Glasgow council is the proof that pork barrel politics is not 'harmless'

The National  - 16th October 2018  Michael Fry

Glasgow City Chambers has been the home of various forms of local government since 1889

IN answer to my column last week on the pork barrel in politics, Neil Munro wrote in to rebuke me for being sniffy about it. In its defence he said that at the end of the day a ruling party still has to be able to answer the question “What have you done for me lately?”

Of course I agree this forms one part of representative democracy. Its ideal is that all citizens should be treated in an even-handed manner, but when the voters elect a particular MP or MSP they also expect him or her to act inside the processes of government on behalf of their personal interests, in a way that as private individuals they cannot do for themselves. If there is a plan to extend a motorway past their front door, or to redirect a flight path overhead, or to open a refuge for drug users round the corner, the only practical way for their democratic authority to be exerted is if their elected representative speaks up for them and says on their behalf, Not In My Backyard.

There is then a risk that honest politicians might need to oppose their own government in its pursuit of some obnoxious policy (not, heaven knows, an unusual turn of events). An elementary test of political skills is to wriggle out of such conflicts of interest. Constituencies may have wishes of their own not always coinciding with national needs. Then I would say it is the first duty of the member to represent the constituency as it wants to be represented: admittedly, this can be a tall order.

When Boris Johnson feared he would be whipped into voting for an extra runway at London Airport, which borders the prosperous suburb he sits for, he managed to find a foreign freebie he could get away just in time to miss the crucial division at Westminster. He soon ceased to be foreign secretary anyway, so he might just as well have made a better fist of protecting his constituents’ point of view.

In any case this is all the small change of democratic politics and, I dare say, merits not much by way of reproach. To me the pork barrel is something much bigger and smellier. A good example is the deal struck between the UK Government and the DUP in Ulster, by which the second keeps the first in office, so far at least. In exchange came £1 billion in new funding for Northern Ireland on its own, without any knock-on boost for the other nations of the UK.

As this was announced amid the turmoil after the last General Election, Nicola Sturgeon said: “In concluding this grubby, shameless deal, the Tories have shown that they will stop at nothing to hold on to power – even sacrificing the very basic principles of devolution. The Tories’ excuses are simply empty spin, and expose that they once again plan on short-changing Scotland ...

“This is the worst kind of pork-barrel politics, which has shredded the last vestiges of credibility of this weakened Prime Minister.” So Nicola can be just as sniffy as I am.

Quite right too. She is an MSP for Glasgow which, before the SNP seized it from Labour, had the biggest pork barrel in Britain. Till that point, city government amounted to an apparatus by which the resources of the public sector could be allocated to a range of clienteles.

For the 80 years of Labour rule, chronic economic crisis in the city and the region around it determined that many human transactions – a sale of goods, a request for a liquor licence, an application for a council house, the renting of a market pitch or the tendering for a municipal contract – got affected by the prevailing clientelism. To put it another way, these transactions were coloured by class, religion, ethnicity – or, let us be brutally frank about it, by sectarianism.

The structure of political command and control prompted Labour activists to regard bribes or rewards as legitimate tools for the exercise of power and the reinforcement of loyalty from client groups. There was a LibDem councillor on Glasgow corporation called Niall Walker who after a few years gave it all up as a bad job, then published a book about his experiences. He wrote: “I have received phone calls from architects and publicans who confirm that councillors and officials in some cases have a price list for a favourable vote in committee. Some councillors just come out with it, no beating about the bush, and some are obviously more circumspect. I heard from a publican that it cost £2000 to get a licence.”

There were also councillors who just saw politics as the road to a better personal way of life than mere work. Glaswegians grew used to piquant stories about local councillors and officials on their exotic junkets. Remember the transport team that just had to go to Manchester on the day Rangers played there in the 2008 UEFA cup final? Or the delegation to a conference in Cannes on property development? Or the event with the alluring title, ‘A Great Night In with Glasgow’, which was a business networking reception in New York?

I could go on, but I’d say the deepest corruption lies not in squalid perks, rather in the lack of any active democracy in supposedly democratic institutions. Niall Walker recalled: “Someone who has been a convener of a powerful committee for more than five years has their own fiefdom. Other party members are loath to vote against him for fear of losing their seat at the table.” If a single party is in power for so long as Labour was in Glasgow, individuals in top positions can make themselves irremovable.

Massive Labour majorities in the council meant, then, a lack of debate on crucial issues, a jealous sharing among cronies of the fruits of office and the incessant feuds of cliques behind the scenes. In wider Glasgow, this led to alienation between the ruling party and the citizens it was meant to be serving till, like the Soviet Union of 1989, it just collapsed in 2017. That, I have to tell Neil Munro, is why I cannot join him in regarding all this as really quite normal and harmless, or something – like the rain – that Glasgow simply needs to put up with.

My esteemed colleague Kevin McKenna wrote a couple of weeks ago: “For the foreseeable future, Glasgow will continue to be the key to the SNP’s continuing dominance in Scotland. The obverse of this, of course, is that if momentum and success in Glasgow are seriously threatened then so, too, is the great independence adventure. The party can never become complacent about Glasgow.”

For once, I agree with Kevin. The change of ruling party has already seen an improvement in the running of the city, yet there has occasionally been a whiff of scandal too. While this has been on nothing remotely approaching Labour’s scale, it would be better if the SNP had remained resolutely squeaky clean.

A lot of public money will have to be spent in Glasgow for a long time yet. Endless social problems still need to be tackled. But beyond that, it is no less necessary to restore a sense of citizenship to Glaswegians so that, for example, they participate in elections and referendums in the same numbers and with the same commitment as the rest of the nation, rather than remaining sunk in the indifference of abstention. For this city needs better politicians, and perhaps it now has them. It also needs to banish any sense that corruption can make the exercise of democratic rights a waste of time. The stench of the pork barrel is what signals the danger.

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