All pretty decent here
Surprisingly, grace and civility have been hallmarks of the hustings in Edinburgh
Tom Gallagher
‘We’re all pretty decent here’ were the words of Martin Donald, the young Tory candidate in Edinburgh East. He was referring to four of his rivals who were sitting a few feet away, at a hustings meeting near the housing scheme of Craigmillar. They clearly went along with this assessment and so surprisingly did most of the working-class audience.
The atmosphere was frank but informal and even warm with repartee between the politicians and members of the audience. This was a contrast to the hustings in Portobello town hall the night before. The atmosphere was polite and restrained for most of the time. It was like a Quaker meeting with absolute silence from an earnest largely middle-class audience as the politicians spoke followed by restrained applause for everything, even the warnings of one candidate that Greek-style riots would follow in the wake of any cuts.
Portobello brims over with civic energy and its main street and some side streets leading down to the promenade appear to be shrines for various good causes. The hustings were impartially chaired by the local head of the community council with only two questions from the floor allowed after lots of pre-arranged questions. Gordon Brown’s disaster with Mrs Duffy had occurred earlier in the day but the questions were resolutely focussed on issues like the environment, Trident, and the need to avoid cuts.
Some of the candidates struggled to project a clear message but not George Kerevan, a lad o’ pairts, who served on Edinburgh council and has been an economics lecturer and journalist in the city. He believed Portobello was an emblematic town in its own right and his goal was to ‘build a new country that looks very much like Portobello’. He was the only candidate to work the audience beforehand and despite his donnish reserve, he appeared rather good at pressing the flesh.
The Craigmillar gathering probably had far fewer graduates but it was a more philosophical occasion. Several questions brought up the disconnection between citizens and their political masters. There was no reticence about raising the affair of the prime minister and the Rochdale grandmother. Sheila Gilmore, the Labour candidate, was the one most critical of Gordon Brown. The former Edinburgh councillor also dwelt on an incident, years ago, at a ward meeting where she had snapped and urged a tiresome voter to get back to where he came from. Beverley Hope, the young Liberal Democrat, showed most sympathy for the cornered leader: ‘He’s really trying to engage with the people, but perhaps trying too hard’. Of course she was more sympathetic towards Nick Clegg, gushing even. At both hustings she began: ‘I am really excited about this election. There’s a real buzz around Edinburgh. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are really shaking things up’.
In response to persistent questioning that the people had been left behind by politicians who now enjoyed a too cosy relationship with the media, Martin Donald and George Kerevan emphatically agreed, the first working full-time in the Edinburgh Conservative press office, the second an assistant editor of the Scotsman until a few months ago – it would seem that it was not just the prime minister who felt the need for penitence.
Kerevan mollified one lady who for the first time in 45 years had no idea who to vote for as she watched ‘backstabbing politicians’ let down the country, by revealing that after, a previous hustings, he had gone for a drink with fellow candidate, Robin Harper. The Green MSP seemed to be most exercised by the idea that politicians were cocooned from the rest of society, by extolling the ability of the committees in the Scottish parliament to reach out to civil society. He appeared genuinely distressed to be seen as part of a class of political overseers – as well he might be because no Edinburgh politician in living memory is as accessible, or indeed visible, because of his brilliantly-coloured scarf.
The Craigmillar hustings were chaired with wry humour by George Pitcher, chair of the Edinburgh Communities Representation Network. He mentioned that he had attended his first public meeting in the city in 1945 at the age of 17 when Churchill had spoken at Powderhall track preceded by the headline ‘Churchill goes to the dogs’. It was a surprise to at least one of the younger candidates that large meetings at which politicians took questions from an unfiltered audience was part of the democratic story in those times and not a 2010 innovation to keep lines of communication open with alienated citizens.
The fight might not be an absolutely clean one, especially when local issues like transportation arise. Both the Labour and Conservative candidates, one a veteran of municipal government, the other new to the game but good at thinking on his feet and frank about past Tory misdeeds, closed ranks against their more combative rivals. George Kerevan promised that if elected, such town hall meetings would be a regular occurrence. It remains to be seen if the honour of Scottish politics will be saved by the grace and civility that surprisingly to me have been a hallmark of this election in the eastern outskirts of the nation’s capital.
Tom Gallagher teaches politics at Bradford University and is the author of ‘The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland Under Nationalism’ (Hurst and Company, 2009).
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