 | 'Mr Prescott ducked The Scotsman's question on whether Labour was really brushing sleaze in Paisley under the carpet.' Peter MacMahon, in the Scotsman, 4 th November 1997. |  |
| 'Mr Prescott ducked The Scotsman's question on whether Labour was really brushing sleaze in Paisley under the carpet.' Peter MacMahon, in the Scotsman, 4 th November 1997. | |
The reason was clear. Why should the stalwarts of this gathering bother with the fictional cheap thrill contained in the paperback when they could have the real thing right in front of them? Or at least the political equivalent.
Joseph McGiffen was our host for the afternoon. "Good afternoon everybody," he said. No-one seemed to hear. "I said good afternoon everybody." "Good afternoon Joseph," the hundred or so pensioners chorused as they eyed the nervous-looking candidates with interest.
First up was Douglas Alexander, Labour's youthful-looking candidate, aide to Chancellor Gordon Brown and the man who had been gleefully described as a "toy-boy" by one elderly resident of Perth and Kinross in the by-election there two years ago.
Keen not to put a foot wrong in front of these folk, most of whom were old enough to be his grandparents, Mr Alexander did what the favourites in by-elections do: he played it straight and very, very safe.
The man who writes soundbites for the Chancellor was on message as ever, promising Labour would "deliver" for the constituency after he had catalogued the Government's achievements so far - including cutting VAT on fuel and insulating homes. The audience, which had been warned by Mr McGiffen to be "on your best behaviour" heard him in silence. He made no mistakes and was politely received.
Next on was the Lib Dems' Eileen McCartin, who drew an "oooh" from the audience, made up mainly of elderly ladies, when she claimed that Labour and the SNP had not chosen local candidates because they were "ashamed" of the activities of their local parties.
If it had not been sex and glamour so far, it certainly livened up with the speech by the Nationalists' Ian Blackford whose party is mounting the only realistic challenge to Labour.
Homing in on his Labour opponent's background, Mr Blackford declared: "Mr Alexander is the Chancellor's boy" and lambasted him for defending the Tory spending budgets which his erstwhile boss was inflicting on the good people of Foxbar.
Then we came to the non-stop action. Frances Curran, of the Socialist Alliance, gave us a bit of good, old-fashioned left-wing tub-thumping, calling for nationalisation, a workers' MP on a worker's wage and ..... well, that kind of thing. The pensioners liked that. Getting carried away with the double inequity of drugs and the rich getting richer Ms Curran stormed: "Two of my cousins have become heroin addicts. I want retribution - I want to see a shift in the balance of wealth." She probably meant redistribution but the elderly forum was happy to settle for a bit of old-fashioned retribution.
The best was saved for last with the appearance of local "independent Labour" candidate Charlie McLoughlin who, complete with shoulder bag draped in a Saltire, had insisted that he be allowed to address the meeting, despite Mr McGiffen's sharp "who are you?"
"I stand here on this platform," Mr McLoughlin proclaimed, even though he was sitting down and his audience were beginning to finger the bingo cards anxiously, "to ask you to vote for the flower of Scotland." He meant himself. A man who clearly gets his political inspiration from ballads and books, he added an apparent reference to new Labour: "Paper roses, paper roses but they are an imitation. They read their scripts from Mills & Boon. Say no to paper roses and no to synthetic Labour."
Mr McLoughlin's so-called synthetic Labour had been on display earlier, very much earlier in the day, in the shape of a very non-synthetic deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, who took a train one stop from Paisley's Gilmour Street station to Glasgow Central and then went back to Paisley again.
Bemused commuters were treated to the sight of Mr Prescott borrowing a brush from the cleaners in Central Station and promising to brush the Tories out of Scotland. The problem was that this has already happened.
On the return journey during a one-stop press conference observed by baffled passengers Mr Prescott ducked The Scotsman's question on whether Labour was really brushing sleaze in Paisley under the carpet. The usual grin on his face, he replied: "Mr Hague's coming today. It doesn't take much to brush him away." In that, at least, he was proved right. The leader of the opposition descended on Paisley in the afternoon and walked through the town for the television cameras, meeting only a handful of voters.
Though they were polite, the elderly he met at the forum were, by and large, not convinced. Gordon Harvie, who along with his wife May, shook Mr Hague's hand, summed it up: "He's all right and I voted for him but he's not going to win."
Earlier, the Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, had tried to inject some spice into the proceedings by asking why the Prime Minister, who it was said would appear at all by-elections, was not putting in an appearance. Was he, Mr Salmond asked, "feart"? Labour said not, that the PM was used only when they needed to win a marginal seat, that he was deployed only when they really needed him.
Yesterday the politicians of all the mainstream political parties were going through the motions, knowing that their political professionals - the hard-nosed men and women whose job it is to predict the outcome - know the result.
Despite all the allegations surrounding the death of Gordon McMaster, the allegations about the council, the word from the pros is that, barring a seismic upheaval in the next three days, it will be a low turnout and Labour will win.
Mr Blackford proclaimed yesterday: "There are a number of issues, but sleaze is very important and I would expect the people to have their judgment on that and we will accept the peoples' judgment." Brave words to which he will have to hold if, as expected, the voters shrug off the allegations and do what they have always done in Paisley - vote Labour.
The SNP slogan is Change the Pattern in Paisley. The pattern is set to stay unchanged.
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