Learning from History? Municipal Radicalism in Edinburgh and Lothian in the 1980s

Scotland has a history of municipalism that has not been told. There has been considerable academic work on the radical Councils in England in the 1980s, but historical analyses have been blind to the specificities of Scotland. Excellent book length contributions by Gyford (1985) and Boddy & Fudge (1984) make only fleeting reference to developments in Scotland. And in searches of work on radical municipalism in Scotland almost nothing turns out to have been written, even though a number of Local Authorities in Scotland in the 1980s were elected and attempted to govern with a range of more or less radical policies and practices. The focus here is on Edinburgh District Council and Lothian Regional Council. These were two Local Authorities that had real political battles between right and left before, during and after the 1980s. They were, Edinburgh more than Lothian, seen as conservative areas, and yet they elected radical councils in 1984 and 1986. The question then is why a radical socialist leadership was able to gain power there, and not in, for example, Labour heartlands of Glasgow and Strathclyde. This paper provides some tentative answers to that but also seeks to discuss how these Councils won power, and look at what they did with it, and any legacies still evident today.