Wild West Wiltshire – Outlaws and Schemers
Joceline Bury reviews this personal reminiscence by Rosie MacGregor.
When I arrived in Bradford on Avon in January 1987 to start work as a subeditor on the Wiltshire Times, I had just left a demanding job in London, working for a weekly Middle East news magazine. I was looking forward to a gentler pace of life, at a publication focused on village fêtes and morris dancing, births, marriages and deaths, some petty crime perhaps, and the inevitable lengthy but dull reports of local authority deliberations.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Horrific murders, drug abuse, bitter arguments about air pollution from various local industrial sites, interminable wrangling over the route of a bypass for Westbury (that particular story is no closer to resolution now, 35 years on), the sad decline of Wiltshire's market towns - these were the stories making the front pages, week after week.
But when the first murmurings were heard about dodgy land deals and even dodgier information technology sell-offs at West Wiltshire District Council, no-one had any idea that the scandalous events that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s would make national news headlines, bring the council into disrepute and have a lasting impact on those involved.
Rosie MacGregor had joined the staff of the Architects Department at West Wilts in October 1986. Her first impressions were positive: “it felt warm and secure and I looked forward to a spell of stability in my career, protected from the volatility of the building industry.” It was an impression that was “rapidly dispelled by the rumours we heard of alleged irregularities in the shadowy Chief Executive's office”.
She, like all her colleagues, was a member of the local government union, NALGO, and by early 1988 she had taken on the role of Branch Secretary.
It was a role that inevitably placed her in a frontline position as the saga unfolded.
Her first-hand account tells a story of secrecy, lack of accountability and alleged fraud and deception surrounding the transfer of council-owned assets to private companies - most notably the apparent sale of a lucrative council information technology department for ‘a peppercorn’.
Wild West Wiltshire is peopled with characters whose names are now almost forgotten, but at the time were as familiar as any soap opera cast. Rosie writes with vivid and lively recall about the heroes and villains of the piece. At the centre of the scandal was Gerald Garland, Chief Executive of West Wiltshire District Council in the late 1980s. He was allegedly complicit, with a group a of senior managers and councillors, in selling off council assets and in the suspension of his successor, Don Latham, who had started asking questions about the legality of the deals. So many other names - the good, the bad and the very definitely ugly - bring to mind the 'mug shots' published every week in the Wiltshire Times and other local papers, as more and more damaging revelations came to light. Events culminated in a walk-out by staff, questions in Parliament and a high profile court case.
Rosie writes with assurance, clarity and a welcome dollop of humour about an extraordinary period in local government history. She concludes: “I felt it important to record my own memories of these unprecedented events before they are lost in time. There are lessons to be learned. These events serve to remind us that our lies and indiscretions are usually found out, there is almost always a price to be paid for dishonesty and that we should all have the courage to stand up for what we believe to be right. How different it might have been if greed, financial gain and secrecy hadn't clouded good judgement.”
Wild West Wiltshire- Outlaws and Schemers is published by White Horse (Wiltshire) Trades Council and can be purchased locally from Ex Libris, price £7.50; it is also available at £10 (including postage and packing) from www.watermarx.co.uk.
