Plan to shut People's Story Museum an act of cultural vandalism

Previously, the city was in thrall to generations of self-interested rule by a narrow, local merchant class. But the group of young Labour radicals who unexpectedly found themselves running the capital were determined to represent and celebrate Edinburgh’s wider working-class communities.

One sign of this was their manifesto commitment to open a museum of labour history: the People’s Story.

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Fast forward to 2024. Edinburgh’s current minority Labour administration – proprietor, councillor Cammy Day – has just announced the closure (supposedly temporary) of the People’s Story Museum.

There is a terrible irony in Day’s new(-ish) Labour administration being the one to shut this popular and important part of the capital’s homage to its working-class history and achievements.

The People’s Story survived and prospered under councils run by the SNP, Greens and Liberal Democrats. It is Starmer’s New Labour Army that are set on perpetrating an act of cultural and political vandalism.

First, a declaration of interest: I was a proud member of that Labour administration back in 1984. I stood and won election in Portobello, then a decaying seaside town that felt shunned by the big city up the hill. We wanted recognition that Edinburgh was made up of many working communities, not just the haute bourgeoisie of the New Town.

Post-war, Edinburgh had undergone so-called regeneration, like many other parts of Central Belt Scotland. But regeneration meant bulldozing the working-class tenements in the city centre and exiling working people to damp housing estates on the periphery. Edinburgh University added to this desecration by blitzing the south side and leaving much of it empty. Memories were lost in the process.

Memories, for instance, of the great James Connolly – born in Edinburgh, a trade union leader on two continents, and martyred by the British Empire in Dublin in 1916. Or the resistance the Edinburgh working-class showed to Mosley’s Black Shirts in the 1930s.

Or the creation of the People’s Festival at the time of the early Edinburgh International Festival – a project that grew into the Fringe, the world’s biggest live arts event.

But the People’s Story recovered and celebrated more that the headlines of history. From the start the aim was to remember the ordinary lives of ordinary people – which are always extraordinary.

Tales of how people lived, worked, educated themselves and organised their communities. Stories of how working-class women brought up families, created neighbourhoods, and fought for equality.

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How generations of immigrants came, fought discrimination, and became part of our heritage. And how the artisans, turners, machinists, printers, drivers and a hundred other skilled trades built a city and a global economy.

The brewing and publishing industries were to Edinburgh what shipbuilding was to Glasgow. The coal-mining towns that orbited Edinburgh provided power for the city and for export. Leith Docks linked Scotland to the Baltic, Russia and Europe.

Leith itself was a cosmopolitan community. Here arrived Jewish refugees from the Tsar’s pogroms and Italians from poverty. From here guns were sent to the Bolsheviks. All the world ran through Leith. A worthy story to tell – a story now threatened with a second erasure.

Edinburgh councillors will meet to discuss and vote on closing the People’s Story, theoretically for seven months, until the start of next financial year. As is the way with democracy on the council, the museum has already been shut by officials.

The actual vote to rubber-stamp that move takes place on Thursday. God knows what the outcome will be if councillors have the guts to reverse the officials’ decision. Hint, hint.

I know that Edinburgh City Council has financial problems. The authority faces a £27 million hole in its budget that has to be filled by next March. And before Cammy Day writes to The National, I for one think the SNP Government’s decision (under Humza Yousaf) to freeze Council Tax was a gimmick too far.

But the plan to shut the People’s Story will only save £205,000 – less than 1% of the budget deficit. This is cultural vandalism on the cheap.

Note also that the chances of the People’s Story re-opening next year are slim to zero. After Rachel Reeves gets through making “tough decisions” to please the City of London bankers – why else are we getting an further dose of austerity? – it seems unlikely there will be very much extra cash coming down the Treasury pipeline to Holyrood. Pretending that the closure of the People’s Story is temporary is merely sugaring the pill.

I’m also aware that Edinburgh’s city museums and galleries have generated less income than forecast in 2024-25. But any business plan anywhere that focuses simply on cost-cutting is doomed to fail. A fresh look at investment in marketing and product is always the key to success.

It is the same with the People’s Story. The truth is that Scotland as a whole – not just Edinburgh – has undervalued its labour and industrial history.

Scotland was once the workshop of the world.

Now the country has been comprehensively de-industrialised and that heritage expunged from popular memory.

If Scotland is to re-industrialise – a vital necessity – we need to recover our sense of the importance of manufacturing.

One way of doing this – perhaps using the People’s Story as a springboard – would be to create a National Museum of Industry, Engineering and Labour.

Start by bring the Queen Mary liner back from forlorn exile in California, as a living reminder of our historic shipbuilding prowess.

And put back into the air examples of the aircraft once manufactured by Scottish Aviation Ltd. Maintaining our industrial and labour heritage is not about nostalgia, it is about the future.

The ruling Labour group on Edinburgh City Council is politically vulnerable. It holds only 12 seats – just one-fifth of the chamber. It has clung to power by the fingertips since the 2022 election, when it cut ties with its SNP coalition partners after Anas Sarwar banned formal coalitions.

However, hypocrisy rules. While there is no formal coalition agreement, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have supported their fellow Unionists by voting with Labour on vital confidence and supply motions, allowing budgets to pass.

Fortunately, next month Edinburgh voters will have a chance to pass judgment on this state of affairs – and on the closure of the People’s Story.

There is a council by-election in the Colinton/Fairmilehead ward to replace Labour’s Scott Arthur who is the new MP for Edinburgh South West.

I hope the SNP and Green candidates put saving the People’s Story in their manifestos.

Meanwhile, show up to the Edinburgh City Chambers this Thursday – the committee meets at 10am – and prove there is still support for maintaining the People’s Story as a tribute to the lives and struggles of the ordinary folk who built and sustained our capital city.

Shame on Labour for forgetting its heritage.