The Obliteration of Memories

Googling is so easy – “everything we need is there”. Except it’s simply not true. Google has a gigantic hole which no-one talks about – knowledge of those who acted as role models in the period before Google existed (BG – before google).

I’ve been trying to check my memory of events in the late 1960s and 1970s when I was involved in initiatives which swept across Scotland and had influences further afield. But as far as Google is concerned, these events never took place. 

I google the names of people on whose words I used to hang – like John Mackintosh, who had been an academic tutor of mine and then Professor and Labour MP but found only a couple of references (including a huge list of the articles in his archives). However, thanks to the archives site, I was able to access his The Devolution of Power : local democracy, regionalism and nationalism which came out in 1968.

Geoff Shaw had been an inspiring Glasgow community minister and then, all-too briefly, political leader of Glasgow City and the first Convener of the new Strathclyde Regional Council from 1974-78. A book had been written about him (“Geoff”) and his funeral (at Glasgow Cathedral) attended by the nation’s dignitaries drew overflow crowds. But he gets only a couple of google references – including a short Wikipedia entry.  

And Dick Stewart, the ex-miner and leader of Lanark County Council and of Strathclyde’s Labour Group is virtually impossible to find - despite his funeral actually being attended by a Conservative Cabinet Minister. 

It’s only thanks to an ex-official’s mountain blogs that we have this record of the Region’s achievements – although one of my other senior colleagues was persuaded by one of the Scottish national newspapers to pen this paean on the Region’s demise in 1996. 

So – to offset the Google hegemony – I offer my record of important material about the Scottish condition between the 1960s and 1980s which I know about -

·       Scottish Government Yearbooks !976-1992 A superb website which gives access the archives of every yearbook in this period. Probably the only source which gives a sense of what it was like to be alive during these years – although subject to the usual vagaries and prejudices of the academics (generally) who supplied the material. A couple of my pieces can be found – one from 1983 on the relationships between the Scottish Regions and the Districts.- and a more speculative piece from 1984 called Scottish local government; what future? 

·         Review of Local Governance (COSLA 2018) A useful overview – starting in 1968 - of what various efforts of reorganisation have achieved

Re  generation and Poverty in Scotland – evidence and policy review; Douglas Robertson (Rowntree Trust 2014) This is an important academic study of how governments from 1968 to the Coalition government dealt with the social and economic aspects of regeneration. A shorter version is available here

·       The making of an empowering profession (Community Learning and Development Council 2002) tells the fascinating story of how Scotland rediscovered its democratic traditions in the last few decades of the 20th century 

·       Case study in Organisational Learning and Political Amnesia (1995) tells the neglected story of how Strathclyde Region came to establish a unique social strategy which influenced the Scottish government - updated this year by  Modernity’s Last Gasp - SRC’’s theory of change

·       Criticism and public rationality – professional rigidity and the search for caring government; Harry Smart (1991) is a rare and riveting account of tensions between education and social work as a political system tried to introduce changes which challenged professional traditions. 

·         Social Strategy for the Eighties (Strathclyde Regional Council 1982) This is the “little Red Book” which was widely distributed within the Region and whose development is described in later posts. I’m seeing it for the first time in 30 years thanks to the valiant efforts of Keith Yates who worked with me on the draft for several months in 1981/82 

·       The Search for Democracy – a guide to and polemic about local government in Scotland (1977); a little book I produced for students and community activists to help demystify a new system of local government 

·       What Sort of Overgovernment?  Chapter in “Red Paper on Scotland” ed G Brown (1975) My earliest published piece about the challenge of democracy – in a famous book edited by someone who was UK Prime Minister 2007-2010.