Doncaster used to be a name that triggered shame about Labour’s local government corruption – “Donnygate” and all that, which saw councillors and officers appearing in court on a regular basis. But forget political disgrace. The town is now a laughing stock, courtesy of the new barmpot Mayor, Peter Davies. He was elected in May, as an English Democrat, on the back of revulsion against the main political parties. Labour, traditionally rulers in this old railway borough, came third.
Since taking office, Davies – father of the right-wing Tory MP for Shipley, Philip Davies – has blundered across the media with a series of ill-considered remarks that have left people shaking their heads in disbelief. The word “gaffe” – so often used in newspaper headlines and so infrequently heard in normal speech – might have been invented for him.
His most notorious remark, made in recent days, was to praise the Taliban. “They do have an ordered society of some sort”, he opined, adding that the Taliban could teach us a thing or two about family values. Indeed they could, although not the sort of things we might want to learn. His outburst was swiftly denounced by Rosie Winterton, Doncaster’s MP and Gordon Brown’s minister for Yorkshire. In a more considered reaction, she and neighbouring MPs Caroline Flint, Jeff Ennis and Ed Miliband demanded an explanation from David Cameron about his party’s relationship with the English Democrats. Tory councillors serve in Davies’s “cabinet” and the party declined to put up against the little Englanders in a recent by-election in the mining village of Rossington.
The latest cause for hilarity is a briefing paper prepared for Davies by the Campaign Against Political Correctness, at his request. It says that pictures of the Queen should adorn Doncaster’s schools (royal correctness?), children in care should be adopted or sent to boarding schools, the local education authority should be scrapped, youth workers should be sacked and arts subsidies ended.
Not surprisingly, the otherwise mouthy Mayor doesn’t want to talk about the policy paper, which also suggests closure of the town hall canteen, leaving staff to use Spudulike. There is no branch of this fast food chain in Donny. It is further proposed to abolish the “Five A Day” and “Real Nappy” officers, although neither of these jobs exist.
Public toilets are “pretty poor value for money”, argues the Mayor’s political guru, John Midgley, co-founder of the CAPC. He thinks pubs should be paid a fee for allowing non-drinkers to use their lavatories. I can see this going down like a pint of Tetley’s – or not, as the case may be. He also wants an end to “long reports that nobody reads” and a maximum length to officers’ contributions. I don’t know how long the CAPC document is, but reports suggest it might break its own rules on brevity.
In today’s grim economic climate, we all need a bit of entertainment. However, behind this façade of fun, there is a deadly serious agenda. Mayor Davies suspended the Unison branch secretary, Jim Board, and encouraged staff to join a newly-created “trade union”, the Workers of England Union. The WEU is affiliated to the English Democrats and boasts of being “proud of being English and of being an English-centric organisation”. It also brags about not being affiliated either to the TUC or the Labour Party. I can see no circumstances in which either body would want anything to do with this weird political creature, even if it does get you into the Mason’s Arms loo without buying a drink.
So, as the laughter dies from our lips, let’s just remember that voting for these fringe parties isn’t really funny. The joke is on us. l
He may not be on the front line any more, but he still knows how to pick a target, that Roy Hattersley. In his latest offensive, he remarked: “By the way, had I the power when I was in government, I would have pushed hard for Derbyshire to be made the fourth Riding.” Of Yorkshire, of course.
Milord H was raised in Sheffield, which to us further north is a John Biffen-style,
semi-detached part of God’s own county. I take it that this is part of his guilt complex about living in posh rural Derbyshire these days, but he has still managed to upset a few people. Not least the man who wrote to the paper to say a fourth Riding is a technical impossibility.
He’s right. From memory, the word comes from the Viking “Thriding”, meaning one-third. And there are already North, West and East Ridings, the latter restored from the Tories’ redrawing of the boundaries to invent Humberside in the 1970s. True, Winifred Holtby called her classic novel of Tykes and local government South Riding, an epic of municipal politics and romance which I must read again, but it is set in east Yorkshire, the most conservative part of the county, with the exception of Hull.
A close friend of Vera Brittain (Shirley Williams’ mother), Holtby died young and is buried in Rudston churchyard, on the eastern edge of the Yorkshire wolds, the least known part of the county, even after publication of Richard Benson’s excellent The Farm. But that’s probably quite enough Tykery for one week.
