THE high-spirited events leading up to the Glasgow students’ Charities Day of January 1955 could not fail to be noticed.
There was, for a start, a running “battle” between students of the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Technical College at the city’s Central Station.
Lunch-hour commuters had to run for safety as soot and flour bombs sailed through the air. A young female student entered the station on horseback and was promptly ordered to dismount. Two British Railways policemen, on duty at a platform entrance, were peppered with flour. An art student was briefly stunned by a blow to the head.
The cause of the trouble, it was reported, was a bust, which was allegedly stolen by art students from the technical college in George Street; they had planned to place it in George Square, but the college students recovered it after a struggle. After leaving the chaos of the railway station, the art students entered the college but were forced back by superior numbers.
Battle was resumed the following day, when some 100 technical students tried to rush the art school in Renfrew Street (pictured) but were repelled.
Sand, flour, soot, bread and empty boxes were thrown. Four hoses were used, and the would-be invaders made a dozen attempts with battering-rams to get into the school. There was fighting in Scott Street, and police had to divert traffic and escort some of the smaller children from Garnetbank School.
Elsewhere, students “kidnapped” top actors from city theatres and held them for ransom.
Meantime, the bust that had caused the trouble was quietly removed from the college by a party of Glasgow University students and taken to the home of the Lord Provost, Thomas A Kerr. They asked him, in the name of the university students, to accept it. He accepted, saying that he bore them no resentment. “I was young once myself,” he added.
* More tomorrow.
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