When Glasgow made history by hosting the Scottish Parliament

The Parliament’s interim home, the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall on The Mound was be needed for the Kirk's annual General Assembly. The temporary base, for two weeks in May, was to be the former Strathclyde Region debating chamber, itself in the old Glasgow High School building at Elmbank Street, Charing Cross.

Scottish Executive sources said Parliament had opted for Glasgow because the only other option, the Royal High School on Edinburgh's Calton Hill, was judged to be damp, cramped and too expensive to wire for sound. Elmbank Street, on the other hand, had a built-in microphone system wired to specialised recording equipment and was big enough to accommodate all 129 MSPs.

The news was warmly welcomed by Glasgow politicians. The city’s Labour leader, Charles Gordon, said: “We still believe the Parliament should have located in Glasgow in the first place. We have the biggest centre of population and we are the commercial heart of Scotland. But what's done is done”.

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SNP front bencher Nicola Sturgeon, a Glasgow list MSP, added: “I am pleased that the right decision has been taken on this. It's high time Glasgow got a share of the economic benefits of the Parliament. Two weeks isn't much, but it's a start”.

Scottish Socialist Party list MSP Tommy Sheridan declared: ''This is Scotland's Parliament and it is only fair that Glasgow gets some of the benefits. I think it should hold meetings in Glasgow every year, even after it moves into the new building at Holyrood”.

Lord Provost Alex Mosson and councillor Eric Ross with the signs for the Scottish Parliament at Charing Cross station (Image: Ian Hossack)Sir David Steel, the Parliament’s presiding officer, expressed surprise that the old Scottish Parliament had never sat in Glasgow. Officials in the newly devolved Parliament had gone through old records and found that Glasgow had apparently never had the opportunity to play host to the legislature which disappeared in 1707. “We are creating history”, Sir David told The Herald’s Murray Ritchie.

Glasgow’s Lord Provost Alex Mosson said: ''It should be emphasised that in coming to Glasgow the Scottish Parliament is going to the people and that Glasgow is the first city outside Edinburgh to welcome it”.

Official Report of first Scottish Parliament meeting in Glasgow, May 17, 2000

That March, Tony Blair and his Chief Press Secretary and Official Spokesman, Alastair Campbell, in Edinburgh for the Scottish Labour conference, visited the Parliament on the Mound. “It seemed a very nice building, which made me wonder why they really needed another one”, Campbell wrote in his Diaries. (A footnote acknowledged that this was the General Assembly Hall and that the Parliament had several other temporary homes before the purpose-built Holyrood building was opened by the late Queen in 2004).

On May 17 the Herald Diary had some fun with the opening of the Parliament’s new home. Its item began: “It is diverting but a touch cruel to say to a Glasgow taxi driver: ‘Take me to the Scottish Parliament’. There is a brief expectation of a lucrative hire on the part of the driver of the taximeter cabriolet before he or she realises that the Parliament is in session in the dear green place”.

The debating chamber, the Diary added, was mostly used in those days by the Strathclyde Elderly Forum, “so the Parliament will have a high standard of debate to emulate”.

Lord Provost Alex Mosson, Sir David Steel and Patricia Ferguson MSP, depute presiding officer, in the debating chamber (Image: Chris James)Parliament got underway at 10am that day with Sir David Steel announcing that the Time for Reflection would be delivered by Mr S L Gajree, president of the Hindu Mandir in Glasgow.

The official minutes then quote the presiding officer as saying: “Before we begin our proceedings, I would like, on behalf of the Parliament, to express our thanks to Glasgow City Council and its staff for its preparations and— [Applause.] You are a bit ahead of me, as I want in particular to welcome the Lord Provost of Glasgow, who is in the gallery. [Applause.]

A key subject that day was, fittingly, Glasgow regeneration. Wendy Alexander, Minister for Communities, declared: “On the day on which the Parliament meets for the first time in Glasgow – many of us hope that it will not be the last – it is right to start with the future of this great city”.

My name is Margaret and I'm from Edinburgh

Later in her speech she remarked that the “no mean city” of the 20th century was “giving way to the cutting-edge city of the 21st century.

“As we know”, she continued, “Scotland’s headline writers have not only been hard on Glasgow, but in recent months have echoed with the cry, ‘What has this Parliament done for us?’ Today, I want to answer that question for all Glaswegians, particularly for those loyal Labour voters who looked forward to home rule as a strategy for better homes, schools, hospitals and more jobs. I want to lay out our vision for the new Glasgow – the story of a renaissance that has just begun”.

SNP Shadow Communities Minister Fiona Hyslop meets Robert and Elizabeth MacMillan at a lobby of the Scottish Parliament in Glasgow organised by the Glasgow Campaign Against Housing Stock Transfers (Image: Angela Catlin)Our political correspondent, who some half-a-century earlier had actually been a pupil at the High School of Glasgow, opened his report the following day thus: “The feelgood factor was tangible. As the Scottish Parliament met in Glasgow for the first time, all the talk was of how natural it all felt. Kenny Gibson, Nationalist MSP of this parish, welcomed his colleagues to the ‘Holy City’, and a succession of politicians competed to swear their undying loyalty to the dear green place. They all banged on about how they felt at home.

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“After Wendy Alexander became the umpteenth MSP to proclaim 'I am a Glaswegian', there was widespread anticipation that someone would eventually go overboard and cry: 'Ich bin ein Glaswegian’

“Margaret Smith, a Liberal Democrat from the far east, said it was a bit like attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She summoned the courage to confess: 'My name is Margaret and I'm from Edinburgh,' and warm was the applause from the similarly afflicted”.

Generally, however, our correspondent added, this was a day in which the Scottish Parliament showed Scotland's first city “genuine and even heartwarming respect and affection.

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“It was almost like a salving of conscience”, he continued. “Smouldering feelings of outrage at the way Glasgow was mistreated in the fight for the Parliament's temporary home were rekindled by the ease with which MSPs settled down for business in surroundings which were far from strange.

“It still beggars belief that Glasgow was encouraged to bid for the Parliament in a cynical manoeuvre designed to jerk Edinburgh from its complacency and its non-existent effort to win the temporary Parliament. But there was no future in nursing old resentments on this special day”.

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On June 1, at the final meeting of the Parliament in Glasgow, Jim Wallace, the Deputy First Minister, praised the city for its co-operation. “It has been much appreciated and everyone has made us feel warmly welcome”, he added.

Afterwards, at a dinner for MSPs at the City Chambers, Lord Provost Alex Mosson used the occasion to censure the press and academics for their repeated comparisons of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

A week or so later, the Herald revealed that the first steps had been take which could lead to a permanent presence in Glasgow for MSPs, with the City Chambers hosting parliamentary committees.

"Following the Parliament's successful sojourn in the West while the Kirk temporarily reclaimed its Assembly Hall”, the paper added, “there are moves to give MSPs a more permanent role in Glasgow and possibly also in Stirling, both within easy striking distance of Edinburgh for the politicians and civil servants based there”.