Glasgow's Tangled Web: Tammany Hall never died, it just had a makeover

Rather enjoyed The Herald's graphic spectacular A Tangled Web: How Purcell Ran Glasgow The newspaper unpicks all the Arms Length Organisations (ALEOS) set up by the council, mainly in the last five years of Purcell leadership. It also shows at a glance which councillors were in the leader's "inner circle" and which were members of the "Labour cabinet". There will be much interest in the payments that councillors received to sit on the boards of these Aleos, which were run as private companies. The killer figure is the £400,000 extra it cost in top-up wages for councillors. But many will enjoy reading who got what and why.

They are trifling sums when compared to bankers bonuses, or even MPs second home allowances. What it really reveals is the power of cronyism and patronage. I have spoken to people who insist that Purcell was a good chap who had friends across party lines - no wonder, the SNP councillors got paid to sit on the Aleos as well!  Others have pointed out the ruthlessness with which he exercised control of the Labour Group. This is one of the ways he remained so firmly in power right up until his breakdown.

Yet I am struck by the familiarity of it all. Cronyism is nothing new in West of Scotland Labour run councils. As a reporter in The Scotsman's Glasgow office more than a decade ago, I was involved in several investigations into councils in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire - the old Monklands authority. There were few Aleos back then, but patronage operated in the much same way - reinforce your power over the group by handing out sweeties - a committee convenorship was worth something in the days when councillors got allowances for extra responsibility. It could also mean perks such as foreign trips. That's why I found it so laughable when people insisted Purcell was a great moderniser, a break with the past etc  He looked and sounded different, he was young and homosexual. But beneath the 21st century outer casing, the cogs of the Tammany Hall machine creaked away.

To some extent patronage is the stuff of politics and allows visionary leaders to get things done. The danger is that it can promote loyal mediocrities instead of talented, independent minded people with something to bring to the business of government - but who could then emerge as a rival. Loyalty can also be bought by ensuring money is spend in the wards of allies. That means public funds are not distributed on the basis of need, which has to be wrong. This was the allegation from Monklands all those years ago, when "rebel" Labour councillors in Airdrie claimed the ruling Labour clique was skewing spending towards its home turf in Coatbridge.

What we could never really prove back in the day was out-and-out corruption. I mean real, brown envelope corruption, not low level graft. Without pictorial or video evidence, it's difficult.  It requires the media to invest in long term, painstaking, investigative journalism.  See The Sunday Times and Channel Four's work on Cash for Access.

Questions have been raised about Glasgow under Purcell that are much more serious than cronyism within one political party.  It is important to shine a light on how the Aleos awarded loyal politicians. But did the politicians use the Aleos to reward their own loyal backers in business? That is the concern this time around, and that is why we need an independent enquiry to investigate it. 

Comments

[Jan Mason]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2920534/Glasgow-crime-crusader-vows-to-carry-on-after-dossiers-are-stolen.html

This is really scary stuff, if he had indeed been targeted.

[Desmo]

I`m neither a sleuth nor a journo but it seems to me that these ALEOs, however objectionable, have been set up and run within existing guidelines. There are, however, far more serious allegations which require the fine-toothed comb analysis of independent audit. These include :- City Refrigeration quoting prices said to be above those in rival tenders, but still winning the contract. How ? Why ? City Refrigeration`s relocation compensation being increased from £7.2m to £13.3m following a meeting between the firm's owner, Willie Haughey, and First Minister, Jack McConnell which we were told had no bearing on the raised offer. There may indeed be good reasons for all this, but, put in the context of the £1.1m that Mr. Haughey has donated to the Labour party in recent years, it is an affront to democratic accountability for Mr. Coleman and the council to refuse an open, independent inquiry. He has told those demanding scrutiny to bring forward evidence "if they have any". May I suggest that, given the information which is already in the public domain, it is for Mr. Coleman and his colleagues to prove that there has been no impropriety and to fail to do so will only cement the public`s impression of a deplorable clique of vested interest whose sole aim is to avoid incrimination.

[Davie Park]

It all seems to be unravelling. We have seen that we cannot trust the Scottish media to play with a straight bat, so the sooner we have a properly independent investigation the better.
I don't see that sitting on the Aleos (and getting paid for it) is a crime in itself. After all, we knew they existed and surely we didn't think they did it for nowt. The concommitant cronyism and backscratching is the issue at hand.