All human life is up ’ere, as the News of the World used to say and perhaps still does, for all I know. And more besides, indeed. The tragicomedy of Doncaster blunders on, unscripted and out of control. While the nation reeled at the sheer horror of child-on-child violence in the former pit village of Edlington, the council responsible for their care carried on its private war oblivious to the disbelieving gaze of the outside world. You think they have reached the limits of farce and they go and exceed themselves.
On the day that the 11 and 12-year-old brothers were in Sheffield Crown Court, listening to a litany of their violent and sexually abusive crimes, Doncaster’s English Democrat mayor, Peter Davies, told his interim chief executive to resign – only two days after he had been appointed. Tim Leader, the council’s director of resources had been appointed chief executive after the sudden resignation the previous week of the council’s “managing director”, Paul Hart, citing “personal reasons.”
Leader had been chosen at an emotional meeting of the full council. And when I say emotional I mean emotional. The Tory group leader, Yvonne Woodcock, broke down in tears, saying she had been “badgered from here to there by all sorts of people” and walked out of the chamber. Plainly, a cull of Doncaster’s setts is called for. Poor Mrs Woodcock had been due to challenge the appointment of Mr Leader, proposing instead the name of Robin Hooper, the deputy director of children’s services.
One can well understand why anyone would want to move on from that job at this time, but it appears that Robin Hooper was the favoured candidate of the mayor, who was angry that he had not been consulted about the appointment. Another Tory councillor took on the doleful task of nominating Hooper, but the council’s legal advisers insisted that his candidature could not be allowed at this late stage. Leader was confirmed as the town’s chief executive, has refused to resign and was still in post as Tribune went to press – although with Donny you never know. Meanwhile, the mayor faces a vote of no confidence from the council.
I recount this story of municipal madness not just out of fun (although the town’s politics have been a source of entertainment for many years), but also to draw attention to a scandal of local government in self-indulgent chaos. While these clowns are tearing lumps out of each other, seven children for whom the council had responsibility have died. The children’s department failed the town’s at-risk children, and nobody did anything about it.
Nor was national government blameless. Nick Jarman, the town’s acting director of children’s services, told MPs on January 20 that Whitehall officials (to which he could have added ministers) had failed to get to grips with the problems of the department for years, despite a “significant amount of evidence” showing grave trouble.
Children’s Secretary Ed Balls finally intervened, ordering an overhaul pending reviews into the deaths of the seven children. By then, Doncaster’s children’s services had been “in crisis” for more than a decade, according to Nick Jarman.
It does honestly beggar belief that the political and official hierarchy in this once-proud railway town could have been so inward looking and blasé about its civic duties that such a scandal could occur. From “Donnygate”, the expenses-fiddling saga that predated Westminster’s own sorry drama, through the steady degeneration of local rule under the first directly-elected mayor, Martin Winter (kicked out of the Labour Party), to the final triumph of the Taliban-praising Peter Davies as English Democrat mayor, Doncaster seems to have had a death wish. But the politicians lived. It was the children who died.
There must be some kind of legal provision for direct rule from Whitehall, on the lines of Ulster. At the very least, it ought to be threatened.
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While the rest of the country breathed a sigh of relief at the fall in unemployment, Yorkshire bucked the national trend with a rise of 14,000 in the number out of work.
There are now 239,000 men and women jobless in the region, almost one in 10 – 9.1 per cent – of people of working age. Add to that the 775,000 people of working age who are economically inactive and the overall proportion of those not in work rises to more than 20 per cent.
These frightening figures attracted little political comment locally, while fears that unemployment in the county is bolstering support for the British National Party do not appear to have been borne out by the latest real poll evidence.
In a by-election for the Airedale and Ferry Fryston ward of Wakefield council, Labour’s Les Shaw, 57, easily retained the seat with 1,330 votes on a 5.5 per cent swing from the Tories. The Liberal Democrats came second, and the BNP, runner-up in 2008, fell to third place with only 356 votes. The Tories trailed in fifth with a risible 275, after boasting for weeks in the local press that they would win. They took 10 per cent of the votes cast.
Had Labour lost this seat, the party would have lost overall control of the council for the first time since 1974. Mary Creagh, the city’s MP, must be breathing a sigh of relief. The Tories thought they were in with a chance here, but old loyalties die hard – if at all.
