Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow Ends Display of Confederate Flag

[David Lockmiller]

New York Times – November 29, 2023

A country and western music venue in Scotland, nearly 4,000 miles and 150 years removed from the Civil War, voted this week to end its controversial display of the Confederate flag.

Until recently, a night of live music at the Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow, a members’ club that holds public events, would end with what it described as a salute to the war’s dead.

The flag had been displayed in the club, which offers live music, line dancing and a saloon bar, since it opened in 1974, more than a century after the Union’s defeat of the Confederacy forces.

Chris McDowell, the club secretary at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry, said that efforts to remove the flag had been ongoing for a few years. Visitors had often been unhappy to see the flag on display, Ms. McDowell said, which had resulted in verbal incidents as well as the cancellations of some bookings and events.

Among the cancellations was The National Theater of Scotland, which does not have a building of its own and tours around the country:

“Unfortunately due to the displaying of the Confederate Flag at the venue we have withdrawn our interest,” the theater group said in October, adding that going ahead with a show there would be “inappropriate and insensitive to our audiences, artists and arts workers.”

[David Lockmiller]

The National Theater of Scotland does not have a building of its own and tours around the country. If it does not perform, the entire company does not get paid. The National Theater of Scotland withdrew their interest in a performance at this location as a matter of principle. Not for a civil war fought in Scotland, but because of the meaning of a Civil War fought a century earlier in the United States.