Centre stage for Bradford Lord Mayors! (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Centre stage for Bradford Lord Mayors!

9:10am Thursday 12th January 2012 in Remember When? By Jim Greenhalf

It’s a truism to say that politics is not what it was. The death of former Bradford Lord Mayors Tom Wood (Labour) and Olive Messer (Conservative) before Christmas brought back memories of days when City Hall politics and the office of first citizen were frequently in conflict.

Most controversial of all Lord Mayors was the late Conservative councillor Smith Midgeley. He was the first of two consectutive Tory Lord Mayors – George Hodgson was the second – who broke the tradition of not using the mayoral casting vote at full Council meetings in a party political way.

Depending on these two genial men to do this was one Councillor Eric Pickles, then leader of Bradford’s hung Council from 1988 to 1990, now Secretary of State for Local Government.

Determined to advance his political career to a national stage, his Thatcherite Bradford Revolution plan could only be passed and sustained by the second and casting vote of the Lord Mayor at full Council meetings.

That’s why the Tories broke the tradition of rotating the mayoralty between the three major political groups, ensuring that at the end of Smith Midgeley’s year the mayoralty passed to George Hodgson.

The uproar in Bradford was palpable. How Labour must have wished they had stuck to their 1986 decision to abolish the office altogether. They U-turned only after a T&A campaign and thousands of letters from the public.

But when Labour regained power in 1990 they made a point by keeping the office of Lord Mayor for ten years. In fact, politics had encroached on the office of first citizen long before 1988.

In the autumn of 1981, the Lord Mayor was Councillor Danny Coughlin, a Labour politician and former shop steward in Glasgow. Recesssion was ravaging manufacturing industries in Bradford, and Bradford’s first citizen felt he could not watch it happen from a position of neutrality.

He protested against a visit by Michael Heseltine, then Mrs Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Environment, spoke out against spending cuts at the University of Bradford and, to bang home the message that Bradford was a prisoner of national government policies, had himself photographed by the T&A handcuffed to Labour group leader Derek Smith and Tory group leader Kevin Hawkins.

They were snapped on the front steps of City Hall wearing mufflers and flat caps. The Lord Mayor wore his scarf along with his ceremonial robe and chain of office. The public didn’t like the stunt, conceived by City Hall’s Policy Unit.

Olive Messer, who once entered the Council chamber wearing a grey stetson – it was her way of letting everybody know she had just returned from visiting North America with her husband Basil – was one of the few first citizens to authorise a midnight feast of fish and chips at City Hall.

The early 1980s were marked by a series of hung councils with the consequence that the annual budget meeting became a test of endurance. The longest took 14 hours.

On March 12, 1985, the decision to increase domestic rates by 65p a week took 12½ hours of tortuous argument that included 44 amendments and several long adjournments.

Coming up to midnight, Councillor Messer, sitting as chairman of the meeting, reluctantly agreed to permitting supper on the rates.

She said: “I will allow fish and chips provided that members do not make the mess they made last time for staff to clear up.” You would never have thought this was the same lady who had worn the headgear of Calamity Jane.