In the run–up to the Commonwealth Games, two alternative walking tours are helping locals and visitors alike to understand Glasgow’s colonial history
The Commonwealth Games are coming back to Glasgow this summer, and the city is offering a plethora of cultural and sporting programming as part of the festivities.
The Games’ website presents the event as an opportunity for different countries and cultures to come together through sport. But the thread connecting the participating countries, historical and ongoing British colonialism, has always been a topic of critique.
As part of this year’s programming, two groups are leading alternative walking tours through Glasgow’s historic city centre to discuss with visitors and locals alike how British colonialism and Glasgow’s role in this system are still present in the built environment. Radical Glasgow Tours walks around Glasgow Green, while Invisible Cities, a non-profit employing people with experience of homelessness as guides, goes from St Mungo’s Cathedral to Nelson Mandela Square.
“We’re very focused on the idea of engaging with histories as continuing struggle and thinking about what the living traditions of resistance against empire mean in the city,” said Henry Bell, a member of Radical Glasgow Tours.
Challenging colonialism at the Commonwealth Games
The first edition of what would become the Commonwealth Games took place in 1930 and was known as the British Empire Games. Bell starts his tour by explaining that the objective of the Games was to be “another link in the chain to bind the dominions to the mother country.” Set in Hamilton, Canada, the participating countries were England, Australia, Bermuda, British Guyana, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales.
As the British empire gradually fell apart, the name of the Games changed to reflect this, being the British Empire and Commonwealth Games from 1950-1966 and the British Commonwealth Games until 1970.
The Games have long been a site of protest, with one of the most significant examples being Edinburgh 1986 when several African nations boycotted the games to protest Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to impose economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa. In 2018, when the Games were held in so-called Australia’s Gold Coast, Aboriginal protesters blocked the opening ceremony to protest the British Crown’s theft and occupation of their land.
In the 2022 Games in Birmingham, athletes were for the first time officially allowed to use their podium to “advocate positively for social causes which they feel are just to them.”
When the Games previously came to Glasgow in 2014, there were some attempts to address the colonial history, such as the Empire Café which hosted discussions about the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. However, Bell recalled that conversations about this topic were still quite fresh in the city.
“Glasgow is a city built by empire,” said Bell. “If you’re going to be politically engaged or you’re going to try and work for a better world or a better Glasgow, you kind of have to be engaging with empire and with how we understand it.”
This year, both tour groups say that the Commonwealth Games organisers encouraged programming that was critical of the colonial legacy underpinning the Games.
“Obviously the Commonwealth Games is inevitably going to be tied to soft power and international relations, and Radical Glasgow Tours hopes to both be in useful dialogue with it, but also a thorn in its side to some extent,” said Bell.
Glasgow in the Commonwealth
Invisible Cities and Radical Glasgow Tours have been offering tours of Glasgow for years which reckon with the city’s role in colonialism, slavery, and empire. But thanks to funding from the Commonwealth Games festival, they’re able to offer their tours for free and promote them to a wider audience.
“I think it fits within the wider ambition that we have of talking about things that maybe other tours don’t talk about, and also having more honest conversation around what cities look like and how they’re built,” said Zakia Moulaoui Guéry, founder and CEO of Invisible Cities.
Invisible Cities started developing resources about Black history in Scotland in 2020, which includes discussion of how much of Glasgow was built with wealth obtained through slavery. The names of many of these plantation owners and “tobacco lords” were given to streets in the Merchant’s City, such as Archibald Ingram, John Glassford, and Andrew Buchanan.
“The Commonwealth Games bring people together for a very positive reason,” said Moulaoui Guéry. “But I think that’s why it’s important to tie in things that are maybe not as positive, but ultimately a part of the history here.”
Invisible Cities also publishes descriptions of their tours on their website so that anyone visiting the city can learn about the information shared by the guides. Moulaoui Guéry said that they want it to be accessed by as many people as possible.
Invisible Cities Glasgow guides Angie and Silvana. Courtesy of Invisible Cities
But ultimately, these tours are not just giving people information. The guides also hope to foster discussion about the past and how we can address these difficult legacies. Invisible Cities chose to end the tour at Nelson Mandela Place to celebrate what has already been done to recognise resistance against colonialism.
For Bell, understanding the past is essential to building a better future. He argued that the anti-immigration riots in Glasgow over the past week are a clear example of how British colonial violence still persists.
“Engaging with how that white supremacy has been fought in the past, both by Glaswegians and by people internationally, is crucial for understanding how we combat it today,” he said.
Both Radical Glasgow Tours and Invisible Cities are running tours until the first week of August. Tours are free, and can be booked through their respective websites.
