The majority of this week’s column is lifted from a local free paper with a very rich history, The Govan Press. I make no apology for that as the story which caught my eye in the latest edition concerned The Mary Barbour Association and their attempt to secure funding from the Scottish Government quango, Creative Scotland.

According to the story an application for funding to support artists who have been shortlisted to create a permanent memorial of Govan’s own Mary Barbour was refused.

She was Glasgow’s first female Labour councillor and the woman who led the civil disobedience campaign of rent strikes against the profiteering private landlords in Glasgow in 1915.

The greedy private landlords sought to profit from the extra demand for housing during the war by hiking rents and evicting families of soldiers serving in the Great War’s frontline.

Through determined and courageous organising Mary Barbour assembled an army of women, mostly, across Govan and Maryhill who refused to pay the unjustified rent rises and waged literal combat against sheriff officers despatched to try and evict rent striking families.

It was the type of civil disobedience that was required to break such unjust laws that permitted the private landlords to raise rents at will and punish poor families who could hardly afford existing rents let alone the exorbitant rises.

Mary Barbour and her volunteer army of rent strikers and sheriff officer busters were having none of it. ‘Better to break the law than break the poor’ was one of their mottos.

Labour and the SNP Government could learn a lot from those struggles 100 years ago in relation to the horrendous local government job and services cuts being contemplated today.

Anyway, unbelievably Creative Scotland rejected an application despite finding money to support such delights as a puppet maker to take two productions, entitled Cloud Man and The Secret Life of Suitcases to Canada, China and Australia, and over £6,000 to SonADA to allow it to stage a series of workshops about the sounds of slowness and boredom. Seriously?

Frankly I find that decision incredible and worthy of detailed justification or prompt re-consideration.

A fund was launched last year to raise the £80,000 needed to complete the statue of Mary Barbour but the design, material and location have yet to be decided. I would have thought this was a project Glasgow City council and Creative Scotland would have been all over.

After this column appears on line I intend forwarding it to Creative Scotland in search of an answer as to why this Remember Mary Barbour Association funding request was turned down. I will be emailing them at enquiries@creativescotland.com and I ask you to do likewise.

The Remember Mary Barbour Association and their campaign to build a statue to this Glasgow heroine deserves support from all of Glasgow.

Without their campaign of defiance the Rent Restriction Act of 1915 forcing the Government to freeze rents for the duration of the war would not have been rushed into law. It was the 30,000 rent strikers led by Mary Barbour which forced that concession and ultimately the campaign effectively opened the way for the construction of municipal houses across the city.

Real Glasgow history which should be taught in our schools and is deserving of real support from the likes of Creative Scotland, the City Council and the Scottish Government.