 | 'The SNP this time round is very bright, highly-qualified people who take the trouble to find out what the council is all about, whereas the Labour group for the last three to four years has been rent asunder by internal squabbling.' Ex-Labour Renfrewshire Councillor Betty McIntosh, who now sits as an Independent. |  |
The local police must know their way in though, because they've been called to the building on several occasions over the past year when the air in the council chamber has been rent with cries of fascist, eunuch, nazi, lager lout, and other insults - the most audible signs of a long running and increasingly personal feud between ruling Labour administration and their SNP opposition.
In the past, the situation brought little more than a slap on the wrist from the Scottish Office, some sharp words from opposing party headquarters, and a flurry of bemused headlines: Scotland's most unruly authority; council farce; petty feud boils over.
But more recently it has grown uglier, and the ripples have spread more widely. Last week a large lump of metal wrapped in a SNP leaflet was thrown through the window of Provost Nancy Allison's home, and she has told The Herald that the situation has become so acrimonious that she now fears for her own safety.
Meanwhile, the SNP says it hopes the slashing of one of its councillor's car types outside his surgery wasn't overspill from the antagonism within the chamber itself.
At the same time, the Renfrew business community, which has publicly dismissed the rumpus as 'energetic debate' says privately that if it doesn't stop, it's going to hurt the local economy. Council officials say they are finding it difficult to attract new staff, and councillors themselves admit that the work of the council is being affected.
'Because there's so much shenanigans going on in the council it's being run more by officials than it is by democratically elected councillors,' said one councillor, 'And that has got to be bad.'
No one here can put their finger on the exact catalyst for the feud, but many say it grew from the first meeting of the former Renfrew District Council after the 1992 elections. The council was split between 23 Labour councillors and 22 opposition. Ms Allison had been chosen as Labour nominee for provost, but a senior Labour member, Mr Willie Orr, joined the opposition to secure the provostship instead.
Whatever the spur, the bitterness has continued into the new unitary authority which is even more divided with 20 Labour, 13 SNP, three Liberal Democrats, two Conservatives and two Independents, who were both former Labour supporters.
Last year the police were summoned to the council chamber on several occasions to eject councillors and members of the public; the chief executive Mr Tom Scholes had to warn councillors not to make derogatory remarks about members of staff; councillors threatened legal action after being called Nazis; letter were fired off to SNP and Labour headquarters; and finally, in December, Scottish Local Government Minister George Kynoch publicly condemned the council after both sides had appealed to him to step in and sort out the mess.
By this time both groups were issuing press releases accusing the other of being undemocratic and calling for each other's leaders to resign.
There is no middle ground here. No hint of accord from either side. Compromise is a four-letter word, dirtier it seems, than many of the insults flung regularly around the debating chamber.
Depending on which side you take, the council is being run by either a Labour cabal, including former Militant sympathisers, who have made themselves comfortable on the positions and perks of local government office and stifle debate at every opportunity; or a committed Labour administration trying hard to function in the face of destructive behaviour from a frustrated minority who have admitted they are out to 'wreck the system'.
Mr Jim Mitchell would have you believe the former. The SNP's deputy leader is often at the fore-front of slagging matches across the council chamber. He has a lengthy list of grievances against the Labour administration: they are trying to gerrymander him out of his ward, he says; the SNP are seriously under-represented on committees; they've stuck the SNP and Independents office away from the main council suite.
When the phone rings in his office and there's no one on the line he says 'that's Labour for you, only joking". His chief accusation is that Labour stifles democracy by refusing to let the opposition debate issues and by railroading through motions.
'I do the antagonism that unionist Labour is showing towards the Scottish National party and the smaller independent councillors is getting progressively worse, and I think the real reason behind it all is that they see the writing on the wall,' he says. 'They are actually afraid that Labour might win a general election which would leave them vulnerable. It's about Labour trying to blacken the SNP. What Labour does in local government is they build fiefdoms. They take the public for granted and the only thing they are interested in is squabbling amongst themselves for titles and honours and privileges.'
'Where does this come from? From the time that Nancy Allison wanted to be provost in the old council. She wanted to have the chain round her neck. There's plenty of us who wanted to put the chain round her neck and pull it a few times. At that time there was William Orr who served 40-odd years in local government, who thought he should be provost, and the SNP and the opposition groups backed him, as did some Labour renegades and since these days it has got pretty vicious. He was an elderly man and they gave him a wicked time. They held the SNP responsible for promoting Will Orr so we had to live all through that.
'When it came to the unitary elections, the SNP did spectacularly well in Renfrew. We had a reputation of taking Labour head on. In Renfrewshire council we have 13 out of the 40 and we came second in every other seat at a time when Labour were running riot in every other council. In here we're chasing them to the line. We have virtually taken over from them but they have completely ignored the SNP in setting up committees.'
Statistics from the council's corporate services department show that Labour have 57% representation on committees and the SNP have 26.8%, compared to 50% and 32.5% in the full council. The SNP insists the split is significantly unfair.
Mr Mitchell while, is un-apologetic about some of the insults he has flung across the council benches, and bridles at suggestions that his behaviour could be seen as petty and destructive. 'To call the Labour group an authoritarian junta is pretty strong but it's pretty accurate. They are afraid of debate and they come down with a hammer on any of us who want to debate. I believe they are intellectually challenged. I believe they are simply not up to the job, and what they do is try to throttle everybody else who is up to the job.'
'It's not so much squabbling. It's a fundamental defence of democracy. If people in the media look on this as a squabble or a bunfight that's the wrong way to take this... this is a very serious struggle that's going on here. What are we supposed to do? Say I'm just not going to bother to turn up here any more? Or we can stand up in defiance of this intimidation and this authoritarian junta who are running this place, and the consequences of doing that is that we are then labelled a lout, a lager lout and other abusive terminology.'
Around the corner in the main council suite, Labour leader Mr Hugh Henry drops his head at the mention of Jim Mitchell's name.
'Jim Mitchell is a man obsessed with conspiracies,' he says. 'He's a man whose agenda is ... it's not quite hatred but it's hostility at every turn. He can't talk about Labour without putting in epithets about unionist Labour. We've asked Alex Salmond, the police have been involved, we've ejected their supporters on a regular basis. Short of giving in to bullying what can we do? We behave. They don't. They see it as helpful to them in the run-up to a general election. We are talking about political opportunists, and we have now been forced into acting in a certain way by their behaviour.
Mr Henry believes a key player behind the feud is Mr Paul Mack, a controversial former Labour councillor who now sits as an Independent after being expelled by the party last year for standing unofficially as a candidate in the unitary elections. There were deep divisions within the party locally during the selection procedure, and these have continued to blight the council.
Mr Mack claims he has no personal vendetta against Labour but says he is angry at the treatment meted out to a fellow Labour councillor, Mr Richard Manser, a controversial figure in local politics who was also submitted for the new council despite being excluded from Labour's official panel of candidates. Although Mr Manser, who has admitted past support for Militant, was called to task by the party, he was kept within the Labour fold, and, according to sources at the Scottish party headquarters, Keir Hardy House, was given the deputy convenorship of the education committee in return for his support. 'That was OK'd by us on the clear condition that he support the administration,' said a Labour official. 'Despite his chequered past, people have got to have a chance to reform. We are relaxed about that, despite matters past.' Mr Manser said this week that he took the whip from the Labour group and denied he was controversial. 'I'm 51, you can't be controversial at 51,' he said.
Mr Mack, meanwhile, says the animosity within the council is growing. 'It's war here without the bombs and bullets ... it's a town called malice. It's tangible ... but I think I have a function and a duty to expose cant and hypocrisy. I will represent the people that elected me and scrutinise the workings of the ruling group.'
Mr Mack recently wrote to the Local Government Staff Commission asking for an investigation into nine Labour councillors who had relatives working for the authority. Council officials say an internal investigation has deemed the appointments, some of which were made before the councillors took office, to be above board.
Mr Henry says Mr Mack is clearly out to 'wreck vengeance' on his former colleagues, and the SNP are using that to their own ends.
'Three years ago, Paul Mack described the SNP as the Scottish Nazi Party. They hated each other with a vengeance. They have cobbled a coalition of the lowest common denominator to attack the Labour party. I think their agenda now is a negative, destructive one. They have gone beyond attacking the Labour party politically and have started on a very personal, destructive war of attrition.
'They are bitter that they didn't have a majority to form an administration., they are bitter that they could not stop the provost being a Labour nominee. I think they also have a degree of personal antipathy towards Nancy Allison. Some of the personal comments they make to her are really beyond civilised personal debate.'
Mr Henry dismisses the claims that Labour stifles debate, producing hand-written figures which he says show 14 Labour speakers and 33 SNP at one council meeting.
'How can they say they're being denied the opportunity to speak with a ratio like that ... at committees Labour has a majority and that's really trying to process the council business. It really doesn't matter if there's a majority or not on the committee, if they don't like the decision, they can refer it to the full council and they exercise that right regularly. As far as being ruled out of order, yes, there are time they put up motions which are incompetent.
'The SNP have had ample opportunity to put forward their case and we have listened to them with courtesy and respect. If somebody says something they don't like they howl us down, they disrupt meetings, they clog the agenda with irrelevant and abusive motions.'
One of the most frequent accusations made by the SNP is that the Labour group is led by a 'militant cabal' of Mr Hugh Henry, Mr Richard Manser and Mr Tommy Williams, convenor of the social work committee.
Mr Williams and Mr Manser both openly admit former sympathies for Militant, but Mr Henry refuses to be drawn on the issue. 'It's just a form of abuse. They just keep shouting it. I don't think it makes any difference to the public ... I have never hidden what I have said over the years. The Labour Party are aware of my views and as far as I know it's not anything that causes them concern.'
Officials at Keir Hardy House, meanwhile, admit they were 'nervous' when the current administration took over, but insist they have so far been impressed, singling out Mr Henry for praise. 'In two years he has managed to unite what's left of the Labour group and he has one of the most consumer-oriented service-oriented, efficient council administrations in Scotland ... compare it with Glasgow it's like night and day,' said one official. 'We were very nervous about the new administration that took over but I think Hugh in particular is a very very straight guy. What's important in Renfrewshire is the effort being made by the council leadership to change the whole culture of the council.
Ms Betty McIntosh would disagree. The former Labour councillor quit last year saying she could no longer work with her colleagues and is now an Independent. 'There's never been a Labour group like this one,' she says, 'Most of the members are new or have come in from the region and to get an opposition is a novelty for them. The SNP this time round is very bright, highly-qualified people who take the trouble to find out what the council is all about, whereas the Labour group for the last three to four years has been rent asunder by internal squabbling. It was just a cabal that got together and saw a way of getting themselves in power by using Labour branches to get themselves into power. We have a position where we have a coalition with the hard left. It is a coup by the hard left.'
'A situation now exists where if we say black, they say white. It's just sheer cussedness. I find I have to be very careful what I say. I have got to think, if I say something about this will it damage this or that project.'
In the provost's office, Nancy Allison sighs at such claims and says she has tried to be as non-political as possible about the situation. She says 26 years in local politics have given her a thick skin but just recently she has started to have concerns about her own personal safety after particularly acrimonious meetings which have included comments, she says such as 'I'll show you bitch.'
the past three months I have been feeling slightly threatened about some of the things that are happening in the council chamber. I'm 63 so maybe it's an age thing, but I'm just slightly apprehensive about going out into the car park. I don't mean one of the councillors themselves would do anything.'
Both Ms Allison and other members of the Labour group insist that it is only a minority of councillors who are disruptive and there is 'an acceptable face' to the SNP, but other SNP members are unwilling to be distanced from their more vocal counterparts. 'There are no two SNPs,' says councillor Colin Campbell. 'It is nonsensical. We are on the same side. Attempts that are made to divide us are naive in the extreme.' Officials at the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh endorse this view, saying their councillors have their full support and the acrimony has arisen because Labour is simply unused to effective opposition.
For those outside the SNP-Labour front-line the situation can be frustrating. Ms Eileen McCartin, one of the three Liberal Democrat councillors, says they feel they have to provide the balance between the two sides. Ms McCartin says the SNP has admitted to her that it was out to 'wreck the system.' The SNP denies this. 'This is a conscious line the SNP appear to have taken and the Labour group is almost equally culpable,' says Ms McCantin. 'It's a total abuse of power ... I have no doubt the work of the council is being hampered and that it must impact on the local situation and the investment situation.'
Official at the council say it is now difficult to attract new staff and that morale amongst those who deal directly with the councillors is low. When the council asked for 100 redundancies earlier this year, 900 employees, 10% of the workforce, stepped forward.
Meanwhile, both Labour and the SNP insist, separately, that the public believe they are doing a good job in difficult circumstances. Ms McCartin is hearing something different. 'The public in general are disgusted. They're asking, and quite rightly, what the hell is going on in there?'
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