DUMBARTON NOTEBOOK BY BILL HEANEY

I have been covering local government meetings for longer than any other newspaper reporter in Scotland.

I first took my noteook and pen across the road to the Municipal Buildings from the Fitzgerald Owens national newsagency office above Donny Gillies’s shop in Church Street. That was 60 years ago.

Newspapers were different then. The Evening Times and Citizen, the Daily Record, Daily Express, Daily Mail and on Sundays the Mail and the Post and Express, Dispatch and some that have now departed the scene such as the News of the World, the Sunday Pictorial and the Reynolds News.

Before that I delivered the papers from Hart’s Shop in Brucehill around the houses in the deprived West End. Nearly every house got a paper, 78 per cent was the official figure at one time. People were better read and more articulate.

The Lennox Herald was Dumbarton and Vale of Leven’s local paper at that time and was referred to variously as the “Two Minutes Silence” because families sat together quietly as they waited for their “shot of the paper” to find out who had died that week; what was on at “the pictures” and who had appeared in court.

Births, deaths and marriage notices were the lifeblood of the Lennox. And Police Court cases, which dealt mainly with Saturday night drunks, breach of the peace and people peeing up closes.

Some families lived in fear that their name would be in the column of announcements submitted by the Sheriff Officer for that week’s warrant sales, which saw people being evicted from of their homes for being unable to pay their debts, which often included the rent money for tenement flats and single ends. Many of these were “condemned”. They had outside and stairheid toilets which were shared between families.

Local councillors were “big shots” then. Desperate people went to them for a family home or a job. Even those who aspired to be teachers asked them to put in a word for them for a job with the council.

Needless to say the politcians didn’t like it when, after the Reporter was founded, they grudged having to conform to the rules which meant free speech and a free press and journalists attending council meetings and having the temerity to ask questions afterwards.

I remember the late Bill Owens being miffed by the fact that we didn’t get invited to one of the councillors’ many knees ups, which included the annual Water Trip and countless civic receptions.  Such small mindedness was commonplace.

The then Provost was livid with criticism from Bill Owens along the lines that the councillors were so mean they refused to put up a steak pie dinner for journalists covering a civic Burns Supper. You can take a photograph but then get out, they said.

If some local notable passed wind then a civic reception was given in their honour at Dumbuck Hotel with all the trimmings.

At that time though, they were not half so stuck up as they are now, although they too considered journalists second class citizens, so beneath them that they didn’t want to have them sitting near them at meetings. It’s still that way now.

And, in later years in the Council offices at Garshake, when it was put to them that reporters needed a place to write up their stories, they were allocated a cupboard  where the cleaners stored their pails and brushes.

Journalism evolved. We were writing opinion pieces and weekly columns full of comment.

In those days we got to speak to councillors and officials on your behalf. If we had a planning story then it was the planning officer we spoke to.

If social houses had been affected by black damp or there were potholoes in the road or a classroom ceiling had fallen in then the officials were expercted to give us an answer. It was the same with housing officials.

It was significant that the housing committee convenership was considered a hospital pass because that was where most of the scat was to be found.

It’s a while since a single opinion piece generated as much discussion as the inane catastophe that was the council’s refusal to cut the grass in public spaces making the the area a disgrace.

It was the same with the council’s inability to build homes and infrastructure to meet the needs of the 21st century’s growing population.

Spin doctors were employed on huge salaries to ameliorate the criticism. It was when they couldn’t gag the press they employed dirty tricks such as telling lies about our conduct and both locking us out and later thowing us out of public meetings.

In one analysis, politicians – in part responding to a collapse in public trust after a series of scandals – have ceded control to a fast-growing network of agencies, quangos and regulators, resulting in labyrinthine overlapping systems of sometimes contradictory mandates and incentives that ultimately cannot work towards the common good.

West Dunbartonshire had the sword of Damocles hanging over it for victimising and bullying a disabled colleague, but they wouldn’t talk about that either. The public were kept in the dark. How much will that cost the council taxpayer?

It is not okay for our society to forget the basics of running a council: we’ve forgotten how to build sufficient housing for our population, we’ve forgotten how to sensibly organise population growth, we’ve forgotten how to attract employment for the people who live here, and we’ve forgotten how to build infrastructure to support our population. They can’t even organise a successful bin collection service.

“These are things we once did and – to all intents and purposes – can do no longer. We’re not meant to be going backwards, but look around you. It’s not difficult to see that we are,” said one commentator.

It used to be that the electorate here were switched on with debates in news stories, columns and in Letters to the Editor. The Lennox sometimes had four PAGES of letters on local matters.

One reason for the chaos now is that succesive governments have devolved too much power to arms-length agencies, but why did this happen?

One of the reasons they did it was because, in a clientelist, hyper-local electoral landscape, it insulated politicians from the consequences of their actions.

Nothing encapsulates this paradox quite like the Auditor General issuing a press release stating where councils have gone wrong. They hate it.

Councillors detest hate being held to account. Many consider themselves to be infallible. They would die with their feet up at the suggestion of being put into special measures, which is where the current lot should be.

One observer said: “The true blockage is not procedural but psychological. Our institutions mirror our inner life. A council that distrusts power can only build a bureaucracy that fears decision. Then we call our hesitation integrity.”

That’s why people are living in damp houses or even worse left homeless and “sofa surfing” in other people’s homes and so many are dying of drugs overdoses or living on welfare. That’s why we have so many children living in poverty.

That’s why we need openness and honesty and not spin doctors who are ordered to be  economical with the truth.

Top of page: Members of the basket case Labour administration at West Dunbartonshire Council.