When Paul Robeson Came to Queen’s Park
Govanhill has long been known as a place of resistance, where solidarity spills over into protest, and where people aren’t afraid to stand up for what they believe in. This article on civil rights activist, Paul Robeson’s visit to Queen’s Park makes up part of our Timeline of Resistance piece. This was featured in our latest issue on Community Action, showcasing a few inspiring actions that happened locally.
Paul Robeson in Queen’s Park, May 1960.
By Katherine Mackinnon | Photos by STUC Archive
Sunday 1st of May, 1960. The sun shines on the springtime leaves of Queens Park, as pipe bands and trade union banners and a long procession of people make their way into the bandstand. Assembled and waiting, the crowds rise to their feet in a standing ovation as the tall figure of Paul Robeson walks onto the stage. Thousands are crowded into the amphitheatre and standing in rows on the sloping hills of the park beyond. To this day, over sixty years later, you will still meet trade unionists who speak of what it was like to stand in that crowd of 10,000 and hear Paul Robeson sing for the people of Glasgow.
Paul Robeson was many things – Shakespearean actor, bass-baritone, activist, film star. He attended college on an All-American football scholarship but chose to study law over becoming a professional athlete. Prevented from working as a lawyer due to racism, Robeson began his career as an actor on the stage in 1930s Harlem before making his first musical recordings in the 1940s. His anti-Fascism, anti-colonialism and association with Communists led to Robeson being blacklisted by the U.S authorities during the McCarthy era. For most of the 1950s he was denied a passport, hampering his ability to earn a living through touring.
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Prior to those years, Robeson had visited Glasgow several times. In 1938 he played a benefit concert in the St Andrew’s Halls, now part of the Mitchell Library, in aid of the Scottish Trade Union chartered ship which was to carry 100 tons of food to besieged Republican Spain. At a performance in 1949 he sang the revolutionary songs of anti-Fascist Spain and occupied Poland, ending with a performance of the Moor’s final soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Othello.
Before he was to sing some of his most famous songs to the crowd in Queen’s Park that May Day in 1960, Robeson addressed the crowd, saying “I needn’t say how happy I am to be here with you to-day on this historic occasion on May Day, a day set apart for the working people of the world.
My people had to struggle. My father was a slave. I have cousins working on the plantations in the South to-day, and I had to labour to go to school. My sympathies remain with those who struggle and are building a world in which they can live a rich and decent life. There is no question that we, the people, in the deepest sense, create the wealth. We and our children should enjoy it.”
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In leading the Glasgow May Day march Robeson joined a tradition of the labour movement that stretched back to the city’s first International Workers’ Day celebrations in 1981. The May Day march and rally in Glasgow has over the years seen demonstrations of international solidarity from Spain to Palestine and has celebrated occupations and actions like the Rent Strikes, the UCS work-in or the Lee Jeans occupation.
1960 was no different, taking place scarcely a month after the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, in which police opened fire on peaceful crowds protesting the country’s apartheid laws, killing 69 people. The gathered representatives in Queens Park passed a resolution in protest at the South African government’s “ruthless methods”, which had aroused the indignation and condemnation of the entire world.
Paul Robeson remained steadfast in his belief that people could change the world for the better, despite the historical injustices and violence he himself had been subject to. Often his words forced audiences to confront histories that remain unacknowledged to this day, as in a 1949 performance in Edinburgh during which Paul Robeson spoke of his father, who was born into slavery, saying that “he had received his name from his master, who was a Scot.” From the day Robeson stood on the bandstand stage it was still to be almost 40 years until the STUC Black Workers’ Committee would be formed to represent and support people of colour in the Scottish trade union movement.
On the 1st of May 1960, Robeson sang Loch Lomond and Ol’ Man River to the green parkland and the gathered crowds. He pointed out the similarities between Water Boy, an African-American folk song, and the Eriskay Love Lilt, and the crowd roared in agreement as Paul Robeson said to the people of Glasgow: “If the songs can be the same, the people must be the same.”
If you would like to read about more radical local history; like the Penny Farthing women’s sit in, the glacier metals occupation, the poll tax riots and more, then pick up a copy of our latest issue from all the usual spots to see the whole timeline.