No cheer in Glasgow
Richard West
Having recently made a tour of England, to write a book, I had somehow hoped to find something more cheerful in Scotland, where I had come to report the Glasgow Hillhead by-election. It Was a vain hope. The buses here were on strike — 'about bugger all,' the taxi-driver said. The hotel was re-opening after a fire had gutted it during the recent firemen's strike. 'The firemen came to watch how the army tried to extinguish it with their primitive equipment,' said the same taxi- driver. When the hotel re-opened (courtesy of the Norwich Union insurance company) the whining politicians of Glasgow said that hundreds of unemployed people queued to obtain jobs for wages as low as £1.65 an hour. In the hotels of Florida, where so many Glasgow 'workers' go for their holi- day, employees of the tourist hotels get, on average, £1 an hour and some as little as 50 Pence. Even those who obtained a job at this newly re-opened hotel in the Glasgow Hillhead constituency are very aware of their trade union rights. 'I want to be seegn- ed on for overtime,' one of the staff pro- tested, as I was filling in the register. Told that he could be signed on tomorrow, the fellow objected: 'Why can I no be seegned on today?'
This once magnificent city has fallen into a lassitude and despair worse even than that of Newcastle or Liverpool. There is litter everywhere. The streets are pot-holed. Hideous tower blocks loom over what once was the greatest view in Scotland, the cemetery on the hill by the cathedral. Few People do any work any more, but the pubs are open all day, and packed. There is plen- ty of rape and razor-slashing still, and fires. I whiled away five minutes watching a fire in a betting shop just off Sauchiehall Street.
As an Englishman, I would like to see a by-election victory for the Scottish Na- tionalist candidate. The United Kingdom Would only benefit from the secession of Glasgow, along with the other idle, sub- sidised former industrial cities. But Glasgow of course, does not want to secede from the country that pays its living. Glasgow's rise to fortune came from Scotland's union with England in 1707, as Daniel Defoe noted a few years later. `The Union has answered its end to them more than to any other part of Scotland, for their trade is now formed by it; and as the Union opened the door to the Scots in our American colonies, the Glasgow merchants Presently fell in with the opportunity; and though, when the Union was making, the rabble of Glasgow made the most for- midable attempt to prevent it, yet, now they know better, for they have the greatest ad- - dition to their trade by it imaginable ...'
The Common Market has also proved a benefit to the people of Glasgow. The EEC offers grants and subsidies supplementary to the ones given by British tax-payers; many of Glasgow's 'unemployed' have jobs in Holland or Germany; though the local car works at Linwood was closed by its bloody-minded work force, a trade exists in the illegal import of foreign cars by Glasgow, people living in France. (The modus operandi of the trade was explained to me but I could not master the details.)
No businessman in his senses would want to invest in Glasgow which therefore depends on government subsidy, and will therefore vote for the party that gives it most. This means, at present, the Labour Party. The party's policy towards Glasgow was explained this week by a pop-eyed, bearded Labour MP, Robin Cook, who was described to us as a front-bench spokesman on economic matters. His policy seems to involve increased govern- ment spending on Glasgow. Naturally; he is MP for Glasgow Central.
Popeye was speaking on behalf of the Labour candidate for this election, a fat man who first came to Scotland in search of the Loch Ness monster. He should win the election if the opinion polls are right and if the main opposition- party can win enough support at this stage in the life of an un- popular Tory government. The only threat to Labour comes from the appearance here as a candidate for the Social Democrat- Liberal Alliance of Roy Jenkins. I cannot make out whether Mr Jenkins wants to solve the problem of Glasgow by squander- ing public money; his utterances are vague. However, it should be remembered that Mr Jenkins was, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, 'the best Chancellor of the Ex- chequer since the war' and the only one who balanced the budget. He may talk tripe, but that is expected of politicians still in office. We can only hope that, underneath, he does not think tripe. Remember that Jo Grimond talked tripe while he was leader of the Liberal Party but since then, especially in the Spectator, he has talked very good sense. The only doubt one can feel about Mr Jenkins concerns his speech in 1969: explaining how he had put the British economy to rights after a lunch with a Polish diplomat. Nobody that I know of actually asked Mr Jenkins what the Polish diplomat said, or indeed whether the same Pole planned the present Polish economic disaster. Somehow, one cannot ask Mr Jenkins embarrassing questions.
The Conservatives could still hold the seat they won at the last election by just over 2,000 votes; but Conservatives do not believe in funding places like Glasgow, so they may now lose their last seat in the city.
Every one of the daily and Sunday papers I read has pointed out that the Hillhcad people are upper-class and genteel, and all ,of them made the joke that in Hillhead sex is something one uses to carry the coal. One could request from the lex, sleek hex that they think up some fresher crex. But jokes about Hillhead mean something nasty as well. It is suggested that well-spoken, educated people are somehoW less sexy, less virile than working-class Glaswegians, the strikers, razor-slashers and football hooligans who have made the name of Glasgow known and hated in several con- tinents.
The Hillhead people represent everything that is good about Glasgow. They are the people of education and industry who ran the British Empire and still run much of British business abroad. Hillhead has the highest number of A Levels in Britain, and may continue to do so unless the appalling Shirley Williams gets her hands on the schools again. In many ways Hillhead is similar to the South Belfast constituency, which had a by-election last week. Both are middle-class. Both contain the principal university of the town. But South Belfast is much more pleasant. It would be mischievous to suggest that Belfast is a Scottish, and Glasgow an Irish city; though there is some truth there. Northern Ireland retains an excellent and severe system of education. The Northern Irish work rather than strike. All one can say for Glasgow is that the Labour Party here has not yet suc- cumbed to the Trotskyite militant move- ment. It stays, as before, clubbish, Catholic and corrupt.
But Glasgow is not entirely horrible:
'How much longer are you going to use the excuse that you are writing a sex manual as a reason for not coming to bed?'
there were none of the race riots last year that afflicted most of England. The ex- planation may be, as Hillhead people might say, that Glasgow has almost no blex. Why West Indians have not come here is pro- blematic. One might have thought that, in some ways, Glasgow, with its love of razor- slashing, arson and Bible-thumping religion, was almost the Kingston, Jamaica, of the North. The absence of West Indians is about as odd as their presence in 1773 when Dr Johnson made his journey to Scotland with Boswell. A black servant, Gory, waited on Lord Monboddo in Mearnshire: 'Dr Johnson called to him. "Mr Gory, give me leave to ask you a question: are you baptis- ed?" Gory told him he was — and confirm- ed by the Bishop of Durham. He then gave him a shilling.'
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