Who would you expect to live longer: an east Glaswegian or a man from
Colombia, Albania or North Korea? The answer is that the Colombians,
Albanians and North Koreans would drink a toast at the Glaswegian’s wake.
Who says so? The World Health Organisation. Male Colombians, despite poverty
and narcotraficantes, expect to reach 71; Albanians, despite all those blood
feuds, 69; North Koreans, despite living in a concentration camp, 64; east
Glaswegians, despite living in one of the richest states on the planet, 63.
That is about the same as Bangladesh. They’d have to move to Burma, Nepal or
Somalia to drop dead sooner.
East Glaswegians are citizens of a country with average male life expectancy
of 77. They live in Labour’s 25th safest parliamentary seat, where on July
24 the party will defend a majority of 13,500. They ought to share the same
rights and life span as the rest of us, particularly after 11 years of
Labour government – but they don’t.
Above and beyond all the clever political forecasting that is going on about
the by-election here and whether or not Gordon Brown would survive losing
the constituency, we should never forget this inequitable abuse of human
rights in the Labour heartland.
Glasgow East’s last MP, David Marshall, a former bus conductor, resigned
precipitously after 19 years for unexplained “personal reasons”. The man
most expected to replace him at Westminster, George Ryan, a local
councillor, turned down the chance equally mysteriously.
Perhaps it’s not such a mystery. Glasgow East is the hardest, poorest place in
Britain. Others may pick a fight about that – but they’d lose. Shettleston,
at the heart of the constituency, makes the rough margins of Liverpool look
like the Chelsea Flower Show.
The constituency is large and incoherent. It looks like the national museum of
pebble dashing – everything that could have the bottom of a fish tank stuck
to it has.
The people do not look good here. Often it is difficult to tell men from
women, old men from older men. The mean parades of shops are dotted with
tanning parlours. Yet the locals have the blotchy pallor of cave-dwelling
consumptives; only their first two fingers are stained brown.
In the pubs there are shellsuited angry men with faces like melted funeral
candles. Among them are little knots of pensioners who spend their days in a
bar because they can’t afford to keep the light and the heat on at home.
They get a bit of telly and some warmth and some company. And if they nurse
a glass of Irn-Bru for long enough, someone will put a dram in it.
The gossip is all about drug dealers, organised crime and the local
celebrities – the inmates of Barlinnie jail, which is also in the
constituency. You can buy a knife here called a 10-shot, the street weapon
of choice, named because it costs £1 an inch and will go right through you.
Drunks turn up at an accident and emergency cupping their amputated fingers
in their palms.
The day I’m here the clouds hang at head height; it could be February. My
first stop is a shopping precinct where the Scottish Nationalists are
shaking hands in a credit union. This is a starter bank for people who are
not into joined-up economics yet.
Next door there’s a greetings card shop with a big display of birthday cards.
I pick up one that says “Happy 100th” and ask the girl behind the counter if
she has ever sold one. She gives me a f*** off look and says no.
John Mason, the Nats’ candidate, is so insignificant that he has to be pointed
out to me three times at a distance of 5ft. He is lurking in an oversized
suit the colour of wet cement, has wisps of gingery hair and a pair of
glasses that must have come free with another pair of glasses.
His voice sounds like rain falling on derelict carpet. Apparently in a
previous life he was some sort of councillor, although he might have been a
draught excluder or a novelty loo roll cover.
The Westminster excitement over this ballot supposes that the nationalists
will rise like Wallace in a fervour; but by choosing Mason the SNP has shown
that it doesn’t think it has a shortbread in a teacup’s chance of winning.
This is an overwhelmingly Catholic seat – Celtic’s ground is just down the
road – and Catholics always, always vote Labour. They won’t vote for a man
called Mason: the freemasons are aligned with the Orange Order, which is
Rangers and unionist – and they are having their marching season right now.
All this may seem ridiculously 1960s Belfast and unsophisticated; but if you
leave people to stew in squalor, what’s the surprise if they behave
tribally?
Not that Labour isn’t doing its best to cut its own throat. Three or four
people turned down the job before the party could find one willing to say
yes.
She is Margaret Curran, who is a member of the Scottish parliament for a
constituency that overlaps this one.
We go to meet her at a kilt-hire warehouse that boasts it sends out 12,000
wedding outfits a week.
That’s more Highlanders than fought at Culloden.
Most end up in England.
Curran is one of those small, sinewy – tough as girders, sharp as a dirk,
subtle as a football chant – political women fashioned by the viciously
adversarial nature of Scottish politics. Her minders – both English – assure
me she will be taking only one parliamentary salary.
But what will she do for her constituents that she doesn’t do already in the
Edinburgh parliament?
In this seat nearly half of all households are council or housing association;
60% of them have no car; death from heart attack in the under-75s is more
than 80% above the national average; drug-related crime and Aids are
endemic.
Teenage pregnancy is 42% above a national average that is already the shame of
Europe. Nearly half the children live in long-term unemployed households.
About 50% of the population have no qualifications. The biggest single
employer is the social security.
So what this place really, really needs – what it’s crying out for – is a
part-time MP playing political hide-and-seek with the government in
Westminster.
We drive off to find the Tory candidate, Davina Rankin, who sits in the back
room of the Tory office, an abandoned shop.
She is young, local, black and a trade unionist, which is something of a coup
for the Tories. And there’s more. She grew up in Gartnavel mental hospital
where her parents were nurses.
Davina is utterly new Con, right on. She can tick boxes they haven’t even
invented yet. She is also the only candidate who talks about local issues
eloquently, sensibly and with sympathy – and she doesn’t have a hope in
hell. She will be lucky to save her deposit.
At best only 30% of east Glaswegians will turn out for the ballot. They are
deracinated, as uncoupled from the political system as they are from the
economic one. No one wants to talk to the candidates; they have no questions
to ask, no use for a leaflet.
It would be easy to see these people as being the agents of their own
misfortune, what with the smoking, the diet, the drugs, the drink, the
strokes and the heart attacks, the rotten teeth, the pregnancies and the
crime. But why should they get enthused about a system that has for
generations taken them for granted?
The citizens of east Glasgow have bigger problems to be getting on with – like
how to stay alive.
