Billy McAllister, deputy leader of the Scottish National party grouping on
Glasgow council, has a knack for making trouble. He once had a pistol held
to his head by a member of one of the city’s most ruthless crime families
after mounting a protest outside the home of a drug dealer. Today he is
flaunting a similar contempt for the Speaker of the House of Commons as he
contrasts the gentility of Michael Martin’s suburban Glasgow home with the
urban squalor to be found three miles down the road in the constituency the
Speaker has represented in parliament for nearly 30 years.
“This place must be worth a million,” says McAllister, a former welder on
North Sea oil rigs, pointing at the detached home in Bishopbriggs, one of
Glasgow’s more salubrious areas. Local estate agents suggest the house would
fetch closer to £400,000, but McAllister enjoys teasing Martin for his
aristocratic ways. He calls him “King Henry”, for he has long been struck by
Mr Speaker’s Tudor hauteur. “Mairi Bhan” may be grand by Glasgow standards,
but it is spartan against the grandeur of Mr Speaker’s grace-and-favour home
in Westminster. “The Speaker’s House epitomises the status of the Speaker,”
notes the official guide that celebrates an extensive refurbishment of the
listed building, its two formal drawing rooms (Corner and Crimson), state
dining room and state bedroom. In Glasgow, Martin presides over a formidable
Labour-party machine; in Westminster, his authority is unchallenged, for
nobody, not even a prime minister, dare antagonise Mr Speaker.
There is a dynastic quality to Martin’s Scottish political empire. Since 1979
he has been MP for Glasgow North East (formerly Springburn); his son, Paul,
was elected to the equivalent seat in the same constituency in the Scottish
parliament, despite having shown little dynamism while he served on Glasgow
council. At election times, the pair of them appear together on the streets
in identical suits and shirts. “We call them the Martin mafia,” laughs an
SNP activist.
But this is not just a father-and-son political operation. For several years
after Martin became Speaker, his wife, Mary, was also on his constituency
payroll, earning £25,000 a year for unspecified duties, even though she was
living in London with her husband. His daughter, Mary Ann, who lives in
Glasgow, was for many years employed as his constituency secretary, and most
people in the area assume she still is. In fact, as the autumn deadline
approaches for MPs to declare which family members they employ, Mary Ann has
been quietly removed from the payroll. The Speaker’s external PR adviser
would say only that Mary Ann left her father’s employ “sometime this year”, though
it is understood to be a very recent change. Martin declined a request for
an interview, and his secretary wrote warning that nothing must be written
that is “misleading or inaccurate as to fact”.
Although Paul Martin, according to one colleague, “has not exactly set the
heather on fire” in the Edinburgh parliament, he is widely tipped to succeed
his father as the Westminster MP when Mr Speaker retires. “Paul is not very
bright, but he’s wily,” says Phil Greene, an SNP member of Glasgow city
council. “He does the job of keeping the Labour vote up while his dad’s down
in London.”
Greene’s Labour colleagues in Scotland are reluctant to criticise Michael or
Paul Martin. “Michael runs a tight ship,” says one Labour councillor, who
asked to remain anonymous.
He adds that there is considerable resentment of the way they seem to regard
the constituency as a family fiefdom.
The eerily vacant streets that Michael and Paul Martin represent once echoed
to the sound of heavy engineering production, but there are few traces of
the industrial activity that in early Victorian days led Glaswegians to
boast that theirs was the “second city of the empire”. The St Rollox railway
plant made famous locomotives for Britain and the world. The factory and the
neighbouring Teacher’s whisky bottling plant were flattened long ago, to be
replaced by the familiar emblem of post-industrial Britain: a vast retail
park comprising a Tesco superstore, a Lidl and a Costco. “This area used to
be the engineering leader of Europe, of the world,” laments Paul McLaughlin,
a community activist who runs a help centre advising locals on how to secure
their full entitlement to benefits. “Now it’s No 1 for only one thing:
heroin.”
Across from the bypass that runs into central Glasgow stand the monstrous
Sighthill tower blocks, the unfortunate consequence of the city fathers’
enthusiasm in the 1960s for aping Le Corbusier’s modernism. Within the
central redoubt of the Sighthill complex lies a decaying precinct with a
handful of shops, mostly boarded up. Most of the locals seem largely
indifferent both to Martin and to the growing controversy about their
representative’s activities in London. Not that that stops them coming out
reliably for Labour in every Westminster election, giving him a majority of
over 10,000 in 2005.
Apart from the Tesco superstore complex, there are few signs of private
commerce. Most economic activity is state-funded, and the business of this
part of the city is recycling different types of funding, from Brussels,
London and the Edinburgh parliament. Labour lost control of the devolved
parliament to the SNP at the last election, but it keeps a grip on the city
of Glasgow itself, which it has ruled for as long as anyone can remember.
The permanent Labour rule has created a vast bureaucratic operation,
state-funded and based on patronage and old-fashioned machine politics.
“It’s like Chicago in the 1920s,” says McAllister.
In the mid-1970s, Labour councillors frequently faced charges of corruption;
the graft is apparently more subtle these days, but it is there, and many
politicians (there is no suggestion that this includes the Martins) have to
reach some sort of accommodation with the big family gangs who run the main
drug and prostitution rackets in the city. In Michael Martin’s constituency,
60% of children live in “workless households”, where the entire family
income comes from the state.
Michael Martin was born on July 3, 1945, into an observant Roman Catholic
household, one of five children. His father was a merchant seaman and his
mother a cleaner. He left school at 15 without any qualifications, became a
sheet-metal worker with Rolls-Royce and a shop steward, then a full-time
organiser with the public-sector union Nupe. There was nothing fancy about
his political career, his political associates recall, as he plotted his
path to Westminster. Rather, Martin worked the system and covered the party
bases, establishing favours through assiduous networking on Glasgow council
before clinching the inner-city seat in 1979. Always on the right of the
party, he was at war with Militant in the 1980s and won, served as
parliamentary private secretary to Denis Healey from 1980 to 1983, and
supported Roy Hattersley running for leader in 1983. Martin was seen by
Commons colleagues as affable rather than clubbable, perhaps because he has
never drunk alcohol. While most MPs aspire to join glamorous committees such
as foreign affairs, he set his sights lower, becoming chairman of the
administration committee – the “committee of blocked loos” – where he learnt
how the Commons worked. This was to be crucial when Betty Boothroyd stepped
down as Speaker in 2000, and his network of contacts sprang into action to
return favours.
When a Speaker of the House of Commons is finally selected, he or she must
traditionally show reluctance and be dragged from the bench to the chair. It
is an act, of course, for being Speaker is one of the most sought-after jobs
in British politics. He has immense power, because he sets the procedures,
chooses amendments and in which order they are debated, and defines what is
a “finance” bill – a technical term attached to a piece of legislation that
prevents the Lords from blocking it. Government and opposition leaders are
scared of antagonising Mr Speaker. He cannot be sacked, unless he is caught
red-handed, like Sir John Trevor in 1695, taking a bribe. And when he
decides to leave, he joins the exclusive ex-Speakers’ club, with a thumping
pension and a guaranteed seat in the Lords.
Two of Martin’s three immediate predecessors – George Thomas and Betty
Boothroyd – rose from humble origins. Both adored the job and were popular,
or at least respected, in the Commons. Lady Boothroyd says she loved every
day of the job, and the perk of the finest flat in London, with its rooms
facing south across the Thames. “For eight years I felt I was living in
Venice, because I was always looking at water.”
Yet Martin has seemed incapable of enjoying his prize. From the start he
appeared convinced that colleagues and the media were doing him down. He
annoyed traditionalists by abandoning the Speaker’s wig and tights. He
struggled with procedures, and did not always appear to know members’ names
when calling them to speak. He was surprised to be told he had to resign
from the Labour party to preserve the Speaker’s historic neutrality, and did
so only reluctantly. One former official suggests that the Speaker was not
exactly a workaholic. Where previous Speakers had spare time to prepare for
official receptions by reading up on the guests, Martin, the former official
recalls, tended to disappear to his private suite to watch television. He liked
soap operas, but his favourite programme was The Royle Family. The official
conceded that Martin was supportive of junior staff and encouraged people
from disadvantaged backgrounds similar to his own. But he was contemptuous
of people he sensed were cleverer than him, and likely to take offence at
any perceived intellectual snobbery.
Soon there were leaks to the press, supposedly coming from within the cabinet,
that ministers were unimpressed by the Speaker’s performance. Martin struck
back with the ferocity he learnt as a Glasgow shop steward, instructing
“friends” to let it be known he saw himself as the victim of “anti-Scottish
and anti-working-class snobbery”. Within a year of his election, there were
press reports speculating about how long he could survive in the job.
“Gorbals Mick”, the nickname given to him by sketch-writers, stuck, and he
did not find it funny. (He is not from the Gorbals, which is south of the
Clyde, and he is said to regard the Mick moniker as anti-Catholic.)
The criticism from ministers stopped, but inside the Speaker’s office a bunker
mentality was developing, and those seen as potentially disloyal were
encouraged to leave. Charlotte Every, his diary secretary, was let go
allegedly because Mr Speaker found her “a typical Sloane ranger” and
probably a Tory. “I am a victim of class war,” she complained at the time.
Like most who have fallen foul of Martin, she declines to comment now,
though the briefest telephone conversation confirms a friend’s assessment
that she is “frightfully posh but really lovely with it”.
Miss Every had committed the cardinal sin of referring to her boss as “Mr
Martin” rather than the more respectful and correct “Mr Speaker”. Sir
Nicolas Bevan, the Speaker’s secretary – a key position in the Commons
hierarchy – also left after personality clashes. Lady Boothroyd declined to
talk about Martin’s performance as her successor, but she did say that she
had always found the staff in the Speaker’s office superbly efficient,
especially Sir Nicolas. His successor, Roger Daw, also found it impossible
to work for Martin, and left within a year, apparently after a disagreement
about Mr Speaker’s ceremonial dress. “Working for this Speaker is like being
part of a Tudor court,” recalls one former official.
Morning meetings take place in the Speaker’s library, an exquisitely
proportioned Thames-facing room with carved oak panelling, stencilled
ceilings and a fireplace of Purbeck marble. The meeting comprises the
Speaker’s secretary and assistant secretary, the first and second deputy
Speakers, three of four clerks, and the serjeant-at-arms. At the beginning
and end of the meeting, the participants acknowledge Mr Speaker with a bow
from the neck – as is the custom for staff in the royal palaces. “You deal
with this by telling yourself you are honouring the office, not the man,”
explains one former parliamentary official.
Supporters of Martin expected things to settle down, but they got worse. The
atmosphere around his office became ever more acrid. Mrs Martin had never
settled in London, one official said, and rarely went out. Staff believed
she was a firm republican, because she would generally decline invitations
to Buckingham Palace, and Mr Martin would go alone.
There were rows with the Commons security team when they challenged Mrs
Martin’s guests to show their passes. The Martins became convinced that she
should be entitled to a government driver. MI5 was contacted to see if there
was any credible security threat to the Speaker’s wife that might justify a
driver, but none was identified, so the request was denied.
It was at this point that Mrs Martin began claiming back over £4,000 worth of
taxi receipts for shopping trips with her housekeeper, supposedly buying
food for official functions.The Speaker and his wife have the entire Commons
catering operation at their disposal for official functions, so the idea
that Mrs Martin would need to take a taxi to buy cocktail nibbles was
regarded as risible. Mike Granatt, a PR man drafted in to restore the
Speaker’s reputation, resigned after finding he had been misled by the
Speaker’s office about the nature of those trips.
There was bemusement when the Speaker retained the libel specialists
Carter-Ruck to deal with journalists’ inquiries, then fury on all sides of
the Commons when a parliamentary question revealed that the firm’s bills had
reached £21,517. In fact, the row over Carter-Ruck’s services concealed a
huge increase in overall spending on legal advice by the House of Commons
Commission, through which the Speaker runs the parliamentary estate. In
2003-4, total legal costs were £108,921. Last year they had soared to
£731,101, which included some fees paid relating to construction and
refurbishment.
Last spring there was another eruption in the Speaker’s office. A group of
enterprising protesters from Greenpeace had climbed a crane moored in the
Thames and unfurled an anti-nuclear banner reading: “Tony WMD”. Most
MPs took an indulgent view of this latest manifestation of protest politics.
But the Martins did not see the funny side. According to past and present
Commons staff, Martin exploded with rage because the floating crane occupied
by Greenpeace was moored just 30 yards from the front of his apartment.
Martin found that four impertinent environmental activists had unrivalled
views into his own bedroom, and indeed into all the finest staterooms of
their official home on the floors below.
The man held responsible for failing to thwart the protest was the
serjeant-at-arms, a public servant of the old school with impeccable
military credentials, Major General Peter Grant Peterkin. He had spotted the
risk of the crane in the Thames the moment it was put into position for
repair works to Westminster Bridge. He alerted the river police, but they
were then caught napping when a Greenpeace speedboat successfully landed the
protesters on the crane.
Colleagues understood that the serjeant’s days were numbered, and there
was no surprise three months later when he was told his contract would not
be renewed. The Speaker did not attend Ampleforth-educated Grant Peterkin’s
farewell party.
With Grant Peterkin gone, Martin took decisive action to change the culture of
his court, reduce the influence of the “men in tights”, and move away from
the practice of appointing public-school-educated retired army officers to
senior positions. As part of a wider review of the running of the
parliamentary estate, the ancient post of serjeant-at-arms was downgraded,
with its responsibilities for security limited to the Commons chamber
itself. The new serjeant was named as Jill Pay, who had been assistant
serjeant, and before that a civil servant in the Department of Employment.
By all accounts, she carries out the diminished functions of her role
perfectly well, but there is an awkward constitutional problem with the
transition. Though the selection has long been made in the Speaker’s office,
the serjeant-at-arms has always technically been a crown appointment.
According to those familiar with the situation, the Queen was unimpressed that
she had not been consulted about the changes to the role of one of her
representatives at Westminster. “Put it this way,” says one official. “That
end are very unhappy with this end, mostly about the way the post was
downgraded without consultation.”
Previous serjeants-at-arms had begun and ended their tenure with an audience
with the sovereign. When it was suggested that time might be found in the
Queen’s schedule for an audience, word came back from Buckingham Palace that
Mrs Pay need not bother. Telephoned to confirm whether or not she had had
her audience with the Queen, Pay reacted, as do almost all who have had
dealings with Mr Speaker, by saying, “I am not going down this route with
you; I’m not going to discuss it any further,” before putting the receiver
down.
Those who have known Martin a long time are baffled that he has turned what
should have been the crowning glory of his career into eight rather
miserable years. He is also sensitive about his appearance. When his
official portrait by the artist Andrew Festing was submitted, Mr Speaker
thought his nose too big, so it was sent back to be touched up. “He and his
wife came to my studio to see me about it,” says Festing. “It is very rare
for a subject to request a change.”
Martin has his defenders in the Commons, who point to what he has achieved
from his humble origins. Tam Dalyell, the former father of the House who is
now retired, rates him highly, and higher than his more popular
predecessors. Conscious that he left school without a single qualification,
Martin delighted his family by passing his first O-level – Italian – at 42.
He is an accomplished Highland piper and can be persuaded to play at
Burns-night dinners. On the whole, MPs want to like Mr Speaker, and realise
that a bad Speaker reduces parliament’s standing. He can be very charming
and kind, firing off letters to MPs with personal problems.
With his military background and fondness for shooting and fishing, Black Rod,
Lieutenant General Sir Michael Willcocks, might not be assumed to be Mr
Speaker’s type. But he says he has found Martin “very friendly and
engaging. That ‘Gorbals Mick’ stuff overlooks the fact that he has risen
from hardship in Glasgow to become Speaker. People underestimate him”. But
Black Rod works in the House of Lords and is technically a servant of the
Queen: it is people who have to work directly for the Speaker who have found
him so difficult.
Douglas Carswell is highly unusual, as an MP who has publicly challenged
Martin’s suitability for the job and demanded he set a date to step down.
Carswell, one of the energetic young Tory modernisers elected to the Commons
in 2005, deplores the snobbery of the allusions to “Gorbals Mick” and sees
nothing to dislike personally about the Speaker. But Carswell thinks he has
not been up to the job of holding the executive to account.
Colleagues were appalled in April when Carswell made his views known,
predicting the MP’s career would not recover and he would never again be
called to speak in the chamber. To his surprise and, he says, to Martin’s
credit, Carswell was called for the first time in three years during prime
minister’s questions just after he had demanded the resignation of Mr
Speaker, though he concedes it might also be that it was the first time he
had remembered his name.
Martin is temperamentally ill-suited to dealing with the tempest caused by
MPs’ expenses because he is stubborn and old-fashioned in his view of
Commons procedure. It is perhaps his misfortune to have been in the chair
when abuse of the system came to light, characterised most infamously by
Derek Conway paying his son Freddie £45,000 as a parliamentary researcher
while he was a full-time student.
But there is a further problem for Martin, for he is complicit in many
practices that, though within the rules, seem dubious. Like many of his
constituents in “workless households” in Glasgow, Martin has been adept at
maximising his family’s income from the state. On top of his £137,000
salary, he has a pension estimated to be worth £1.4m, and the best rent-free
apartment in London. His wife was earning £25,000 a year in the first years
of his speakership, and his daughter until very recently worked as his
constituency secretary. His son, Paul, eased gently into the Scottish
parliament, earns £50,000 a year. And, even though he has a primary home
fully paid for by the taxpayer, Michael Martin claimed £17,166 last year in
housing allowance on his home outside Glasgow, which is mortgage-free. Even
his closest allies were dismayed when it emerged that he used air miles
collected on official, reimbursed travel to fly his entire extended family
from Glasgow to London business-class at Christmas. Paul Martin has had to
explain to the Scottish parliament why he failed to declare this donation.
One of the oddities of parliament’s opaque procedures is that a Freedom of
Information request will show that on February 19 this year, Speaker Martin
gave tea to the Polish ambassador and claimed back £3.77 on expenses. Yet
there is still no requirement for him to reveal which members of his own
family he employs on the public purse, and at what salary. Ann Keen, Labour
MP for Brentford and Isleworth, ran his campaign for Speaker eight years ago
and remains a close ally in the Commons. She and her husband, the fellow
Labour MP Alan Keen, earned the joint tabloid sobriquet “Mr and Mrs
Expenses” after it became known that each was claiming £17,669 in housing
allowances for the mortgage on an apartment on the south bank of the Thames,
even though they live only nine miles from Westminster.
Martin’s stoutest defender on the Conservative benches has been Derek Conway,
the “Mr Expenses” par excellence, who did not see the writing on the wall,
has been stripped of the Conservative whip by David Cameron, and will not be
defending Old Bexley and Sidcup at the next election.
By opting to defend such practices, and to benefit from them himself, Michael
Martin has squandered his opportunity to become a pipe-playing,
Italian-speaking, self-made national treasure, the sheet-metal worker who
rose from grimy, post-industrial Glasgow to be Speaker in the House of
Commons.
“It’s a tragedy,” says one retired official. “Having achieved this great
eminence, he’s going to be remembered as the worst Speaker for 200
years.”
