Tribute from a Scottish Maori

Galgael, The secret heart of Glasgow.
by Makere Stewart-Harawira.

There’s an edginess to Glasgow they say, and from the vantage point of Starbucks on the corner of West Nile and Sauchiehall Streets, I’d agree. In fact from the vantage point of three or four short visit over the last 10 years, and for all the place in my heart that Edinburgh will forever hold, I’d still agree.
Downtown Sauchiehall Street is not only a far cry from Princess Street’s tat in Edinburgh, its cleaner too. Remnants of the once thriving slave trade on the River Clyde are hard to find, at least on the surface. The workers of the 21st century are tucked safely into their tenement buildings living, its hoped, productive lives as ‘good citizens’, which in today’s lingo means contributing to the economy by holding a job.
Bustling with culture high and low, Glasgow prides itself on being ‘down to earth’, a place in which you don’t need to change your clothes to bring in the milk bottles. Contradictory, cultured, pragmatic, edgy Glasgow.
Its history appals.
400,000 people cleared from the lands and crammed into tenements in all four corners of Glasgow.
Land for the gentry, poverty and squalor for the masses.
You’ve come along way, Glasgow. Yet – one in four are diagnosed with mental illness, according to the mental health foundation worker who stopped me in the street. Did I know anything about mental health illness, he asked? About depression? Do I know anyone who suffers from depression? We are trying to develop alternatives to medication and anti-depressants, he explained. So many people are on anti-depressants. Some will be on them all their lives.

It happened that I did. It happened that I had just come from a return visit to Govan, Govan whose hidden heart and quietly shining light is a place he’d never heard of. A place in the tradition of the Reverend George MacLeod who dedicated himself to Govan’s poor, homeless and dispossessed before founding the Iona Community. A place where love abounds, where questions are not asked, where people are not categorised, where trust is manifest. A place with which I’d joyfully renewed my earlier brief acquaintance from two years previous, where visitors are made as welcome as those for home The Galgael Trust exists, the dispossessed, the sad, the hopeless, the unemployed – and yes, you and me and community. A warm and safe and trusting community, Govan’s shining light and Glasgow’s secret heart.
The founder of The Galgael Trust was also a Macleod – Colin with the enormous vision and even more enormous heart. Colin who loved people. Colin who loved trees, and land, and community. Colin from Lewis, Colin the Gael. Who came to Govan and, seeing the dispossession and oppression of people, put the woodworking skills he learned from the Lakota to the service of Govan’s people and brought together people with traditional skills and a disused building and created an astonishing community built on the values and traditions of the best of Gaeldom.
The story of the community of The Galgael Trust in Govan is inspiring and good reading, and it’s all on their website. So are stories of the traditional sailing ship that they sail on the River Clyde. And the astonishing story of Colin, the Gael whom I never met. Incredibly, Colin’s enormous heart gave out the year before my first chance visit, when he was only 39.
Today The Galgael Trust is carried on in exactly the same way by those whom Colin gathered around him. And I hold them high amongst those who inspire my own life.
The Galgael Trust in Govan. Its worth a visit. Its worth getting to know.
Its Glasgow. Its community. It’s a new economy. And its built on love.