To A Cone

I'd said I would occasionally post on wee bits of Scottish news and issues, so I figured the recent reports that Glasgow City Council are planning to spend £65,000 on raising the plinth that supports Carlo Marochetti's famed 1844 statue of the Duke of Wellington in order to combat that most pressing and grave of civic concerns...

The weegies cannae stop putting a traffic cone aun 'is heid.




Apparently the cost of removing this monstrous vandalism is no less than £100. Per time. To remove a traffic cone from a statue's head. £100. Apparently the Glasgow City Council, which presides over one of the most impoverished areas of the developed world, sees fit to spend £65,000 to stop this tomfoolery:

For more than 30 years the Wellington monument has been defaced by traffic cones which regularly appear on the head of the horse or rider (and sometimes both) after the revelries of the weekend. This depressing image of Glasgow has sadly featured in posters and postcards depicting the city. 

Ironically this unfortunate impression of the city has been supported by former Lord Provosts and chief executive and even adopted occasionally by the city marketing bureau. These cones have been the subject of numerous complaints from elected officials and the public who find them offensive and this matter is the subject of time-consuming correspondence. 

The cost of removing these cones is conservatively put at £100 a time and the frequency is estimated at around 100 times a year, this is an estimated burden to the city council of some £10,000pa. This cost is unsustainable in the current economic climate.

To this end it is proposed that permanent solution is found to deter these cones and reduce the incidence of vandalism to this iconic monument. The principal problem is that the base of the monument is too low. Vandals can literally step onto the plinth from the rear and then quickly gain access to the horse and rider. 

Various solutions were considered, after a year’s investigation and consultation it was decided to raise plinth to a height comparable to the Victoria and Albert monuments. This would require the insertion of a new concrete base, clad in matching granite – an increase of 0.86 metres (around 3ft). This should deter all but the most determined of vandals.

 - Rachel Smith's application to deter the Cone menace

I refuse to even entertain the notion that the sight of a proud Anglo-Irish noble general, famed and renowned the world over as implacable in determination, flawless in resolve, and resolute in action, mounted upon his mighty steed, surveying the great city of Glasgow, with a bright stripey orange cone on his head is anything other than utterly hilarious. That is not depressing. That is the antithesis of depressing. I defy anyone to look upon this image and remain remotely depressed:

The biggest laugh? I'm positive the Duke himself would've loved it. While his policies as Prime Minister may be regrettable, especially in his opposition to suffrage for Jews and the underclasses, he was the most riotous bounder this side of Lord Flasheart. Upon his victory at Waterloo, Wellington's first order of business was to sleep with Napoleon's mistresses - and hung a picture of Napoleon's sister in his bedroom. When he learned of Napoleon's abdication following the Battle of Toulous, he broke his otherwise iron countenance and - I quote from The Peninsular War 1807–1814: A Concise Military History - broke into an impromptu flamenco dance, spinning around on his heels and snapping his fingers. He refused to move into 10 Downing Street because it was too small. He received an offer from a publisher suggesting they could suppress his mistress' outrageously raunchy memoirs in exchange for monetary compensation - which he refused outright, and anecdotally replied "publish and be damned." You think sticking a funny hat on him would be besmirching that man's memory?

£10,000 per year is indeed an unacceptable cost for the city. But it leads me to three questions:

• Why does it cost the council £100 a pop to remove a traffic cone from a statue's head, and is this really the lowest amount the council could possibly spend for such a task?
• If this constant removal costs £10,000 a year, then has it not occurred to the council to save this vital money for something other than sending Wee Jimmy around with his broom handle knowing that it's just going to happen again?
• If it is entirely necessary for this statue to be de-coned at all cost, wouldn't this put Wee Jimmy out of a job, removing an apparently crucial employment opportunity for an already-suffering Glasgow?

A lot of folk have been, quite rightly, making a mockery of this nonsense on the Pigeon Network and Tome of Faces, for what else can you do when you learn that this popular and beloved facet of Glasgwegian popular culture is not only being threatened by a council which doesn't seem to understand its own populace's wishes, but has been wasting £10,000 of public money combating it? Do the GCC realise just how inept and incompetent it makes them look when they are "forced" to spend ten grand bopping a pokey hat aff a statue?

Think about it. If you take down the cone, someone else will put one up. You say you wish to stop possible injuries incurred by no-goodniks, and prevent further damage to the statue: well, what do you think is more likely to cause that damage, one person putting the cone up and leaving it there unmolested, or - by your own estimates - 100 people every year? Furthermore, what is more likely to cause serious injury, falling from the existing plinth, or one that's twice its height? This constant putting-up and popping-off is what's causing damage to the statue, and draining an already beleaguered city of its funds, and basically flying in the face of a council's supposed purpose of serving its community by attempting to deprive the city of one of its most iconic pieces of popular art.

Because it really is amazing how beloved the cone-headed statue is: as of writing, the petition at Change.org has just over 8,000 signatures within hours of launch, and the comic Twitter account WellingtonCone already has over 700 followers since its debut today. It was named one of the 10 Most Bizarre Monuments On Earth by Lonely Planet* - and one of the 1000 greatest sights in the world as a result. It even has a tribute in one of the most influential and lucrative games in history.

Grand Theft Auto III is the highest-rated PS2 game of all time, the best-selling game of 2001 (and second-best-selling of 2002 after its own sequel), has sold over 14.5 million copies in the US alone, and was named one of the most influential games in history by The New York Times.

Interaction with statues is a time-honoured and valuable phenomenon which has been happening for millennia - because an innately tactile art practically begs for a similar connection with the audience. Religious icons worldwide have had their digits eroded into a slipper from the hundreds of thousands of faithful laying their hands on the statues' feet, as have the bellies of many a Laughing Buddha. This practice goes beyond religious observance: rubbing the nose of Greyfriar's bobby, the right breast of Shakespeare's Juliet in Verona, and various parts of Il Porcellino in Sydney allegedly brings good luck. This even happens in politics: in Westminster, MPs would touch the feet of the statues of Churchill, Atlee, George and Thatcher for prosperity. It's gotten to the point where statues are explicitly designed with tactile interaction in mind, from Fernando Botero's Adam to Daniel Edward's statue of a pregnant Kim Kardashian.

The practise of putting a cone on Wellington is thus not only a fun curiosity, it is part of the very fabric of culture itself. Art is nothing if the people do not engage with it, and this is quite obviously engaging with the people in a tremendous way. Remove the cone, and what do you have? A fantastic statue... just like the scores of beautiful sculptures all throughout Glasgow, fading into a green patina, seagulls perched as reverently as birds can muster on their crowns.  And why do the people of Glasgow persist on this one issue - why didn't they give up after the first hundred goes?  Why are they so invested in this placement of a traffic cone on the head of a long-dead war leader?  Because this is art of the people. Here we have something that the people of Glasgow have claimed, a piece of art which they had an impact on - something which is not vandalism, not defacement, but a communication between work and audience which is nothing short of precious. This is what sculptors dream of: for their work to become beloved and adopted by the community, to achieve meaning as part of a collective.

This is the sort of thing the late, great Scottish scul?tor George Wyllie lived for: to take art out of the domain of the aristocracy and privileged, and bring it to the people. Out on the streets, accessible, something that is theirs - for everyone, not just the elite. The Duke of Wellington is a piece of public art - it has been from its inception, given its situation on the streets of Glasgow. This specific practise of festooning Wellington with a traffic cone allegedly dates back to the 1980s, making this a thirty-year-old tradition, while my mother assures me that she recalls seeing it as a student, which suggests it was happening even in the late 1970s. This sort of cheerful irreverence is part of the Glaswegian character, letting people know that while they absolutely refuse to back down, that doesn't mean you can't be friendly about it - rebellion with a wink; resistance with a laugh; defiance with a smile.

And the placement of ridiculous headgear on the Duke of Wellington has plenty to say beyond being a hilarious image. After all, why is it this statue which receives the cone treatment on a regular basis? Why not the statues at George Square or the Cathedral Precinct? Is it the placement outside the Gallery of Modern Art, which would no doubt be familiar with this sort of iconoclasm? As mentioned earlier, Wellington was strongly against the Reform Act of 1832, which sought to reform Parliament to allow greater representation and give thousands more the right to vote:

In 1832, Parliament passed a law changing the British electoral system. It was known as the Great Reform Act.

This was a response to many years of people criticising the electoral system as unfair. For example, there were constituencies with only a handful of voters that elected two MPs to Parliament. In these rotten boroughs, with few voters and no secret ballot, it was easy for candidates to buy votes. Yet towns like Manchester that had grown during the previous 80 years had no MPs to represent them.

In 1831, the House of Commons passed a Reform Bill, but the House of Lords, dominated by Tories, defeated it. There followed riots and serious disturbances in London, Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Yeovil, Sherborne, Exeter and Bristol.

The riots in Bristol were some of the worst seen in England in the 19th century. They began when Sir Charles Weatherall, who was opposed to the Reform Bill, came to open the Assize Court. Public buildings and houses were set on fire, there was more than £300,000 of damage and twelve people died. Of 102 people arrested and tried, 31 were sentenced to death. Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton, the commander of the army in Bristol, was court-martialed.

There was a fear in government that unless there was some reform there might be a revolution instead. They looked to the July 1830 revolution in France, which overthrew King Charles X and replaced him with the more moderate King Louis-Philippe who agreed to a constitutional monarchy.

In Britain, King William IV lost popularity for standing in the way of reform. Eventually he agreed to create new Whig peers, and when the House of Lords heard this, they agreed to pass the Reform Act. Rotten boroughs were removed and the new towns given the right to elect MPs, although constituencies were still of uneven size. However, only men who owned property worth at least £10 could vote, which cut out most of the working classes, and only men who could afford to pay to stand for election could be MPs. This reform did not go far enough to silence all protest.

When Wellington came to the first meeting of the reformed Parliament following the first election, he had to share the chambers with not his "peers," but with landowners, traders, and other members of the "lower orders." In a letter, Wellington proclaimed:

I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.

As statements go, it's hard to be more appropriate, or more Glaswegian: for the people which Wellington fought to keep disenfranchised to assert their new position as peers - by giving him a "shocking bad hat" of his own. As if to say "we're of you, and now, you're of us." All Jock Tamson's bairns. All wearing silly hats.

Rebellion with a wink.  Resistance with a laugh.  Defiance with a smile.

*Incidentally, Lonely Planet also named Scotland the third best place in the world to visit, behind Antarctica and Brazil at 2 and 1 respectively. This may or may not be connected to the fact that Bluebeard's Revenge named Scotland the manliest nation on earth, so I choose to say that it is indeed because we're the kind of nation who celebrates war leaders by putting funny hats on their statues.