Silence of the speakers
THE REALITY CHECK I
Kenneth Roy on one of Britain’s poorest constituencies – the seat of Michael Martin
Once there were many speakers in Springburn. As recently as the 1960s, they were still building objects of power and beauty in the constituency of Michael Martin. Springburn made railway locomotives for the world and along with that great industry there was a thriving cultural tradition. In the local park, brass bands played on Sunday afternoons. The railway unions organised social gatherings known as the Sighthill Shunters’ Soiree and the Cowlairs Painters’ Soiree. There was a Caledonian Railway Debating Society, a forum for discussion and argument as well as more formal talks, such as the one given on the ‘Philosophy of Life’ by Signalman James Gibson. But then the industry collapsed and the workers no longer gave lectures about the philosophy of life. The speakers of Springburn fell silent. Now, if you want a speaker in the area, you must turn to Michael Martin.
Some years ago, before Shettleston Man acquired mythic status, Springburn not Shettleston was officially the poorest constituency in Scotland. The number of school leavers with no qualifications was 300 per cent higher than the Scottish average. Also above the norm were teenage pregnancies – by 60 per cent; deaths from lung cancer – by 94 per cent; the incidence of heart disease – by 40 per cent; the number of people on income support – by 130 per cent; the unemployment rate – by 140 per cent. These were among the more startling deviations from the average unearthed in a statistical analysis of Springburn by the Public Health Institute. The response of the MSP for the constituency was somewhat abrasive. In a leaflet widely distributed locally, he declared: ‘Don’t tell us what we already know. Give us solutions’. The MSP in question was (and remains) Paul Martin, son of the speaker. The public health statisticians failed to rise to his challenge. Perhaps, not unreasonably, they thought it was politicians who provided solutions.
I was so intrigued by Springburn at the time that I spent a day or two there. On a hot spring afternoon, social workers from an English-based charity concerned with regenerating Britain’s poorest communities had set up a stall outside the shopping centre and were stopping people to ask for their opinions of the place. One middle-aged man said his car had been stolen five times since the beginning of the year. Others complained of buildings being burned out, of windows being smashed. Many remarked bitterly that there was no police presence; that they were simply nowhere to be seen. The prevailing tone was despair and resignation in equal measure. Now that Springburn, a product of the industrial revolution, no longer made anything very much, its reason for existence had gone. But the people were still there, objects of anthropological curiosity, continuing to vote dutifully for the Martin family.
In the local library, I thought I might make sense of modern Springburn. I asked to see books about the social history of the area. ‘We don’t have any,’ came the reply. ‘What, none?’ ‘We used to refer people interested in local history to the museum, but the museum’s shut.’ (A victim of local authority cuts, they explained.) I found hundreds of CDs and videos, a copy of the new issue of Hello! magazine, shelf upon shelf of pot boilers. But there was no record of Springburn itself; no evidence of the men and women who had lived and worked in this community. Yet, when I took the trouble to travel several miles across the city, to the Glasgow Room of the Mitchell Library, and asked the same question, the librarian fetched from a stockroom no fewer than nine titles on the history of Springburn. I wondered why these books were held in a remote stockroom; why they were not on open display in the local library; and whether the policy of making access to the civic memory as difficult as possible, of in effect expunging that memory, was a conscious one. I thought of something I had once read, that the history of mental development had been a history of removing the human mind farther and farther from the reality of the world. And when I looked around Springburn, I supposed that this process of detachment must suit the political class very well, keeping the people only dimly aware of the possibilities of their own lives.
As I left Springburn library that day, I paused to study a noticeboard. It listed no fewer than 11 politicians who were claiming to represent the area: five members of this parliament or that; six councillors. This was impressive, the size of a football team; there had never been a time in history when there were more elected representatives ‘fighting for Springburn’. But with what result? Paradoxically, the condition of the people was more wretched than ever.
That removal of the human mind farther and farther from the reality of the world is also a way of thinking about politics. It is impossible to spend any time in the House of Commons without being aware of the artificiality of the environment, its heightened and febrile atmosphere, the way in which it feeds the vanities of those who work there, the gossiping and plotting, the proximity to (if not actual exercise of) power, the general sense of detachment. It is intoxicating, dangerously so. It is not at all surprising that MPs behave badly. But it is not the reality of the world. Springburn, physically and metaphorically, is the reality; a reality, it seems, almost beyond the capacity of politics to touch. That will be true long after the expenses scandal is over; but it was true long before it too. The collapse of faith in the ability of politics to improve the condition of the poor is nothing new. If you doubt me, look at the constituency of Michael Martin, and of his son Paul.
[click here] for A different world: Islay McLeod’s photo essay
from Springburn
THE
GOD
SLOT
Comment:
Kenneth Roy plunges the Church of Scotland into darkness
[click here]
THE PERFECT VILLAGE?
Islay McLeod’s Scotland:
Photo essay
[click here]
THE SCARS ON MY
BACK
Politics and
the Media:
Nicholas Jones on the dark trade of the spin doctors
[click here]
RETURN
OF THE
NATIVES
Culture:
Michael Elcock on engaging with Scots abroad
[click here]
AMERICA REJOINS THE WORLD
International:
Alan Fisher on Obama diplomacy
[click here]
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