IT has become such an ingrained fact it now a cliche for the hold Labour has had on parts of Scotland for generations.
Since 1933 just eight years have passed when the party was not in control of Glasgow. Sir Patrick Dollan, one of the legendary 20th century Labour figures in the city and Hector McNeil, later Clement Atlee’s minister of state and Scottish secretary headed up the Glasgow Corporation during the pre and war years.
Other notable leaders in the 1950s included Myer Galpern, later MP for Shettleston and deputy speaker of the House of Commons, and the socialist Jean Roberts, the city’s first female Lord Provost whose time in the role coincided with the city’s slum clearance.
Reflective of the Conservative dominance of Scottish politics throughout the 1950s, the decade saw a few years when Glasgow was headed by the Progressive Party, a municipal political operation which was anti-Labour and heavily Unionist, their flurry with power ending in 1952.
It was not until 1968 that Labour failed to secure control of Glasgow, the Progressives enjoying another three years heading the Corporation before their disappearance from the Scottish political scene.
Up to and after the local government re-organisation in 1975, when it became ‘City of Glasgow District Council’, Labour again held sway before its final two years in opposition when the Tories, led by John Young, were in charge between 1977 and 1979.
Since then Labour leaders of Glasgow have included Jean McFadden (three times), Pat Lally (twice), Frank McAveety (twice) and Bob Gould, Charlie Gordon, Steven Purcell and Gordon Matheson.
Until the introduction of the single transferable vote in local elections in 2007 Labour’s main opposition in Glasgow was always internal, stability at the top only a feature after 1997.
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