BRIAN DEER:
HANG 'EM HIGH Page
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But there were
also signs of another agenda - and of a political
opportunity for Blair. Clydeside is not only a Labour
stronghold, it is also more than anywhere else in
Britain the heartland of its traditional philosophy.
Rooted in heavy industry and trade unionism, and with
the birthplace of the party's first MP, Keir Hardie,
just down the road in Lanarkshire, here is the United
Kingdom's greatest socialist fortress, more important
even than Liverpool or inner London. And just as Neil
Kinnock, the former party leader, promoted a
tough-guy image with the public through his duel with
Militant Tendency in Liverpool during the 1980s, so
Blair appears determined to enhance his authority by
tackling old Labour in the west of Scotland.
With
such ambitious game plans in mind behind the scenes,
the votes-for-trips inquiry sparked by Gould's
remarks, was upgraded to a wider review. At the City
Chambers, a six-month investigation took place during
which 37 councillors were grilled by officials, and
on September 24 it was announced that at least five
city leaders and four backbenchers would be suspended
and possibly expelled. Their fate is to be determined
at the end of this week by the party's four-person
national constitutional committee, set up in 1988 for
Kinnock's purposes.
Of
these nine, the most high-profile on the Clydeside
landscape is Pat Lally, the 71-year-old lord provost
of Glasgow - a ceremonial post equivalent to an
English lord mayor. Also on the list was his deputy
provost, Alex Mosson, plus Gould's deputy leader,
Gordon McDairmid, and the head of parks and
recreation, James Mutter.
But
there was also a suspension that surprised everybody:
the apparent whistleblowing leader, Gould himself. On
the September morning when disciplinary action was
announced to the media, he was telephoned at his
office by the party's Scottish head office, warning
that in the afternoon the national executive in
London would take action against him too. "It
was a total shock," said one of his supporters,
a councillor, who asked not to be named. "He was
trying to sort out the mess at the City Chambers and
he found himself out on his ear."
Taken
at face value, it seemed a strange reward - and there
was another peculiarity in the affair. After briefly
examining the votes-for-trips allegations, officials,
led by Jack McConnell, the party's Scottish general
secretary, and Eileen Murfin, a national officer from
London, embarked on a fishing expedition in an
apparent bid to solicit more criticisms of the
accused. And in a string of Scottish media
exclusives, the public were regaled with stories in
which councillors accused each other of a bizarre
rag-bag of offences, from violence and threatening
behaviour, to spreading malicious smears about
opponents' sex lives, to non-payment of rent and of
failing to operate within "accepted
procedures". Gould was charged with poor
leadership of the city's Labour group and was forced
to stand down from his job.
With
so many allegations being bandied around, officials
said they were anxious for caution. "If anybody
is found guilty of misconduct," McConnell
declared, after presenting a report in October to the
national executive, "the action will be firm and
strong."
But
with growing signs of tension throughout the UK
between Blairites and traditional socialists in the
party, many observers believe that the crackdown on
Clydeside is motivated as much by a desire to assert
control as by an interest in curbing any abuses. In
short, that new Labour has embarked on rough justice,
determined to destroy its foes.
*****
The
Glasgow City Chambers building was constructed as a
sumptuous citadel of power - power in which the
people were not meant to share. It was completed in
1889, at the very peak of the British Empire, when a
mighty congregation of capital and labour allowed the
city's fathers to boast that they presided over
"the industrial workshop of the world". The
building was essentially a club for landlords,
merchants and proprietors, who for the most part
entered politics because it let them rub shoulders
with the aristocracy and idle rich. In this, the most
spectacular of Britain's municipal headquarters, a
culture of remote paternalism was forged as durable
as its 10m bricks.
The
building commands the east side of George Square and
was designed in the style of an Italian palace, with
grandiose pinnacles and balustrades. Inside there are
marble staircases, mosaic floors and glazed pottery
walls and ceilings of such exquisite extravagance
that by comparison Westminster is a railway station.
There are great glass domes and chandeliers, rich
carpets and finely-carved woodwork. The council
leader and the lord provost enjoy offices that,
fittingly, resemble the sanctuaries of Borgia
princes.
The
grandest spaces are most often deserted, like an
upper class Victorian villa. But every six weeks a
sporadic bell-clanging suggests some frenetic
activity within. This is a signal that a council
session is in progress and that a division is taking
place. Red-collared flunkies throw open heavy doors,
and members who have wandered off to attend to other
matters scurry in to cast their votes. The chief
executive rises, surveys a semicircle of mahogany
pews (where typically around 80 councillors sit under
the enthroned lord provost's gaze) and declares the
motion to be "carried by a large majority".
But
here is a snag for the people they represent: all the
bell-clanging and vote-casting is a farce. Such is
Labour's stranglehold on the city that of the 83
members returned in the last elections - 1995 - 77
were from the ruling party. A paltry three were
Conservatives, while the Scottish National Party,
Liberal Democrats and Militant Labour all struggled
to win one each. So, there may be the appearance of
some kind of democracy in action, but the sessions
are merely rubber-stamping in public what has been
decided in private by Labour. The chief executive
makes the same large majority declaration whatever
the business in hand.
There
are, moreover, no real differences of philosophy
among members of the ruling group. At last month's
meeting, when a nationalist motion was proposed
attacking the government's education policies and,
particularly, the introduction of tuition fees, the
majority mostly gossiped throughout the proceedings,
read newspapers or shuffled in their pews. A
noncommittal "delete all and insert"
amendment was then mechanically carried, squashing
the criticisms like a fly on the windscreen with, as
ever, "a large majority".
Their
Victorian forebears would have been no more
laid-back, and not surprisingly, the opposition is
miffed. "The Labour local election manifesto
indicated that they would have open, democratic
government," John Young, leader of the tiny
Conservative group told me. "Now, I have been a
councillor here for 33 years and this is the least
open and the least democratic government that I have
ever seen. All of the major decisions take place
behind closed doors. If you're talking about school
closures, or things like that, no parents, no
teachers, no children ever hear what sort of
arguments are put up, one way or another."
The
council chamber is the dreariest theatre. All the
action takes place backstage. As Gould demonstrated
when he stormed from the Labour group, an internecine
battle rages behind the common philosophy as vicious
as in any town hall. Without any need to win
arguments with political opponents, the ruling party
has split into warring factions, whose clashes
dominate council affairs. "Verbal
evidence," officials have reported to their
national executive, "was consistent in
describing an almost total absence of good working
relationships within the Labour group and of fierce
factionalism which has become accepted as part of the
normal situation."
Gould
presently leads of one of these fierce factions,
which is about two dozen councillors strong. Like
most of his colleagues who assemble in the chamber,
he flaunts the kind of working class credentials
which are still a boon to Scottish politicians.
Having grown up in the Springburn neighbourhood of
the city, he became a railwayman and then a trade
union official. Before joining the city council, rose
to lead the now-abolished Strathclyde regional
authority, whose drab, functional administrative
offices were less than a mile from the sumptuous City
Chambers.
The
other faction, perhaps half as big again, is led by
Lally, the ageing lord provost. He, too, has
impressive origins, having grown up in a single room
and kitchen in the legendary (and long-demolished)
Gorbals slums. He once worked in a drapers, but in
1967 was elected to what was then the Glasgow
Corporation. His admirers regard him as the grand old
man of West of Scotland politics, and after clearing
himself of wrongdoing following a bribes-for-housing
scandal in the 1970s, he has earnt himself the
nickname "Lazarus".
Gould
sees himself as an old-style right-winger, while
Lally's supporters call themselves
"Tribunites". But what came into the open
with the votes-for-trips outburst was not a division
rooted in ideology. Both men are traditional
tax-and-spend socialists, with no love for prime
minister Blair. When the council leader stormed from
the group after being defeated over the cuts package,
it was not because he, or anyone else of any
consequence, suggested they shouldn't go ahead. The
point at issue was merely the question of whether the
authority's employees should forgo a 2.5% wage rise
to avoid redundancy.
Mere
matters of politics are the small beer of dispute
here. Tribalism, pure and simple, drives conflict.
Gould and 17 councillors used to serve on the giant
Strathclyde regional authority, once Europe's biggest
local government body. Another 37, meanwhile used to
sit with Lally as Glasgow district
councillors. On April Fools Day 1996, the region and
district were fused in a new entity - the Glasgow
City Council - and, straightaway, a feud broke out.
Cut to its core, Scotland's biggest city's politics
is shaped less by uncertainties on the socialist road
than by crude personal rivalries and hatred.
*****
