A Baby Boomer's Reunion

Margo, after we were the last out

23 January 2025

We met at Margo, a Glasgow restaurant, for the 50th anniversary of the formation of Strathclyde's Regional Report team. There were ten of us at the reunion: four Davids, Kathy, Rob, Keith, Laurie, Gerhard and Sue - names straight from the post-war inventory of Christian names.

In February 1975, four of us, two from the West Central Scotland Plan, David and me and two from the Glasgow Corporation Planning Department, Sue and Linda, met for lunch in a pub across Gordon Street from Central Station. We had been recruited to produce a Regional Strategy for the shortly to be established Strathclyde Region. We were all in our mid-twenties, had four planning degrees, two geography degrees and an Oxford PPE degree but only 15 years of work experience between us. We recruited 6 new graduates to help us, bringing the team's average age down to 24 years. We were boomer scribblers and disrupters. 

We were innocent of the planning policies that had led to the demolition of much of the urban fabric of Glasgow and its surrounding towns. Nor were we responsible for the planning of large housing schemes and new towns that had failed to provide the range of essential public and private services for these new communities. Instead, we were armed with knowledge of threshold analysis, multiple regression analysis, and demographic projection models and shared a collective vision of social justice. We had the field to ourselves; only the senior deputy director had any experience in strategic planning, and he was both our mentor and severest critic.

Tight timescales melded us into a team, and politicians who were determined to tackle the inequities arising from collapsing industries, social deprivation, unemployment, and poor-quality services from schools to child care to housing gave us encouragement. Despite, or perhaps because of, our relative ignorance of the nuances of bureaucratic behaviour, politicians eager to make changes gave us license. We were less popular with senior managers defending the past and fending off politicians with a litany of excuses based on financial regulations and legal requirements. 

We completed the Regional Report within a year. The population and household projections that we produced for Strathclyde were realistic and replaced the grossly optimistic trend projections of the Registrar General. We prepared a strategy for urban regeneration and made proposals for reallocating resources towards disadvantaged communities and groups. The investment was shifted to public transport rather than urban motorways. We recommended the cancellation of Stonehouse New Town and two new communities at Lennoxtown and Houston and for setting up a major project for Glasgow's Eastern Area Renewal. We had been an unwitting but disruptive influence in establishing a new model of local government, one that shifted resources from well-served affluent suburbs and new towns to run-down urban areas and housing schemes that lacked both public and private services and the transformation was delivered at pace. A Scottish Development Agency was created to focus on supporting indigenous industry and the clearance of derelict land, and the Housing Corporation was established, which in turn created 29 housing associations to modernise Glasgow's tenements. These happened as part of the outcome of the Regional Report during discussions with the Scottish Office.

We developed a network of contacts across all departments who shared the vision of the politicians. We also had our detractors in high places who resented a bunch of boomers disrupting long-established administrative procedures, challenging hierarchies and usurping their influence. In the next few years, we focused on developing area initiatives, providing evidence for shifting human and financial resources to needy areas and groups. We worked with colleagues in other departments to reshape policies on community development, children in care, pre-school, elderly, disability, homelessness and addiction. We consulted with District Councils to provide housing policies responsive to the growing needs of the elderly, disabled, single parents and the single homeless. We were more active in corporate planning than physical planning, and this was recognised by the politicians who insisted that we become part of a reshaped Council management structure in 1980. By this time with comings and goings, there had been 18 people on the team.

We were transferred in August 1980 to a new Chief Executive's department with 350 staff. The department was responsible for all administrative, policy, legal, civic and partnership functions. It may seem excessive, but Strathclyde was the largest council in the UK, providing services to 2.5 million people with 25 departments and 103,000 employees.

The Regional Report team became the Housing and Social Policy team whilst some of us were made responsible for urban regeneration. Over the years, people drifted to other jobs in other departments and other organisations, particularly after the 1996 reorganisation of local government that disbanded Strathclyde Regional Council. Strathclyde Regional Council had been too successful in challenging the blandishments of Mrs Thatcher's neo-liberal policies and resisting the Community Charge (Poll Tax). The team's experience had prepared them for a wide range of careers. They had morphed into the Chief Statistician for Scotland, three Chief Executives, one Depute Chief Executive, two Directors of Housing, a Director of Health, a Director of Tourism, two Professors, two Depute Directors of Social Work and various other managerial positions.

It was typical of the baby boomers era that the two brightest stars, Sue and Linda, weren't on the list above. Linda died of breast cancer at the age of 31, and Sue left to have a family. After being out of the labour market for several years, she returned, initially part-time, as a planning officer in various councils in the South East where her husband had become a Director of Planning. Her ability to sift information, write and talk with clarity and nurture those around her was diluted in the man's world of boomer Britain. Most of the old team had not seen Sue for 45 years. I collected her from Central Station. After deliberating what had happened to the pub where we had first met in 1975, I suspect it's a Sainsbury's Local, and a coffee in the Gallery of Modern Art, we wandered along to Margo.

There were many confused faces as we entered Margo. I had not told them that I had invited Sue. The other team members were sifting through their brains to recognise the secret guest.  Sue then laughed, a laugh so loud that it could shake the Humber Bridge. She was brought up in Grimsby. It was a timeless memory, the background noise of working in a happy team. Sue also fires off questions quicker than she could fillet a fish. She had worked in a fish factory before starting university and reckons that standing in a line of 30 women in a fish factory for 8-hour shifts meant that she had learnt how to work and talk at the speed of the conveyor belt. She was multi-skilled, trained by engaging in quirky topics just as bizarre but probably more amusing than those in Planning.

It was a happy and successful fiftieth anniversary. Sue bought a couple of bottles of Champagne, and everyone enjoyed the stories of how lives had unravelled. It was almost 5pm when we left. Margo was empty, one of the Davids got a parking ticket, and the rest of us retired to the Atlantic Bar to continue the fun. There is talk of another reunion before we are subjected to care homes. 

Gallery of Modern Art