Protest then and now – 30 years since Pollok Free State

Protest then and now – Celebrating radical love and surviving the Valentine’s Day Massacre 30 years since Pollok Free State.

We look back thirty years after police came in to take down the trees at Pollok Free State about the state of police powers new authoritarian laws in Britain, their consequences for protest, direct action and occupation (s) and responses to it.

Some reflections from David Lees, Galgael and Radical Glasgow Tours* alongside Katherine Mackinnon interactive walking tours of Glasgow, exploring histories of protest and political struggle and Pablo Kala host of the Dissent Dispatches at Chapel FM. Contributions collated by Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) activist, dan glass

David Lees:

“It can’t have been a coincidence that they chose St Valentine’s Day to tear down the trees and break up the camp at the Pollok Free State. The scenes that were captured on grainy 90s camcorder footage are harrowing; smoke, bulldozers, tears and frantic last acts of defiance against the police and private security firms brought in to tear up the trees to allow one of Thatcher’s ‘Roads for Prosperity’ to snake through Pollok Park. The park had been ‘gifted to the people of Glasgow’ by the Stirling-Maxwell Family in the 1930s – worth remembering they’re a family who profited massively from slave plantations throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and who to this day still use the title ‘Barons of Nova Scotia’. A tale of land theft, through the ages…

The Pollok Free State convened around Colin Macleod’s one-man protest in a beech tree. Colin’s message resonated with folk from the surrounding estates in Pollok, Nitshill and Cardonald who objected to their access to the park being cut off for the benefit of affluent car owners in Giffnock and Newton Mearns having quicker access to Glasgow city centre. They were joined by road protestors from other parts of the country, other peace campers, but also academics, ravers and school kids. Five years before the opening of the Holyrood Parliament, Pollok Free State was part of the leading question about the place of democracy in Scotland.

Thirty years on from Glasgow’s ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’, we gathered at the GalGael under the banner ‘LOVE is a 4 letter word’. Original Free Staters started arriving in the days leading up to it; some folk who hadn’t seen each other in thirty years, and others whose lives had remained intertwined through the decades. We spent the days looking back through old photos, cooking food, playing music, and arranging the workshop for a big gathering. Online ticketing platforms always fall short at GalGael – we generally just use them to get a steer on numbers for food – but none of us were really expecting the hundreds that arrived. Right from the start, the vibe was party. I think this made the few of us (loosely, very loosely!) holding the strings a wee bit nervous about a planned discussion: ‘Protest then and now’. But we blew the horn (if you’ve been at a GalGael event, you’ll recognise the sound of this Object of State), and folk came.”

Pablo Kala:

“The tune has changed. We are living in an era of spreading authoritarianism at home and abroad.  In the U.K., since the anti-roads protests of the 1990’s, successive governments have sought to criminalise protest. Today, the circumstances under which the police can interfere and stop protesters are now much more expansive than before. For example, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 have lowered the thresholds around what is considered serious disruption, introducing orders that, before any crime has actually been committed, essentially prevent people from being able to engage with others that may be involved in protests. So, of the 34 activists jailed in 2024 for taking part in climate protest, five supporters of Just Stop Oil were jailed for four and five years for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance after they spoke on a video call about a direct action protest on the M25 motorway. These were the longest sentences ever imposed for non-violent protest actions. 

So, the tune may have changed, but our song remains the same. We resist. We care for one another. We draw upon our power from below – that includes our power from within (our spirit to resist); our power with others (in solidarity) and our power to create.  

I currently volunteer with ChapelFM arts and community centre in Seacroft in East Leeds, producing a podcast – the Dissent Dispatches – that has interviewed activists involved in a range of struggles around the world, including land rights in Bangladesh; arts activism in San Francisco and Berlin; labour rights in Thailand, Queer activism in London, climate activism in Mexico and disability rights in the U.K. All of these different campaigns are underpinned by forms of mutual aid survival work rooted in principles of anti-capitalism, racial justice, gender justice, and disability justice.

Such mutual aid involves the pooling and scrounging of resources, and everyday activities that sustain us and our communities (such as cooking, childcare, and facilitating discussion). From such bases we generate campaigns and link up with other projects and protest activities.  

Mutual aid provides continuity with past protests. For example, the activist infrastructures, encampments, media centres, and convergence spaces that found militant expression in the anti-roads protests; the peace encampment at Faslane; the alter-globalisation, Occupy and Squares movements; and the climate camps were all examples of mutual aid. Most recently, this has also been witnessed in the student encampments that emerged around the world in protest to the war in Gaza. 

Perhaps the biggest change that has occurred in protest activity has been the emergence of online communication technologies for organising and mobilising through a variety of media ecologies. However, key issues continue to be important, especially in this darkening climate of authoritarianism.

First, the importance of coalitions across differences, community self-defence and networking connections between projects and communities. What is key here is what Richa Nagar terms ‘radical vulnerability’ : the acknowledgement and careful working through of the complex and unequal relationships that exist in all solidarity work especially across different identities, backgrounds, and experiences.

Second, the importance of the use of the arts in our resistance, remembering that art is a weapon, but it isn’t the struggle. Rather, the arts can help the public to recognise how activism connects to what they have experienced in their everyday lives. The arts can work to replace an old story with a new one, and in so doing, break up prejudices, fears and habits in people. The arts can also challenge dominant ideas, practices and stories. A good example is what Larry Bogad calls ‘irresistible images’ that can communicate key ideas to people and travel across borders, such as Carhenge in the Pollok Free State anti-roads protest in the 1990s (see below) and the Trump baby inflatable in London in 2018. 

Such artistic endeavours help to develop a language in common that can express our collective power and so the roads to protest and liberation continue in the here and now.”

Image credit: Pablo Kala

Katherine Mackinnon:

“When learning about the past, one of the most revealing questions to ask is: who is missing here? Whose voices and experiences have not been recorded and why? This as true of histories of protest and struggle as it is of more mainstream histories, and is why the ongoing work being done at Galgael to expand and complicate the archive materials on the Pollok Free State are so important.

In Glasgow and the West of Scotland there’s a rich tradition of protest over the ownership or use of space: we see this in factory occupations like the UCS work-in, community fights for resources like Kinning Park Complex and Govanhill baths. These actions brought people together in a space, in relation with each other in a different way from normal life.   

The tactics change over time, as does the end goal. But each time we’re involved in an act of protest we create a tiny new world, by living that experience of trying to shift power and control out of the hands of those who are abusing it. Sometimes those worlds last years like the Pollok Free State, and sometimes a day like Kenmure St. Sometimes they succeed and more often they do not. But they change us for having lived in them, and we carry them with us. In the words of the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruri, “We are not in the least afraid of ruins, we carry a new world here in our hearts.” 

*Listen to Pablo and dan’s Dissent Dispatches podcast on Queer Activism here; Check out Glasgow Radical Tours Resources page here; see David speak with Russian LGBTQIA+ activist and author Sergey Khazov-Cassia at Category is Books on April 1st and get involved with Galgael here.