Glasgow Anniesland By-elections 2000

'Voters at Widnes Central or Newcastle Gasworks would, for a season, be the cynosure of all eyes; and when they spoke Westminster trembled. Winnie Ewing took Hamilton, and the SNP has been in Parliament ever since. Shirley Williams took Crosby, and the Alliance reached 51% in opinion-polls. Labour seized Fulham, in 1986, the beginning of the end of Kinnock's triumph over Militant. Sillars won Govan: Scotland, the Claim of Right. The Liberal Democrats, that ex-parrot, ousted the Tories in Eastbourne and Thatcher, a few weeks later, fell from her perch.' John MacLeod in the Herald, 23 rd November 2000.

By-elections ain't what they used to be

By John MacLeod in the Herald 23 rd November 2000

Seen from Renfrew ferry, it's a rising blend of tenement, tower block, crane and warehouse, soaring and rolling back to the Kilpatrick Hills. Seen from Jordanhill, it's a tapestry of the endeavours of sincere men, through decades, in wisdom and folly, to house the deserving poor.

You have Wheatley's wonderful red sandstone flats by Anniesland Cross, with their balconies and hints of Art Nouveau. (Do a dozen remain in public ownership?) You have the creamy stucco of Knightswood, garden city of the Thirties, with its broad avenues and proud lime trees.

Here and there high-flats rise in knots, each window with its own untold tale of love; loss; loneliness; dignity and triumph and times of gentle happiness. You see their lights in the night; warning beacons, stop, ware planes in roaring descent upon Glasgow Airport, and you wonder what stories these dimlit curtains hide.

There's almost an American sweep to the seat. Few cities enjoy as elegant an approach as Glasgow from the west, by Lomond and Leven and along the Boulevard and the Great western Road. Time has cleared, or filled, the gaunt gaps of failed industry. You can no longer mark where Goodyear Tyres once rolled; at night, burger-joints and leisure places bustle in the new service economy,

Only Drumchapel defies the magnificence of its hilltop setting: an ugly sinkhole of hope. Even the Free Church congregation gave up the ghost this year, abandoning their phlegm-coloured bunker of a church for union in Partick - the only charge of her many post-war church extension projects finally to fail.

For the rest, it's a pleasant constituency to walk about; there is friendliness, and much of the simple pleasures of life to observe. After Dewar's funeral children scurried through its streets, kicking dusty autumn leaves; fireworks banged and thudded in whiff of cordite.

On Dumbarton Road a rocket exploded from a close, followed by a small face of inquiry. You tut-tutted, but could not squash the grin, and he beamed back.

Children's fat scrawl, too, could be seen in the book of condolence laid out for a week at Anniesland's Safeway: amidst the mass of tributes to "Big Donald", and "Scotland's loss", and "We will not see your like again", there was a plain virtue in such baby-printed lines as "Goodbye I love you", and "You came to my mummy's tearoom".

By-elections, like nostalgia, ain't what they used to be. When the late Vincent Hanna hosted his Newsnight specials, they were theatre tending on farce.

Those were the great days of clone-Tories and unelectable, tubby Labour Bennites and when Steel and Owen cooed from the lofty perch of the Alliance. There were smaller deposits then and memorable, colourful fringe candidates.

By-elections were high-profile events of street theatre. You had motorcades and theme-tunes and the descent of minor celebrities. A Proclaimer would yodel; Billy Connolly would solicit.

They mattered, we were told, those miniaturised contests. Voters at Widnes Central or Newcastle Gasworks would, for a season, be the cynosure of all eyes; and when they spoke Westminster trembled. Winnie Ewing took Hamilton, and the SNP has been in Parliament ever since. Shirley Williams took Crosby, and the Alliance reached 51% in opinion-polls. Labour seized Fulham, in 1986, the beginning of the end of Kinnock's triumph over Militant.

Sillars won Govan: Scotland, the Claim of Right. The Liberal Democrats, that ex-parrot, ousted the Tories in Eastbourne and Thatcher, a few weeks later, fell from her perch.

Great, telling stuff. Yet, in each and every instance, those seats returned to mother come the general election.

Do not minimise their capacity for genuine impact. An unofficial Tory stood in Monmouth in 1922, and beat the candidate of the coalition government: Lloyd George fell, and never held office again. When David Steel seized Roxburgh, Salkirk and Peebles, in Sir Alec Douglas-Home's backyard, it was the deathknell for Douglas-Home's leadership.

They're a ruthless business. Funeral baked meats do not coldly furnish forth the counting-tables. Nevertheless by-elections do not, in the great scheme of things, overturn the established order, end civilisation as we know it, or entitle exuberant third-party leaders to tell their activists "to go back to your constituencies and prepare for government."

They're flatter affairs now. Telephone canvassing and computerised direct-mail are the weapons of choice. There's no music and bally-hoo on the streets of Anniesland. Sadly, there are no debates. Labour is too terrified to let its candidates near the opposition.

This poll will be no classic: not on the lines of Glasgow Garscadden, with its rash of hard-left candidates and the crude posters of SPUC and, quaint in TV archive, the drab, ghastly clothes everyone wore. The SNP (contrary to myth) actually increased its vote.

We have not the excitement of Glasgow Hillhead, in 1982, a genuine three-way contest, with Roy Jenkins charming the matrons of Scotstoun, and Jack Glass crusading against the Papal visit, and the SNP's George Leslie fighting the best campaign of the lot and losing his deposit anyway.

Little has changed in the face of Anniesland since my childhood. There are still high-flats and lime trees and angular, modernist Roman Catholic churches. Knightswood Library still has Jennings books; there are "silence please" signs, but staff talk nineteen to the dozen of summer holidays.

The times have changed; our engagement with politics is not what it was. If the Nationalists grab a seat there will have been no conversion of the masses; rather, thousands of disengaged and unhappy Labour supporters will not have troubled to vote.

In America, the democratic malaise is that folk, for the most part, feel they shape their own destiny and politicians are dangerous souls who might mess it up.

Here in the west of Glasgow, the ideals of the Second World War and the optimism of the Sixties are fading from memory - here, along those avenues and up in the high-flats, as in Harris and elsewhere, we seem to think, with Ken Livingstone, that if voting changed anything they'd abolish it.

-Nov 23rd