The early 1970s saw an intense debate about the very future of Glasgow – the rehousing of people from the city’s slums in the 1960s to New Towns in nearby parts of Scotland had resulted in a significant decline of Glasgow’s population and many felt that it was useless to go on ploughing money into the city. And the shocking 1973 “Born to Fail?” report identified not just Glasgow but the entire West of Scotland as a UK leader in “multiple deprivation”.
There is always, however, opportunity lying within a crisis; and those of us who seized this one were those who had been most critical of the performance of Labour councils. They may have had a good record of slum clearance and house-building but couldn’t handle the new assertiveness being shown by tenants. The new Region established in 1974 required, in our view, a new approach, based on the new spirit of participation which the Labour Government had recognised with its Skeffington Report on “People and Planning" (1969).
The very legitimacy of the new Region was in question – partly because of its enormous scale, its services used by half of the 5 million Scottish people. This, after all, was still local government and people were beginning to express some discontent with being taken for granted by too many Labour municipalities. The Scottish nationalists had scored some stunning parliamentary victories in the late 1960s and the talk, by the time the Regions came into existence in 1974, was of the prospects of being “over-governed” – with membership of the EC having been confirmed in the 1975 referendum and active talk of a possible “Scottish Assembly” which was eventually put to a referendum in Scotland in 1979, failing only on a “technicality”.
“What sort of Over-government?” was indeed the title I gave to my contribution to Gordon Brown’s famous Red Paper on Scotland which came out in 1975. I readily admit that the Over-government piece was an angry and academically pretentious one But its stress on the complacency and conservatism of Labour municipalities was an important corrective for the times. The headings give a good sense of the drift of the piece -
Local government and devolution – a confused debate
what is wrong with local authorities?
structural weaknesses
ideological weaknesses
the challenge of corporate planning
paternalism
Labour Groups
T he Devolution of Power was an important little book produced by Labour MP John P Mackintosh in 1968 which helped produce the Kilbrandon Royal Commission, reporting in 1973. The problem with devolution is that what's conceded can readily be withdrawn and generally is - as we saw with the abolition first of the metropolitan bodies like the GLC in the 1980s and the Scottish Regions in the 1990s.
The basic point is that the 1970s saw great turmoil – and the Region needed to give people some hope that it understood their concerns and would be willing to use its resources to ensure fairer public services.
An initial deprivation strategy was set out by 1975/6 but, over the winter of 1981, was further developed at a series of community conferences attended by 1000 activists who reviewed the initial actions taken by the Region and, with the May 1982 elections, ensured that the subsequent report had a fresh legitimacy
It was printed as an attractive (little red) booklet (complete with poems by TS Eliot, Brecht, Adrian Mitchell and quotations from William James and Alice in Wonderland!) and widely distributed, as was a shorter version in the internal staff Bulletin. The Region's free Newspaper distributed to every household - and more selective monthly "Digest" sent to all Community groups - were both intensively used in the years to come to explain the details of the work. Workshops were held in a variety of public and professional settings over the following years to get the key messages across. And these were simple - if challenging -
"The existing inequalities in service allocation did not happen by accident: they are mediated through the administrative machine by generally well-intentioned professionals and administrators practising apparently fair and neutral principles. To tackle these inequalities therefore requires more than a general expression of content handed over, in traditional style, for implementation. It demands the alteration of structures and the working assumptions".
"What we were asking our staff to do in 1976 was to accept that fairly simple things were needed from them in the first instance; not massive spending but just a commitment, firstly to those who lived in the APTs; secondly to attempting new relationships both with their colleagues in other Departments and with residents. We were also asking for imagination and courage in encouraging staff to bring forward proposals for better practice despite the discouragement we knew they would encounter from the rules, traditions and prejudices which seem deeply engrained in certain departments"
"The majority of staff are discouraged from joint work with councillors, other professionals and residents in APTs by the way the traditional departmental system of local government works. Career advance depends on one's work as a professional or manager in a particular department - and not on the collaborative ventures emphasised in this and the 1976 document. That is the crucial issue which must now be faced and resolved. Exhortations and good intentions are no longer enough"
Previous Posts in this series
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/born-to-fail.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/bliss-was-it-in-that-dawn-to-be-alive.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/turning-crisis-into-opportunity.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-ever-growing-irrelevance-of.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/performance-v-results-as-measure-of.html
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