“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!”

 I may have told the story of Strathclyde’s Social Strategy before – but being given the opportunity to reflect in Zoom conversations almost 30 years later does encourage different perspectives. The tale I told in 1999 was one of success - at least as far as the process of change was concerned. The management of change was, even in the mid-1980s, a largely neglected subject in the UK - indeed no one used such a phrase in those days. The first popular book with that phrase was Managing Change - and making it stick by Roger Plant - in 1989/90. It was the 1990s before the “management of change” exploded into fashionability – with, for example, The Expertise of the Change Agent - public performance and backstage activity (1992) by David Buchanan offering some fascinating insights. But it was 2000 before Robert Quinn gave us the deeply impressive “Change the World”- which coincided with the outbreak of unrest from social movements globally.. Just how fashionable the field became you can see from the Annotated bibliography for change agents I wrote in 1999

Although I started the 1999 paper with a list of the developments which had preceded the creation of Strathclyde Region, I realise now I had underestimated their significance. In particular I had – as most people do – underplayed the positive role of the Labour governments of 1964-1970

• The Labour government of 1964-70 spent much of its period in power exploring how the UK could be modernised; it did this largely via Royal Commissions ie a group of the "Great and the Good" who would take a couple of years to hear evidence and make recommendations

• Its perspective had been very much that of "high modernism" viz a commitment to size, democracy and efficiency

• perhaps no more so than in the literal decimation of the Scottish local government system (albeit with strong support from the Heath government of 1970-74) leading to the creation in 1974 of 9 elected Regions and 53 District Councils

I remember visiting the House of Commons in those years and having a discussion with Willie Ross, the Secretary of State for Scotland, to impress on him the benefits which could accrue the creation of Strathclyde Region – to which, of course, the old Scottish local authorities were utterly opposed. Hansard subsequently recorded Willie Ross's reference to the meeting. In the meantime, the world moved on

• "Born to Fail?" was a 1973 report which exposed the scandal of the scale of multiple deprivation in the West of Scotland ("social disadvantge" was the actual term used but amended in the media to "deprivation"))

• to which SRC responded strongly 2 years later with its deprivation strategy – which it elevated to its top priority

• The Region was seen as a bit of a monster - but some of us saw the "Born to Fail?" Report as an opportunity to demonstrate the difference a well-resourced government body could make to people's lives

• I remember traipsing around the departments of what were then 2 city Universities to try to find knowledgable people – there were none

• this was not only the first municipal strategy against deprivation – it was the first time any UK government body had attempted such a bold step

• It was a remarkably open process – almost certainly because we accepted that, as Labour councils had been responsible for housing and most services for several decades, we had to take our share of responsibility for the results

And we were lucky – a lot of wise people had been developing structures for reform in the previous deacde, expressing itself in at least 4 waves of change

• between 1971-74 a group of individuals led by Ken Alexander produced in 1974 the West Central Scotland plan which contained the basic analysis and recommendations to allow the Region to make the decision to

• one of the Royal Commissions (Wheatley) produced between 1966 and 1968 a radical set of recommendations for Scottish local government

• recognition of urban needs – in the urban programme and CDPs set up in 1968 in partial response to the US War on Poverty

• Special committees of experts were set up by central government in 1971 (Bains: Paterson) to produce - as guidance for new local authorities then being created in England and Scotland - organisational guidelines for better management and policy-making. The main criticism in the reports they produced was the way that local government decision-making focussed (a) on the past (ie continuing to do what it had done before); (b) on itself (making no attempt to explore what those receiving its services thought or wanted) and (c) on single services - rather than the impact on the community.

The new local authorities were therefore advised to -

• appoint a Chief Executive

• set up a Policy Committee (Cabinet)

• establish strategy processes (to ensure a focus on policy issues and on the future)

• have inter-departmental groups (to help that strategic work)

All this reflected what was considered best practice in business and was concerned to concentrate administrative and political power in new structures and posts which were to be used to stamp a strategic purpose on the "ad-hocery" which passed for management. Corporate management and planning structures became fashionable - despite some critiques from those working at a neighbourhood level and a few academics such as John Dearlove.