Save The People's Story

Enough is enough. Let's end the destruction of our Edinburgh. Join the campaign to save the city from the Council.

This article first appeared at Bella Caledonia.

“How can this shameful tale be told?

I will maintain until my death

We could do nothing, being sold;

Our only enemy was gold

And we had no arms to fight it with.”

-Edwin Muir

The sudden closure of The People’s Story museum on Canongate has taken everyone by surprise. Including the councillors for the area and the local community. The museum is unique in Edinburgh. Focusing on the history of the city through the experiences of the working class. Covering our lives at work, our changing cultural tastes, and our struggles for employment and political rights in the city. It tells the stories of our communities in all their complexity. The disagreements, the campaigns, the change in the city and the people, the solidarity. The story of Edinburgh from the bottom up.

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.

Each closure and transfer of power followed the same pattern. Years of neglect and disinvestment. Buildings allowed to decay and turn to ruin. The communities that use the buildings ignored, marginalised and excluded from the decision-making processes. Then closure. With the same explanation, that the Council cannot afford to maintain or repair what they have allowed to rot. Then we are told, every time, that some external body will be getting control of the building on a sweetheart deal and it’s gone. And we are supposed to be thankful. ‘At least it’s open’ or ‘better than nothing’ is what we are told. Community empowerment anyone?

We cannot allow Edinburgh Council to do the same to The People’s Story. It is all there is left for us in the Old Town. We have been socially cleansed, physically pushed/priced out, our social institutions eroded and passed to others, and now we are to lose The People’s Story. Our history swept away in one final act of social vandalism. Enough is enough. Edinburgh city centre has been turned into a citadel for the rich. They would be as well rebuilding the city walls. For all the wealth we are told the city attracts, for all the increases in property prices (and everything else) the city is a dispiriting soulless place. As citizens we need to pause and ask what is being done in our name? What is happening not just to our city, our communities and our culture, but what is it doing to us? To our psyche, our humanity? Our sense of self and home?

Too often working class experience is mediated through others. Through charities, academics, politicians or journalists. The People’s Story, better than anywhere else in Edinburgh, allowed visitors to see, read and hear the stories of the working class, in our communities and our work, unmediated. It allowed us to see ourselves reflected back at us. Through the history of the city. Our city. Not the city of Kings and Queens. It provided a vital sense of belonging in a city that, too often, makes working class people feel unrecognised and excluded.

Recently there has been much talk about the rise of racism and the far-right in working class communities. Politicians have lined up to tell us how seriously they take the problem. Some of the same politicians in Edinburgh who were shouting No Pasaran! a fortnight ago are now responsible for closing the city’s only working class museum. To defeat the racists in our communities we need to win the battle of ideas. That means defending social institutions and supporting working class anti-fascists. It means being creative and imaginative about political education. It means telling our own stories. The working class has always been multi-racial and multi-religious. We need to tell that story ourselves. We need to acknowledge the challenges and highlight the commonality of experience faced by working class people in Edinburgh. Nowhere in the city does that better than The People’s Story. If we did not have The People’s Story we would need to build one. And the Labour controlled Edinburgh Council have closed it. Whatever the financial savings they will be dwarfed by the political and social cost to the city in the coming decades.

“Perhaps Edinburgh’s terrible inability to speak out,

Edinburgh’s silence with regard to all it should be saying,

Is but the hush that precedes the thunder.”

-Hugh MacDiarmid

The immediate priority is the Culture and Communities Committee meeting next Thursday (3^rd October) at 10am in City Chambers. We cannot allow the councillors to shame themselves and our city by closing The People’s Story (in a strange twist the museum has been closed before the committee meets to decide whether to accept the recommendation to close the museum. This raises questions about democracy and who is actually running the city. But I will leave them to one side at the moment). The campaign will have a deputation at the meeting. We must lobby the councillors in advance and we are asking people to gather at the City Chambers on Thursday at 9.30am. We are also planning a public meeting in the coming weeks. It is time for action. Both from the Council and citizens. The People’s Story must be saved.

However, beyond the committee meeting, we must also listen to what Edinburgh Council are saying. They have closed the doors on a museum admitting they are incapable of running it properly. This is a huge admission of failure and we should take it seriously. One of the largest arts festivals in the world only ended in the area three weeks ago. Canongate is one of the busiest streets, not just in the city, but in the country. Edinburgh does not have a problem attracting visitors. We have a problem with overtourism. The city must have one of the highest student populations per head in the world. And Edinburgh Council cannot keep the doors open of a small museum in Canongate. You have to be really good at failure for The People’s Story to fail. Step forward Edinburgh Council. World leaders in failure. The only thing they have mastered is a form of managerialism which in incapable of managing anything.

“We were, neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.”

-Pete Seeger

So, while the immediate objective is for the Council to see sense and reopen The People’s Story, we also have to think strategically. We need to accept that if the same people who have failed so badly, that they just had to suddenly close the doors, are allowed to continue we will be back in the same place in a year or two years’ time. That cannot happen. The Council have admitted they have failed. There is a vacuum where leadership should be. They now need to accept the help being offered. We need to be creative and install a new management structure. A structure which is inclusive of local residents, trade unions, educators, historians and more. We need to collectively devise a plan that guarantees a sustainable future for The People’s Story for the next 50 years. To do that we need transparency from the Council and a willingness to listen to people.

I want the museum reopened but I do not only want the museum reopened. I want it to be the best in the world. I want to see it embrace new technology, be updated, be invested in. I want to see every school pupil in the city visiting The People’s Story. I want universities to be not only welcomed but actively encouraged. I want new migrants to be shown our past. People on the periphery of the city, in every sense, to be encouraged to visit and to participate in telling their story. All our stories. We need to speak to people who run similar museums around the world asking them how it is done. Adopting best practice and making Edinburgh’s People’s Story the very best it can be. If that all seems like a huge challenge. Good. Let’s go. Let’s save The People’s Story. Let’s save our working class history and our city.

To be added to the Save The People’s Story campaign mailing list contact: Edinburgh.peoplesstory@gmail.com

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#SaveThePeoplesStory