A month ago Martin Ford was a fairly anonymous, quietly efficient and widely respected chair of the Infrastructures Planning Committee at Aberdeenshire Council. Today he was sacked from his job as chair of that committee by a vote that included a very large number of abstentions. Sacked – not for bringing the Council into disrepute by immoral, dishonest or otherwise disreputable behaviour, but because he acted within agreed and established Council standing orders and used his casting vote.
The problem is, he used it according to his conscience, and his conviction of what was right for the local authority he was elected to represent. He dared to not support a £1 billion pound development on the Aberdeenshire coast. He felt unable to approve a multi-million plan that would, in his view be detrimental to the area. He had the courage / stupidity / wisdom / folly (delete as you think applicable) to defy corporate America. But whether his judgement was right or wrong,(opinions vary wildly) whether he drives a car or not (and he doesn’t), whether he approves airport expansion or not ( he doesn’t), whether he represents business interests and aspirations ( and he clearly doesn’t), he was duly appointed after being locally elected. And now he has been removed in a charade that renders local democratic expression irrelevant. So he is removed; the constitution is to be changed to ensure that, in the opinions of the chief movers, such a ridiculous, unthinkable, outrageously blinkered decision cannot be made again by ensuring that in future the big applications go to the full Council.
Now I can see why people are angry with Mr Ford. I think the Council are entitled to change the constitution. I fully understand how it can be that opinion is deeply divided between business interests (almost unanimously for) and environmental and local concerns (almost unanimously against). But I see no justification for sacking a man who has done nothing wrong; who has not acted irresponsibly (after all his was a casting vote out of 13 – so six others shared whatever hesitations lead folk to vote against such a massive development opportunity. And several of them have spoken of bullying, assault and other personal threats.
But the Trump organisation now feel they are making good progress. Maybe so. But there is a political shabbiness, a moral distaste, an unpleasant odour caused by anxious sweating over filthy lucre, when concerted actions remove an honourable man from an appointed position, because he acted according to conscience, within the proper procedures and processes, and as a duly elected local government official. I sometimes wonder what it would take for a Scottish Government, of whatever party, but especially one espousing independence(small ‘i’ deliberate) to take seriously the personal and practical cost of believing its own rhetoric. The chair of a local council ‘stood against them’…, ‘and sent them homewards, tae think again’, and his colleagues sacked him. The Scottish nation shaped ‘the democratic intellect’, contributed hugely to the development of a political process where equality, justice and respect were rooted in deep values, – surely we have more political principle, sense of justice and right, and cultural faithfulness than such goings on – but apparently not.
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