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The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
A hate crime on Arran? No, just a sign of where we are now
My second thought about the flags was more complicated however. For a start, flags have never been my favourite form of expression, an aversion made worse by the referendums of 2014 and 2016. And by 2023, I was also struggling – still am – with how I feel about LGBTQ+, trans, gender, and self-ID, and Pride flags in particular. There was a time, in the 90s, when I would've felt overwhelmingly positive about the flag, but in 2023, it was starting to change. The fact that my views have changed was underlined at the weekend when I heard that the police on Arran are investigating an incident with this year's Pride flags. The flags were on the main street in Brodick, as they were in 2023, but they were taken down some time overnight before the main Pride event on Saturday. There were reports on social media that some of the flags were later found dumped on the beach. The Pride event itself was not affected and went ahead as planned, but Police Scotland announced they were investigating what happened. 'Between 2am and 7am on Saturday, 31 May, flags and banners for the island's LGBTQ parade were pulled down,' they said. 'This is being investigated as a hate crime.' There are a few things that should worry us about that statement. First of all, the police should have said they were investigating a possible hate crime as they can't be sure who took the flags down and why. Secondly, it looks like the police still haven't realised that the idea of a hate crime defined and enforced by government is highly contested, thanks in part to the debacle of the SNP's law on the subject. And thirdly, even though we cannot know for sure what the motivation was, there's an implication in the statement that anyone who'd remove an LGBTQ Pride flag must be motivated by hate rather than just opposition to what the flag represents. All of this need to be challenged. Read more The best building in Glasgow, and what we can learn from its tragedy I walked Glasgow streets with a 'heritage detective' and found clues to city's future The Argyle Street Gap – what does it say about Glasgow? One man who has challenged the concepts behind Pride and hate crime is the writer and broadcaster Andrew Doyle, who has a rather good new book out, The End of Woke. Andrew admits there will be some who object to the word 'woke' and/or deny it exists, but his working definition – a cultural revolution that seeks equity according to group identity by authoritarian means – is supported by 550 pages of evidence on the beliefs that form the core of 'woke' and the individuals whose careers have been damaged or ended because they do not subscribe to them. He also outlines his evidence that the end is coming, including the Supreme Court ruling on the word woman, the ban on puberty blockers, and leftist politicians, including the beloved AOC, quietly removing pronouns from their social media profiles. I hope he's right. The critique Andrew offers of modern LGBTQ Pride and the concept of hate crime in the book is particularly applicable to the Arran situation. As Andrew points out, many conservatives have always opposed same-sex relations on moral or religious grounds, and it may be that the person or persons who took the flags down in Brodick were just old-school conservatives who don't much like the gays. Such people haven't gone away just because the Pride flag is ubiquitous. However, it's equally possible that the flags on Arran were removed by someone who supports gay equality but objects to the particular beliefs with which the modern flag has become associated: gender-affirming care for example, or trans self-ID; as Andrew says in his book, this group of people includes many gay people. Andrew also points out that by flying the Progress Pride flag as it's known, corporations and government bodies are taking a side in a highly contentious cultural debate that alienates as many gay people as it attracts. A Pride flag in Brodick (Image: Newsquest) The point about Arran is that the response of the police – the portentous announcement that the removal of the flags is being investigated as a hate crime – indicates they do not understand, or are even aware of, the case Andrew is making. The Pride flag is contentious and someone disliking it, or even removing it as they did on Arran, may be driven not by hate but by opposition to what the flag represents. The police are perfectly free to pursue the person for theft or damage, but by using the term hate crime, they are suggesting that objecting to, or removing, or damaging the flag is more than that: it's hateful. They have taken a side. Andrew Doyle's case is that the wider points in the debate are also poorly understood. In a free society, he says, we are entitled to think and feel as we see fit and so long as that does not interfere with the liberties of others, it includes the right to hate. He also points out that the European Court of Human Rights has admitted there's no universally accepted definition of the expression hate speech and as we saw with the SNP's attempt at a hate law, the lack of clarity renders the law useless or dangerous or both. We do not know the motivation of the person or persons who removed the flags on Arran. But no evidence of hatred is required for it to be seen or recorded as such, and a legal system that requires no evidence is a legal system we should be worried about. I suspect the police investigation on Arran will come to nothing in the end, as so much of the furore around hate crime does. But I also fear we'll take the wrong messages from the fact that someone took the flags down. Some people, including the police it would seem, will believe it's evidence of hatred for LGBTQ people, but it's much more likely to be evidence of how divisive and contentious the debate over the T in LGBTQ has become, including for many gay people. So the question in the end is: was it a hate crime we saw on Arran at the weekend? No: just a sign of where we are now.
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
The best building in Glasgow, and what we can learn from its tragedy
Someone else who shares my love for it is Colin Drysdale, a photographer and writer who's known for the social media account This Is My Glasgow where he posts pictures of some of the city's finest buildings. Colin has now written a book, Glasgow Uncovered, which features 18 walks round the city and I went out with him the other day to stroll round the St Vincent Street area and talk about the buildings we came across and some of the details I might have missed (there were many). The Mercantile Insurance building was only one of the places we visited but it sticks in my mind not only because I love the look of it but because of the tragedy of the place. One of the details I'd previously missed, which Colin pointed out, is the sculpture of the ship to the right of the door and the letters carved into the sails: IOU. The sculptor Archibald Dawson left the letters there in frustration really because the project hit financial problems and he was never paid for his work. And it gets worse, sadly. The fact Dawson wasn't paid was the start of almost a decade of financial woes for him, and in 1936 his business was taken over by a former apprentice, Jack Mortimer, in lieu of debts. One of the other rather sad features of the building is the pair of statues of a man and woman above the front door: it was Mortimer who sculpted them and he based the figures on Dawson and his wife as a tribute to his ruined mentor. The sadness is in with the stone. The story of the architect, John James Burnet, is also not without unhappiness. Burnet built some extraordinary places, including the Clydeport offices with its great dome and bulls and doric columns, and Charing Cross Mansions, that elegant swoop of apartments saved from the destruction of the M8 by the skin of its teeth. But he had financial problems too, caused in part by trying to fix the foundations of the Mercantile, and when he retired early, he was stressed and troubled and damaged. These are the kind of stories that don't show when you look at a building, or don't show much. Read more The Argyle Street Gap – what does it say about Glasgow? The TV channel that saved us, and heralds the change to come Eurovision 2025: the year they fixed their Israel problem However, the stories of Burnet, and Dawson, and the Mercantile, and some of Burnet's other buildings, can at least point us to a few lessons, the first of which is about protection. Some of Burnet's finest and most famous buildings, including the old Alhambra Theatre on Waterloo Street, have been demolished and replaced with something worse (in the Alhambra's case, crappy offices). But one of the critical points Colin Drysdale made on our walk was that the buildings that are struggling to find tenants are the ugly modern ones, not the old ones because people want to be in one of Glasgow's beautiful classic buildings. So do not demolish. Protect and reuse. There's also a lesson in the way Burnet and other architects of the time worked. As we made our way up St Vincent Street, Colin asked me to turn round and look back down the hill at the buildings and the way they fit in with each other, elegantly maintaining a similar height. One of the reasons for this is that Burnet was part of a network of architects who lived and worked in the city; they were walking the streets every day and talking to each other and knew what their colleagues were doing, so it all held together rather than clashed. It worked. As Colin points out, the problem with a lot of the modern design in Glasgow is it no longer works in the same way and many of the buildings are designed by architects with little or no knowledge of the place. If instead of walking the streets of the city, you're looking at a computer screen in some other place, there's a good chance the buildings you create won't fit in with what's there. There's a good chance it won't work. The Hatrack (Image: Contributed) The ultimate answer is much stricter planning, specifically zones in the city that lay out what is, and isn't, acceptable. The strictest zone needs to be in the centre, where Colin and I did our walk, because that's where the finest buildings are and where the greatest damage can be done. You could then relax the rules as you go further from the centre. Across the river, for example, the big Barclay's development could still be possible because it incorporates what's already there and reflects some of the industrial heritage of the Clyde, and it's not at all bad, all things considered. What would never be acceptable though would be the idea of demolishing buildings such as the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company or anything like it and if you think that's far-fetched, just up from the Mercantile is a bland office building where Greek Thomson's offices once stood. The Thomson buildings were pulled down in the 2000s despite widespread protest. And look around you: it's still happening. The battle to stop it will be won, I think, when more and more people start to appreciate why Glasgow's architecture needs protecting and there's evidence of it happening, thanks in a large part to sites such as Colin's. I would also urge you, next time you're in the city, to take a walk up St Vincent Street and stop at the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company and look for the hidden IOU but mainly just stand back and admire the building. As I said, I think it's the best one in Glasgow. But I would also say that it's only one of the greats, the many greats. The job we've got is to celebrate them, and praise them, and value them, and save them.
