“As a trustee of The Druid Network and a Glasgow resident. I spent over 10 years as TDNs representative at The Interfaith Network, the UKs main interfaith organisation which closed down last year due to the previous Government removing funding in an act, imo, of political malice. I served in the senior role of Vice Moderator for 5 years, the first Druid to hold a senior position within the mainstream UK interfaith community.
The event in Glasgow was an interfaith celebration to mark the beginning of Glasgow 850, a year of celebrations marking the 850th year since the Royal charter declaring Glasgow a Royal Burgh. A TDN member was due to give a small speaking section, along with many other faith groups, in the event. She contacted me just before Yule after she had been contacted by the events organiser who informed her that a senior figure within Glasgow Presbytery along with another senior figure within the Roman Catholic church, had objected to pagans and humanists speaking at this event. The event was a collaboration between Glasgow City Council, The Mediaeval Glasgow Trust, St Mungo’s Academy, St Aloysius’ College, Interfaith Glasgow and Interfaith Scotland with funding from the Glasgow Mediaeval trust and the Lord Provost’s office.
The apparent reason why this was an issue is that the event was to be held at Glasgow Cathedral. The Cathedral is technically owned by the Crown and run by Historic Environment Scotland but any religious events are placed under the guidance of the Glasgow Presbytery who get “the final say” on what religious rights can be performed in the Cathedral. And it seems their leaders didn’t approve of pagan and humanists speaking there because it was, in my understanding, “consecrated ground”. They had consequently threatened to withdraw from the event if either or both groups were allowed to speak, which would have resulted in the event having to be cancelled.
So I got involved and did the background work as to the facts. Interfaith Glasgow and Interfaith Scotland then both withdrew from the event in support of pagans & humanists and in the case of Interfaith Scotland, specifically because both The Druid Network and the Scottish Pagan Federation are full Interfaith Scotland members and they could not support the event in light of the choices made by those two individual figures.
I decided that even though we could not speak at this event, we could certainly show up. So I put out a call on a couple of local Scottish FB pagan community pages explaining the situation just 72 hours before the event was due to take place. I stated myself and my wife, along with the TDN member would be turning up “fully robed” to be very visible and after getting confirmation from the event organiser that any pagans turning up would be allowed entry with myself, asked if anyone would care to join us in a “Silent Protest”. The community didn’t let us down, over 20 pagans turned up, fully robed with some travelling from as far as 90 miles away to specifically attend. So we attended.
The event itself went off without a hitch, it was very well presented and very successful. I did have quite a few people asking about us ( pagans and Druids) and a lot of people were both surprised and disappointed at the actions of those two individuals. I and all the other attending pagans did not experience any negativity at all. Glasgow has a reputation of being a welcoming and tolerant city and this has been my experience so to have the event hijacked in this manner, in the 21st Century, was a big surprise and disappointment and I could not, in good faith, allow it to go ahead without pagan involvement even if that was more limited than we would have wished. I believe we have made our point in a successful, and colourful, way.”
Neil Pitchford. Republished with permission and with the agreement of the Trustees.
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