in what way overseeing the closure of the People’s Story equated to “revitalising our cultural venues and communities.”
The saving of the People’s Story museum represents a significant victory for campaigners and shows the power of collective organising. However the next stage in such a campaign must be to equip the museum with the necessary curatorial investment to make that victory worthwhile, and is only part of a bigger campaign needed to reclaim the city from the powerful interests that profit from current strategies and practices. The first battle for any such campaign must be to ensure that the incoming visitors levy is used to create and sustain local public services, and not allow it to be hijacked to promote business as usual and more of the same practices that have brought us to the current crisis.
The current crisis in the arts is the reflection of a city that has failed, over an eighty-year period, to create any arts and culture infrastructure that is publicly-owned and controlled and managed for and by the people of Edinburgh. The People’s Museum saga needs to be seen as part of that wider crisis, and the campaigns to defend local democracy and a sustainable arts sector need to be seen as one and the same.
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An excellent and most timely article.
When I studied Urban Politics, we looked at competing pluralist and elitist theories of local government. There is a grey area of uncertainty (a bit like in the fudged Simpsons episode where Lisa sets out to drain the swamp) where corruption, malfeasance or failures are uncovered, challenged and addressed. Does this episode mean that community organisations like the pro-museum campaign are truly nurseries of democracy which counterbalance and correct for the deficiencies of members and officers (pluralist model)? Or does it substantiate the view that an elite minority of high-status, similar background people make most of the real decisions, and democracy is an illusion (elitist model)? Probably better not ask me; I was a mostly mediocre student and my sources were out of date even then.
Perhaps not everyone agreed with Max Weber on the advantages of professionally trained officers over elected amateur members, but maybe we’re in a later phase of decay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#Bureaucracy
There is surely an instructive and depressing parallel here with Glasgow City Council’s neglect of the People’s Palace and treatment of Elspeth King?
Yeah. although we don’t have a lead curator here in post to then undermine
Aye. Indeed.
There does appear to be a genuine culture within CEC officials to disregard public opinion or even the need to recognise it; whether it’s expressed through Individuals, community councils or even elected councillors. It’s not just clear in the city’s museums; the tendency of officers to prioritise their own “expertise” above anything else can be seen in officials’ response to local criticism of grass cutting (or rather the lack of it) in key public spaces during the summer, and the rejection of demands by local communities to have some input into the redevelopment of dangerous road layouts. Work is currently nearing completion on the “refurbishment” of the junction of Lanark Road West and Bridge Road in Balerno; while the updating of the traffic lights to LEDs is probably overdue, it probably wasn’t a priority as the old halogen lights were still working well. What is more surprising is the reshaping of the whole junction (removing a turn-left lane from the village) which was neither highlighted in advance nor put to public consultation—resulting in £251,000 being spent making a junction that few locals considered a priority in the area, worse.
That culture is very marked. I attended a ‘community planning’ meeting chaired by Cammy Day in Royston Wardieburn Community Centre in 2016. Mr. Day and Council officials commanded the agenda and the floor. The members of the community in attendance were expected to know their place and keep schtum.
In a way it is the ‘meeting’ bit that should be in inverted commas as well. They are not meetings, they are ‘information sessions’. There is no discussion.
The one thing I would say in defence of (ultimately) ignoring local people’s concerns is that they can be quite ill-informed and based on rumour and false info. So sometimes officials have to stick to their guns, because they are right.
Meeting (noun):
1. an assembly of people for particular purpose;
2. a situation when two or more people meet, by chance or arrangement.
I have written on the absurdity of ‘community planning’ in Scotland at greater length elsewhere. I’m not sure how officials are able to determine whether local people may be misinformed, or be well placed to correct any possible misapprehensions, if members of the community are strongly discouraged from expressing views or making observations at ‘community planning’ meetings.
Another possibility, of course, is that the officials in question may be absurdly arrogant and/or utterly wrong.
There was a massive local campaign I know of to stop the replacement of a huge old stone Victorian dam with a modern concrete version. It was a major attractive feature of the area. People were up in arms and gave all sorts of ill-informed reasons for why the water company was doing it. They were wrong and ignored the given reasons which were in fact very important. How do I know? Because I spoke to someone who worked for the water people but who had no direct involvement in this but very good expertise. The reason was that the old dam was falling apart (there was evidence of this most winters with large stone blocks coming loose) and if it fully broke it would flood the heavily populated valley and cause mass death right down its length. People just could not understand the power of the mass of water in the reservoir the dam held up.
The dam was replaced with a concrete version regardless of the local objections and it was the correct decision. However the genuine local meetings, where discussion happened, were still worthwhile because the importance of the aesthetic aspect was emphasised and so a more expensive scheme was agreed that retained more of the original Victorian features but still made safe by concrete on the main bit.
This is how such meetings should work and both local concerns and official expertise brought together.
Your anecdote is noted.
I worked in local and central government for 30 years and have extensive experience in consulting the public and communities on development proposals and strategic policy. I know the difference between good and bad practice. Proceeding on the assumption that communities are ill-informed and that the views of experts are necessarily to be preferred is very bad practice.
“How are decisions made in the council, and how often are decisions made on the quiet, behind closed doors, without the involvement of elected councillors. If elected councillors are not the ones making decisions, who is?”
Good questions, and the very ones I and others are asking of the Highland Council. So far, complete silence. Including from Councillors, the Ombudsman and MSPs. In fact, a flat refusal to answer.
Who really runs Scotland, and on whose behalf?
Excellent questions!
It’s cuts from the UK and Scottish Governments.