It’s almost 30 years since they closed the Dumbarton District Council News, a newspaper paid for by the ratepayers which would print their “news” no questions asked. It was their own wee Pravda. Putin would have been pleased with it, Zelensky dismayed. They didn’t like way I reported what they were doing with the town. Their version, and only their version, of what was happening was good enough for the councillors elected at that time.

Pravda is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the country with a circulation of 11 million. The newspaper began publication on 5 May 1912 in the Russian Empire but was already extant abroad in January 1911.

Today, since it’s the hottest day of the year, I am going to take the rest of the day off and print in this state of the art  space usually allocated to my Notebook, a column written at 1996 by the late Tom Gallacher, possibly the finest writer/journalist/columnist to have graced the local culture and arts scene last century.

THE END OF AN ERA

By Tom Gallacher

Like me, you probably had to dab away a tear on receiving your last copy of the Dumbarton District Council News.

With five weeks to go before the second coming [reorganisation of local government] there were many affecting messages from those who were going. Since none of them looked forward to spending more time with their families, one must assume the strain of public duty has had private repercussions. All of them were full of gratitude for the support they’d received. Though, let’s face it, if they’d received a bit more support from their electorate, they wouldn’t be going at all.

But through all the sweetness and light of wishing their successors well, one could detect a few cracks in the statesmanlike facade.

That incorrigible idealist, James Bollan of Renton, hoped the new council would try harder than the old one to be a Socialist administration. In my opinion Mr Bollan should be cherished as a community treasure. Soon he will be our only Labour activist who actually remembers what socialism means.

Jane Lindsay of Riverside/Dalmonach, with more than a touch of irony, wishes her succesors luck and felt sure they would need it. She also implied that women in her Ward would be less happy dealing Jim Chirrey than they would had they been dealing with her, because she is a woman and he isn’t. She feels strongly that there are too many councillors in the new lot who aren’t women. I think the electors probably noticed they were voting for a man when they voted for one.

William Morrison of Helensburgh West cheered me with a quotable quote. He issued a warning to the new local authority.

He said: “If you only do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” But since all the incoming councillors swear hand on heart they’ll do their best, theprospects must be brighter for Mr Morrison’s successors than it was for him.

Only Gordon Smillie of Bonhill East felt able to puncture the ballon of good fellowship among the dear departing. As Bill Heaney succinctly remarked to me (in quite a different context) “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”

Gordon conceded Dumbarton District Council had gained an unsavoury reputation in the past. I feel I must disagree with him. Not unsavoury surely.

A reputationfor incompetence – yes; for stupidity, petty mindedness, vindictiveness, carelessness and the inability to run a menodge – yes.

But nothing unsavoury.

Whichever way you slice it, Mr Smillie does not say who was responsible for earning the old council such a deplorable reputation. Could it be the officers whom everyone else takes such care to praise? His colleagues with whom he was willing to share the opprobrium? The unsung volunteers everyone else is singing about? Or was it the fact there were not enough women in charge?

Naturally some of the old worthies of the old council have actually worked their ticket on to the new council. One of these, William MacKechnie, of Dumbarton East/Bowling gave hostage to fortune in his opening paragraph.

“My eight years with Dumbarton District Council have been marked with many ups and downs. In this time of great upheaval and uncertainty, it is very easy to forget about our successes.” Yes, it certainly is. However he goes on to list some of them. Three of them in fact of doubtful validity and the third contentious.

Margaret McGregor – who certainly is a woman and did get re-elected – proposes to do what she has always done  the past.

Further to that, she wisely acknowledges that she couldn’t do it without the help of the local community which she represents. And, to my mind, she gains cerdibility in not thanking the old council; or hoping for much from the officers of the new one. I assume she expects them to do what they are handsomely paid to do.

There were 16 photographs of councillors past and present in the old swan-song supplement. I searched the faces for a visible sign of some inbred illusion thay must all share. You see, I cannot understand why anyone wants to be a councillor – any more than Billy Connolly can credit the pull of Westminster. He trenchantly observed, “The very fact than anyone wants to be an MP should bar them right away.”

On a local level it is even more difficult to comprehand. I mean, I fully accept that as things stand sombody has got to do it. And we should be grateful that none of those wh agree to do it are scoundrels. Frankly, scoundrels have more interesting ways of using their time and are a lot more successful at it.

Still, I marvel at the presumption of those who feel perfectly able to represent the views and wishes of thousands of complete strangers.

And I am in awe of the boredom theshold which must be higher than Ben Lomond

Tom Gallacher: Playwright and author

By Donald Fullarton

Tom Gallacher, born in Alexandria on February 16 1932, was the third son and one of five children of Edward and Rose Gallacher, who moved from the Vale of Leven to Linn Walk in the village when he was one.

He always regarded Garelochhead as his home, and he died there in October 2001 at the age of 69.

His first job was framing pictures at the Macneur & Bryden Ltd. shop in East Princes Street, and also making deliveries on a bicycle.

He then trained as a draughtsman and worked at Denny’s Shipyard in Dumbarton, but decided on a career change and served as a reporter for the Helensburgh Advertiser until he was 31.

He also wrote a series of articles for the County Reporter about old Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven which was later published as a collection under the title ‘Hunting Shadows’. Years later the BBC produced two half-hour programmes made up of these articles read by an actor from Dumbarton, Robert Trotter.

During this period he gained his early theatrical experience as an amateur actor and producer with Dumbarton People’s Theatre and Helensburgh Theatre Arts Club. It convinced him that he wanted to be a playwright.

He gave up his reporting career in 1965, then spent two years working as a draughtsman before moving to a similar job in Montreal, Canada. He then decided to take the plunge into full-time writing and settled in London, where he lived for four years.

During that period, several of his plays were performed in London theatres, notably ‘Mr Joyce is leaving Paris’, ‘Bright Scene Fading’ at the Royal Court, and ‘The Only Street’ at the Kings Head Theatre.

Of these the most successful was his play about James Joyce, which created a sensation amongst Irishmen at their Dublin Festival and was also presented in Canada and Italy, filmed by a London company, and broadcast on radio and TV.

Other works such as ‘Our Kindness to Five Persons’, ‘Revival’, ‘Schellenbrack’ and ‘Personal Effects’ were staged in Glasgow, Dublin and Pitlochry. He also translated or adapted ‘Deacon Brodie’ from Henley & Stevenson, ‘An Enemy of the People’ and ‘A Doll’s House’ from Ibsen, ‘The Father’ from Strindberg, and ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ from Rostand.

In 1975 he decided to return home to Garelochhead. He said at the time: “It seems to me that the climate of theatre in Scotland is such that it has a new sense of enthusiasm and urgency.

“This is partly due to the Scottish Society of Playwrights, of which I was a founder member, who in the last 18 months have done a great deal to advance the benefits and possibilities for Scottish playwrights.

“It is also due to the Scottish Arts Council, who have taken a very enterprising attitude to new writing in Scotland. The theatres too — perhaps the most difficult area in the past — are now eager to present new plays by Scottish writers or writers living in Scotland.

“In fact the whole atmosphere has changed radically in the past two years. Theatre in Scotland seems on the brink of taking a big leap forwards. I want to be part of it, and share the excitement of it.”

He certainly was, and he moved in exalted drama circles as more of his plays were produced in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Pitlochry, Dundee, St Andrews and Montrose.

He had spells as writer in residence both at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and, briefly, at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, although most of his later work was prose fiction.

Tom gave a lot of credit for his success to his parents. “I think a lot of it comes from my father, who had a great sense of theatre and a great love of drama,” he said.

“From my mother I got this particular precision of language which many people have commented upon. She instilled into me the value and precise meaning of the spoken word.”

In his later years he resumed contributing to local newspapers, at various times writing comment columns in the two Dumbarton weeklies, the Lennox Herald and the by then renamed Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter.

• • Tom is pictured with Jill Grattidge (centre) in a Helensburgh Theatre Arts Club production of ‘Night Must Fall’.