In the wake of the departure of the SNP from leading coalition and then minority administrations at Argyll and Bute Council, a reader has asked whether any other political party has interfered externally to dictate or influence the action of their local councillors.
The answer is ‘Yes, they have’.
The SNP did it successfully before, in late 2010. And both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats tried it with their Councillors immediately after this – and had to back off in the face of their councillors’ refusal to play.
During the school wars of 2010-2011 the SNP were the junior partner in an administration led by Council Leader Walsh’s Alliance of Independent Councillors.
The SNP’s Councillor Isobel Strong became Education Spokesperson – fronting up a scorched earth policy of closing 26 rural school in a single strike. These closure plans were supported by the SNP group, with Councillor Robb, then suspended from the party, warning – unheard – of the consequences.
Public fury erupted over these quite unhinged plans.
Education Secretary Michael Russell, then List MSP for Dumfries and Galloway but his party’s declared candidate for the Argyll and Bute seat, was reported as saying to his party’s council members that he could have identified a more modest number of schools to close. [These schools were never identified but were said to number around 12-14.]
The SNP Group were then instructed by their party hierarchy to get out of power and oppose the school closure programme – to protect the coming vote for Mr Russell in the Argyll and Bute seat.
This move was strongly opposed by some SNP Councillors but eventually they all agreed to walk and, since the move chimed with strong public feeling, became local heroes overnight.
Voters were prepared to forgive them their sleepwalking into supporting their senior partner’s ill-considered and very incompetently evidenced schools closure programme – in exchange for what became a vigorous and well fought campaign. This was fuelled by the inestimable capability of the Scottish Rural Schools Network [SRSN] team; and by the effectiveness of the newly born Argyll Rural Schools Network [ARSN].
Back in 2010, the SNP were replaced as the junior partner of the Alliance – within an hour or so – by what were then party-based groups of Conservatives and, separately, Liberal Democrats.
Both of their parent parties were horrified. They too knew the political cost of closing schools and they suggested to their local councillors that they should leave the new coalition.
Their councillors stuck to their guns. In each case they rejected their party’s instructions and did what they had agreed to do.
They did so partly – no mollycoddles they – believing that for financial reasons some schools would have to close; and partly feeling personally free of electoral consequences, since almost all of the schools earmarked for closure were not in their wards.
The Liberal Democrat Councillor Ellen Morton became Depute Council Leader [as she now is again] and Education Spokesperson. She reduced the closure list to around 12 schools and opened up a second front in the war. These new closure proposals – from Executive Director Cleland Sneddon – also failed in the face of the sustained and successful scrutiny of the SRSN with ARSN – and the SNP opposition, whom they briefed.
When it came to the Scottish Election in 2011, Lib Dem Councillor for Mid Argyll, Alison Hay, singlehandedly paid the price for what was publicly perceived as the calumny of her party – and for her personal loyalty to her party. This had seen her support even the closure of her own local school in Minard – which had the third best HMIE report in Scotland. There was no way back from that position.
Councillor Hay was her party’s candidate for the Argyll and Bute Holyrood seat and had been expected to poll well.
In the event, the school closures war proved THE pivotal issue in the local campaign, still alive in the popular consciousness.
Alison Hay’s defeat was by far the worst nationally experienced by her party in a result which was generally bad for the Lib Dems across Scotland. They were reduced to 5 MSPs, only two of which are constituency MSPs. It will be hard for the party to recover from this position since it has been left with so scant a base to build from.
In direct contrast, the SNP candidate, Education Secretary Michael Russell, got the largest majority of any SNP candidate in Scotland , benefiting hugely from two hefty bonuses:
- the legacy of trust and respect for Jim Mather, the retiring SNP MSP, the best MSP Argyll and Bute has had;
- the collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote, massively aggravated in Argyll and Bute as a result of the party’s active support for the school closure programe.
In the next Scottish election, neither of these two bonuses will apply; and if the lost Liberal Democrat vote cannot wholly recover, it is unlikely next time to go, as it did in 2011, to the SNP.
The party’s intervention in local government this time is of a very different order and came in very different circumstances from the situation in 2010 that hammered the Lib Dem vote and inflated the SNPs.
This time around, the SNP were the senior partner in administration, the driver – and bizarrely they were ordered out of power, not on the basis of any populist campaign but because real responsibility was too hot to handle.
There was absolutely no opposition action that contributed to their internal cannibalism, even when it was underway.
It has been an unimaginable and indefensible act of self-destruction, an open-mouthed spectator sport. It required no opposition intervention to hasten the collapse because the multiple oppositions were all internal: party hierarchy against local council representatives; and faction against faction with that local councillor group.
The disregard by the SNP hierarchy and some of its local councillors for the primary interests of Argyll – and the consequent damage to Argyll and Bute’s reputation, now Scotland’s joke council, brings into serious question the role of party politics in local government.
