BRIAN DEER:
HANG 'EM HIGH Page
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Labour's
internal feud at Glasgow City Council sounds like one
of those one-off situation, too embedded in
personalities to be untangled. But, however the
situations appear to superficially shape-shift, a
similar story holds constant across Clydeside. Not
only is Labour's dominance absolute throughout the
region (the party won all of Glasgow's 10
parliamentary seats last May with majorities
averaging 13,000 and made a clean sweep of the dozen
in the surrounding conurbation) but everywhere you
look you see the same tribal faction fights and
parallels in the sleaze allegations.
In
the old weaving town of Paisley, the claims of
corruption were laid only after a quarrel developed
between Tommy Graham MP, a former Rolls-Royce fitter,
and the late Gordon McMaster MP, previously a
gardener. In Monklands, accusations surfaced after
hostilities broke out between councillors in the
towns of Airdrie and Coatbridge. And in Govan, the
Sarwar "electoral fraud" disaster was born
out of a squabble for the party's nomination, when
improprieties on all sides were alleged. And while
these conflicts have superficial elements of,
respectively, old-new Labour, Catholic-Protestant and
Asian-white, these features obscure the common
denominator: the bitter enmity of rival cliques.
Some
people have wondered if there isn't something in the
water supply to explain the geographic concentration.
But those who have tried to probe below the surface
point to wider forces at work. "There is a
vacuum at the base of the Labour Party," John
Foster, professor of applied social studies at
Paisley University, said. "We have not only seen
an end to any effective opposition in Scotland, but
we've seen a withering away of powerful
organisations, such as trade unions, tenants
associations and community groups, that were once a
check on politicians."
As
such sticks of opposition have been broken, moreover,
carrots have been on hand to incite personal
jealousies for the spoils of political power. With
Labour candidates near-certain to win elections,
insidious networks have grown up within the party to
share the more immediate rewards. In an area where
jobs are scarce and skills often redundant, for
instance, councillors get £6,000 basic pay (which
for some is all they live on), plus £18,000 if they
hold a committee chair - which around half of them do
at any time. For many, the alternative to holding
public office would be retirement or life on the
dole.
Not
surprisingly, incumbents have sometimes not wanted to
expose their positions to challenge. Countless
stories go round of party branches where membership
lists have been said to be "closed" to new
applications, while meetings are regularly inquorate.
There have long been an unusually large number of
husband-and-wife teams holding council and
parliamentary seats. And union affiliations
mysteriously rise and fall, corresponding to the
various posts up for grabs. Dominant individuals,
such as Gould and Lally, are mirrored in
bare-knuckles everywhere.
In
the face of the potential for naked cronyism,
traditional disadvantages, such as lack of education,
poor social skills and even low intelligence have not
been regarded as critical obstacles to acquiring
public office. For all the idealism stretching back
to the legendary Hardie, because the party has also
offered the chance of advancement, it is has also
provoked the Clydeside equivalent to the Blairites'
middle class opportunism.
"There's
a story that people tell here about someone who
wanted to be a candidate, and he was asked to outline
his convictions," a former member of the party's
Scottish executive joked with me. "He thought
they meant his criminal record and asked how far back
they wanted him to go."
*****
The
people of Clydeside are rightly known for their
toughness. Two hundred years of the economy explains
it. The workshop of the world was racked by boom and
slump to a degree barely known elsewhere. When the
order books filled, at the shipyards especially, even
those families in the most overcrowded slums would
celebrate comparative good fortune. But when business
turned down, as in time it always did, their plight
was incomparably cruel. The stereotyped view is that
this cycle encouraged drinking, but it also bred a
resilience in the face of adversity that became part
of the region's soul.
The
economy which rollercoastered in the Council
Chambers' golden days produced strident class-based
politics. In the face of appalling deprivation during
slumps, the unions achieved an unparalleled
bargaining power when the labour market tightened
during booms. And though today the great shipyards,
steelworks, mills and factories which once dominated
Clydeside are long gone (with not even a book of
memories in the Sauchiehall Street Waterstones) there
are few who doubt that the footprints of heavy
industry are left deeply embedded in the landscape.
"There
is a continuing inheritance that comes through right
from the early 1900s," Ian Donnachie, senior
lecturer in history at the Open University and editor
of Forward!, a textbook on Scottish Labour politics,
said. "It's the tradition of the skilled working
class employed in large enterprises, and this is what
has really driven the socialist movement forward in
this country."
Heavy
industry and highly-regimented, factory-based jobs
were the foundations of both trade unionism and
socialism. But just as they were more powerfully
forged in this part of Britain than anywhere else, so
a chink in the armour of the Labour programme was
found here before anywhere else needed to look. One
reason for sustained capital investment on Clydeside
was that, for all the formidable organisation of the
workforce, it remained timelessly divided against
itself. Feuds expressed in terms of religion, in
particular, but also of nationality, shades of social
class, Scottish regional origin, trade sector and
level of skill, provided what many have noted as a
fatal brittleness in the region's hard facade. For
all its reputation as the foundry of the Left, the
history of "Red Clyde" militancy included
any number of self-inflicted wounds.
As
the region today is reborn from a quarter century of
industrial collapse and restructuring, some think
that the new Labour leadership in London is emulating
the strategy of the old bosses. They argue, in short,
that (with varying motivations) Blair, Donald Dewar
and Gordon Brown, the powerful chancellor and Scot,
want to play the game of divide and rule. "New
Labour?" Alex Mosson, Lally's deputy and a
former shipyard worker, said in a newspaper interview
last year, before being banned by party officials
from any further comment. "There is nothing new
about new Labour. It is only new capitalism dressed
up."
Mosson's
argument is familiar, but there is some evidence that
it's not a Clyde's width far from relevant. Until
party managers were jolted by Sarwar's appearance in
court on December 17 to deny charges of electoral
fraud, they appeared to do nothing to discourage the
public sense that something was wrong in their ranks.
If anything, officials appeared to stoke more rancour
in the heartland of their Scottish support. Internal
information has been leaked to the press; decisions
of the national executive revealed before the
executive has even sat down; and rumour-spawning
investigations have been left to drag on until a full
year has now elapsed.
It
also seems clear that Blair has predetermined that
the suspended councillors should be axed. Although
the party's constitutional committee doesn't even
meet to consider the allegations until this Friday,
it was leaked three weeks ago that Lally - a party
member for 47 years - is to be expelled for life,
Mosson is to be suspended for five years and three
others are to be suspended for three years. Gould is
"expected" to be allowed to remain,
although his case is said to be viewed
"seriously".
