‘It feels like a club that we’re not part of’
A 15 year old takes on the pomp and ceremony of an historic council meeting
Last night both Liverpool and Wirral councils kicked off the annual council meeting season with events at their town halls. In the coming weeks it will be Sefton and Knowsley’s turn too.
If you’ve ever been to an annual council meeting, you will know these are slightly odd affairs. For at least a little while anyway, councillors of all political persuasions usually put the arguments to one side to say goodbye to the old lord mayor and welcome in the new one, complete with robes, chains, formal speeches and a perhaps surprising amount of discussion about food.
Last night’s meeting in Liverpool was historic because for the first time in the city’s long history, the role of lord mayor was taken up by a councillor who is a wheelchair user, marking a milestone of representation warmly welcomed by political leaders across the chamber as Cllr William Shortall replaced Barbara Murray as holder of the city’s big gold chains of office.
Lord Mayors are ceremonial civic figureheads. They represent the area at official events and act as a public ambassador for the council and city as well as chair at full council meetings. Last year, Cllr Murray attended over 700 different functions, from welcoming dignitaries to attending remembrance ceremonies and, as Lib Dem leader Carl Cashman noted at one point in the meeting, even having a kickabout in the park. It wasn’t clear from the meeting whether the mayoral gold chains were worn for that particular event.
Most council meetings have far less pageantry than the annual meeting and usually get down to the business of reports, amendments and arguments from the outset, so perhaps it was one of the stranger meetings to take a 15 year old to for their first proper glimpse of local democracy in action.
Annual meetings are usually split into two halves. The first ends with the signing in ceremony of the new lord mayor and deputy. After a short break, councillors return to appoint committee members, introduce annual reports and approve constitutional or procedural changes, as the Monitor wrote about earlier today.
In Wirral, where Cllr Mary Jordan was appointed as lord mayor to replace outgoing Brian Kenny, the two halves of the meeting are split across separate days, with the second due to take place next week. In Liverpool, there is a mere 15 minute break before it all starts up again.
After the meeting, a meal awaits in honour of the new lord mayor, something referred to several times throughout the meeting at Liverpool council last night. At one stage the newly installed lord mayor, chairing the meeting for the first time, thanked councillors for being ‘well behaved’ enough not to speak too much and delay access to the starter.
Understandable perhaps, but something which jarred somewhat with Jack, a 15 year old with the Monitor on work experience this week attending his first Liverpool council meeting, and the author of today’s story.
‘It feels like a club that we’re not part of.’
by Jack Rand
I had no idea what was gonna happen. I had thought the whole meeting was going to be bureaucratic. Instead it felt more like a massive circus.
The second we walk in to the town hall the first thing I see is gold, everywhere. On the chandeliers, on the paintings, all over the walls.
The guys in the lobby immediately thought we were there for a massive meal. It took them a good few seconds to realise that we weren’t members of the council or part of local politics but two random people who just came to watch it all happen, just two citizens coming to see the council meeting go down.
A guy took us through a corridor that looked like it hadn’t changed in 150 years. There were marble heads and ancient looking paintings, it was like a full on aristocratic building.
What followed was the big meeting, including about ten minutes on how amazing the previous Lord Mayor was, and to be fair she did do a lot of good so honestly it is slightly justified. And then they get a portrait out that someone painted of her, a local artist Dr Dave Iddon. Okay, cool. It’s fantastic that she was respected so much to have a painting done of her. But it’s also a bit of a culture shock when you’re looking at it from the outside, thinking about how there’s a housing crisis and people can’t afford things.
After several speeches from five different people, they call a 15 minute break before starting to actually get on to some problems. The whole time the only thing I’m thinking of is a massive theatre. Anyway we get back inside, and nothing's changed other than the fact that half the audience and councillors appear to have gone.
A Lib Dem Councillor, Richard Kemp, brought up the fact that people didn’t care about what was happening at council meetings or voting much - only around a quarter of people at the last election in Liverpool. A vote was held to talk about having area committees. Labour, having the most seats, just wiped the floor clean of this amendment. The main focus of the meeting seems to be about finishing it all quickly to go to eat.
As we left, while people at the meeting were going upstairs for their meal, the first thing I saw when we left that building was a guy asking for money for food outside a shop. Two worlds right there on that street. That’s how I felt at that meeting, like it‘s a club that we weren’t part of, a different world altogether.
I sent some questions about this to political parties in Liverpool and one councillor who isn’t in a party at all, I didn’t quite say ‘this was stupid and a waste of time’, it wasn’t about sounding like an old man screaming at the clouds, but these were the responses I got.
Alan Gibbons, the Liverpool Your Party leader, seemed to agree with me, saying ‘there is a lot of truth’ in my observations. He said he doesn’t go to the dinners because ‘I don’t feel comfortable with the pomp when citizens are in the middle of a cost of living crisis’. He said he’d prefer ‘a more business-like culture’ and that these ceremonies remind him of the Palace of Westminster. He said that some people might say following on with traditions ‘reflects a history of restraining power’ but added it was a ‘weak argument.’
Alan Gibbons said we should run things more like the Scottish parliament ‘modern and lean’ and said his group, who are all councillors from Your Party, ‘similarly thinks the council should be aware of the impatience of the public with any sense that elected representatives benefit from their term in office’. He added: ‘our job is to serve’.
‘We should do everything we can‘ he added, ‘to look like a modern, responsive, perk-free administration encouraging a more engaged electorate’.
Independent councillor Steve Munby also said he doesn’t ‘relate at all to all the pomp and ceremony.’ He went even further, saying ‘council meetings are basically an exercise in performance art and poor art at that.’
He said the real work of local councillors happens at ward level, meaning not in the council meetings. ‘I'm just off to a surgery where I’ll try and help with problems people bring to me. Then drop in on various local community groups and see what they're up to and how I can work with them to help.’ he added.
Liverpool Greens leader Tom Crone also agreed, going further than the others in describing the meeting as a ‘waste of time’. He said: ’because of how this yearly meeting is designed, you have 85 councillors in the room from different political viewpoints and absolutely no politics done, it's just dealing with formalities like selecting the Lord Mayor, which could be done in 15 minutes without all the old-fashioned stuff. We could easily change that.’
He also talked about the work local politicians do outside of council meetings: ‘We are out in communities showing how the Greens do things differently.’
I’d asked about how young people would feel about what’s happening in council meetings and how to get more people generally, as well as young people in particular, interested in local politics and Tom Crone said: ‘We would love more young people to get the vote so they can feel empowered to argue for the changes we need to make people's lives better and protect the planet for everyone to enjoy.’
Liberal group leader Cllr Steve Radford later added that the AGM was ‘more than disappointing’.
We did also approach the Lib Dems, the Labour cabinet and the council for their comments. We’ll add them in if we get a response.
in case you missed us…
We don‘t put out newsletters every time we publish a story. We’re sure we’re not the only ones having wasted time on the tedious task of clearing up bloated inboxes and we don’t want to add to anyone’s data storage issues here at the Monitor, so if you are signed up, you’ll only receive a couple of emails off us a week.
So, you might have missed some of what we’ve been talking about recently, such as this fascinating history of a pioneering Maghull home which could soon become a private clinic.
Lisa Rand
We’ve also been looking at car park problems on the Wirral, which could leave the barriers up and revenue lost if the issue doesn’t get fixed soon. Not everyone reading about the issue was disappointed however, with one person commenting ‘I quite enjoy free parking actually.. I vote for keeping the old machines’. Alas for those hoping for free town centre parking, the problem has been solved or at least could be soon, thanks to a £130k injection of cash from the council.
Lisa Rand
And earlier today we took a look at some significant changes to how Liverpool council operates, approved at yesterday’s meeting.
Lisa Rand
before you go ….
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