Episode 1: Monumental Maidens.

In this episode, Caroline introduces Brazill Blog, and the Monumental Maidens Series in celebration of International Women’s Day 2022.

Monumental Maidens of Glasgow and beyond

Mary Barber’s statue, is one of only four statues in Glasgow’s civic spaces occupied by a woman!  In celebration of International women’s day, I salute these four women, and look  for more such  women to be represented in statuette form, and focus on  fairness not of ladies but of justice, as fair maiden do not often win fair rights!!

Glasgow’s ‘going around and round’ as the song says,  it doesn’t stand still.

This can  be true of its sporting events, City of sport for a second time joins accolades, which include: city of culture, architecture and style. But it did stand monumentally still on the matter of statues. The city’s slogan ‘people make Glasgow’ is put to shame, with so few of the women who made Glasgow, immortalised in statuette form.

‘Damnatio Memoriae’, the formal Latin name, for removing fallen citizens from civic plinths and the annals of history was a popular practice in Ancient Rome. If erasure is one thing, absentia is another, perhaps more damaging crime!

By absence – there is no existence! I could launch into a philosophical debate of Sartre’s ‘being and nothingness’ or Heidegger ‘being and time’ but lets us just take the facts: the plinth, the statue and the absence of women in immortal memory! Three women in Glasgow stood still in Glasgow, Queen Victoria, La Pasionaria and Isabella (Elder), an educational philanthropist, University of Glasgow, until Mary Barber’s erection, and that is still nowhere near enough!  And Glasgow, is not on its own, civic spaces throughout the rest of the UK, Europe and globally, share the same issue.

https://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH0024&type=P

As the fashion for female representation marches from bank notes to monuments. Writer, feminist and activist Caroline Criado-Perez won her fight for a statue of Millicent Fawcett to join 11 men in Parliament Square, London, I did initially worry about Millicent taking on a football team by herself, but I trust she can hold her own. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/15/caroline-criado-perez-suffragist-parliament-square-interview-millicent-fawcett-statue

http://researchstories.group.shef.ac.uk/impact/a-statue-to-suffrage/

She is not alone though, on  standing  her ground with her male counterparts, Queen Victoria, Glasgow’s first woman, on a plinth, stands similarly outnumbered,  with thirteen men in George Square, a team and two subs, Queen Victoria, a lone female figure.  If East Enders Queen Vic is anything to go by, I don’t see her falling from grace anytime soon and with justice and jurisprudence hovering above the square she’s in safe hands.

Isabella Elder, educational philanthropist, is the second statue in  situ for Glasgow women and sits in elder Park Govan a goal kick from our fourth lady Mary Barber and indeed the place of my birth, exalted company indeed!

La Pasionaria, Dolores Ibárruri, who  we will look  at  in more detail next week, as a reflection of women and war and the Ukraine, is Glasgow’s third woman, on a plinth. Eected a far cry from the ‘No Pasarán’ calls made by the young Scots who left Scotland and stood alongside La Pasionaria in 1930’s Spain, almost 100 years later no matter which  side of the barricade you stand upon with regards Scotland’s and Catalonia’s calls for independence, or Ukraine and Russia’s intervention, justice is often not served, where it should stand.

But it was to justice that got Mary Barber on the plinth!

A wise woman seeks counsel ahead of reckless endeavour, ex-Lady Provost Eva Bolander take note (refer footnote note below. But in Govan, our fourth lady on a plinth, erected in 2018, her form, stands stately, on the ball of where the city ‘rent right strikes began, and serves as a timely reminder of inflated domestic living  costs as unfair energy fuels rise sharply, in the line of profiteering.

http://www.rs21test.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/glasgow-21.jpg

Govan landlords, during the first world war, spotted an opportunity to raise rents as dockers arrived to build ships for the war. With the men away at the front, the Govan woman were seen as a soft touch. Being of fairer ‘sex’, at that time the word ‘touched’ often meant in the head, as in mentally deficient.  But this fairer sex – knew what was fair and more importantly what was not! Just as justice stands over Queen Victoria in George Square, it stood with Mary Barber and her ‘rent army’ she mobilised women to rally, halt the increases and keep families in their homes.  Justice and civic rights for women and their families. The rogue landlords thwarted. Mary Barber went on to represent the city as one of its first women councillors and its first female Baillie. Made of stern, fair stuff there never was any chance of her falling from grace! (Refer footnote below on fallen councillors).

Maria Fyfe, chair of the RMBA, the group who raised funds for Mary’s statue, after Creative Scotland turned them down, saying ‘it didn’t meet the criteria of assisting a community’!! Said of its opening: “I hope people who see this statue are not only proud of our forebearers but see it as an inspiration for the struggles of today.”

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgows-mary-barbour-statue-unveiled-14385125.

There over 220,000 children currently homeless in the UK due to rogue landlords – English councils were using shipping containers as temporary housing in  2019! Mary Barber ensured justice for Govan! The fight and struggle go on!  This time in the form of domestic energy fuel, rising to  almost ten times the price of last year and the why? Profiteering from a predominantly patriarchal ‘power’ trips, pun intended and for every ‘pun’ of fuel used the people are being used, at the expense of the privileged few – this is not democracy  and time for women’s ‘fuel’ army such as Mary Barber’s rent army is set to rise again.

Footnote We are not all perfect!

Muriel Gray once wrote in the NME ‘women let me down more than men’, this blog is not saying  that all women are perfect. Indeed Eva Bolander, a previous Lord Provost of Glasgow, fell from grace, she did redeem herself, by resigning forth with, an  action that a current PM, could well emulate. The cause of Bolander’s disgrace, , ‘accessories’. Accessory to what? Crime? Violence?  Murder – Glasgow i ‘no mean city’ after all. Taggart repeats reassure us of this. No. It was accessory to fashion or hubris! 

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgows-lord-provost-eva-bolander-17179122

The city’s first woman, acceded to fashion statement disaster, the ‘bank statement’, notched up £8,000 in hair, make and accessories.  The civic purse strings had stretched to, amongst other things, twenty-three pairs of shoes – enough to merit her departure. Absolutely Fabulous darling! Patsy might have said but not said the citizens. A former, Lord Provost, Pat Lally, aka Lazarus no doubt turning in his grave for a third coming! I doubt the city purchased but one-man bag for him! But Bolander, created some noise as she fell from grace, and as the city’s first EU national to become Glasgow’s Provost, I wonder as the Brexit’s anvil continues to swing, is this an omen of more European droppings to come! The guano from George Square pigeon force beckons!   It’s a pity, when Eva looked to nix the slush fund, she didn’t take a leaf from Nixon’s book. When his fund scaled the dizzy heights of $18,000, Nixon spun himself around faster than Kelly Marie: citing a working-class background; an unpaid wife rendering services free to the state; yielding his ticket, statesmanship, a republican cloth coat and a pup called checkers – checkmate!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers_speech

Next week: Women and War.

‘Better to die on your feet than live forever on your knees.’ – Dolores Ibárruri

La Pasionaria, Dolores Ibárruri, is Glasgow’s third woman, on a plinth, and women of the Ukraine