IT has been just over a month since Glasgow elected a raft of young Green councillors and the group are starting to find their feet dealing with the “arcane” systems in the city chambers.
“In some ways it feels like going back to school,” Anthony Carroll, 25, Greens councillor for Dennistoun, told the Sunday National, adding that the older cohort feel like senior students, both bemused and confused by their presence in the council corridors.
Carroll is not alone. Out of the six young Glasgow Green councillors under 30, the Sunday National spoke to four, and each had at least one tale of their age being brought up at their new job.
For Holly Bruce, 28 (below), Langside, coming from a background working with diverse communities including young people and women, she was taken aback by the number of older, predominantly white men inside the chambers.
Of the first full council meeting last month, Bruce said: “It’s bizarre for me and as I was standing there, I can only describe it as an uneasiness, and it wasn’t because anyone was doing anything, I’ve just never been in a room with that many men before.”
Dan Hutchison, 28, Govan, and Blair Anderson, 24, Partick East and Kelvindale, both said they found it strange to be referred to by their last name, and to see older council officials defer to them and treat them with respect.
Anderson explained: “They’ll say ‘Councillor Anderson can you sign this form?’ and I’m like ‘who’s that?’ because it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.
“It’s very traditional, very deferential, even the building itself is obviously really old and very grand. So it has been quite a change going from a laptop on your knees on your bed to that.”
Hutchison added: “It’s definitely strange. I thought I’d prepared myself exceptionally well for it but it’s obviously been a complete culture shock.
“My background is hospitality and I think I’m used to everyone speaking down to me.
“All the officers call me Councillor Hutchison, but there’s that power dynamic now it’s almost inappropriate for me to say [call me Dan].”
Bringing a new perspective into a council with such an older male dominated history is no easy task, but the group are undeterred and already getting stuck into case work and dealing with local issues varying from rubbish collections, dodgy landlords and transport to area specific problems like anti-social behaviour outside of Ibrox.
Bruce, one of the youngest women on the council, noted that at one point an older male councillor referenced that the “people in the room were younger than his own daughter”.
She said: “My lived experience is different from your lived experience, it doesn’t mean mine should be discounted. I would never sit in a room and say ‘You’re too old to be here’, so why would you say that?
“That was an instance where I thought we need to nip this in the bud, so I’m going to be mindful and aware of that and try and approach it as it comes but I do anticipate more of that going forward.”
Carroll has had a similar experience with older colleagues, adding: “There are microaggressions between the newer councillors and the older councillors where there’s still that divide in a lot of ways, it’s an interesting environment.”
Parts of the way the council is structured can also cause issues. Elaine Gallagher (above), Greens councillor for Southside Central, recently had Covid-19 and had to miss chairing a meeting of the Southside Area Partnership. The group sent someone to stand-in, but council rules mean Gallagher herself should have nominated her replacement.
“It was technically chaired illegally,” Carroll said, “because they didn’t follow the very arcane way the council runs their committees. There’s a lot of arcane practices still in committees and in enacting motions or instructions to council to do things, in a lot of ways we still have those barriers that are more institutional.”
Meanwhile, Hutchison recounted a run-in with a councillor from another party, who said when leaving a lift that he and another young Green were “too young to be in here” [the City Chambers].
He said: “Well, tough s***. There are six of us under 30 in our group of 10 so they’re just going to have to deal with it aren’t they.
“I don’t know whether it’s because the Greens were kingmakers in the council because of the way that the kind of numbers worked out, I don’t know whether that’s what’s kind of throwing them a little bit.”
For Anderson, the youngest in the Green group, it hasn’t been “too bad”.
He is keen to stress that he understands the privileges of being a white male, but also pointed out that many of the older councillors have been there since before he was born.
He added: “First of all they don’t think that I’m meant to be there, literally, they’ll say ‘Oh who are you?’, but they also don’t think that you really belong there.
“They think that they’re grownups. You can see people get a bit of a start when you start talking about detailed policy and union things and they are obviously taken by surprise, so it’s quite nice to be able to show them up.”
