Louise Gilmour: Council’s silence over £1m donation after factory closure really takes biscuit

If Louis Brandeis was right to suggest “sunlight is the best disinfectant” then Scotland’s biggest council needs to open the blinds.

The turn-of-the-century US judge believed transparency and openness – practising it, not just saying it – is how our institutions stay clean.

Not so much in Glasgow, however, after councillors kicked out the press and public before accepting a big donation from a secret donor.

Thanks, as usual, to those pesky journalists, it only took a day or two to discover the donation is £1 million and the shy benefactor is Pladis, the multinational snacks giant.

It was not so shy three years ago when summarily shutting down the McVitie’s factory in the city’s Tollcross, shedding 472 jobs and costing the Scottish economy an estimated £50m a year.

It was not dogged by diffidence when ignoring widespread opposition – including some commendable campaigning by this newspaper – to shutter the historic and profitable plant despite recently having received £900,000 of taxpayers’ money from Scottish Enterprise.

And managing director David Murray was not at all bashful last week when revealing the huge party planned to celebrate the centenary of the McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive, a biscuit he likes to call king of the company.

Maybe the councillors and officials, whispering away in the City Chambers, will crack open the closed doors to receive an invitation?

Despite ticking the ‘no publicity’ box, Pladis finally issued a statement, tersely insisting it only wanted to leave a “lasting legacy” in the city’s east end. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

Instead of a legacy, those abandoned communities might have preferred the jobs.

© DC Thomson

Instead of handouts, they might have liked Pladis to have shown the same pride and loyalty as its workers before severing the last link between Scotland and McVitie’s after almost 200 years.

They might, on balance, have wanted to keep their factory open rather than get thrown a crust from a company that made £100m profit last year and whose ultimate owner, Murat Ulker, a Turkish tycoon, is worth an estimated £5 billion.

No one wants to check the fillings of a gift horse but what on earth is the council thinking? What kind of way is this for a local authority to go about its business?

Agreeing hush-hush deals with a multinational that has so recently treated Scotland’s biggest city and its people with polite but absolute disdain?

Accepting the secrecy demanded by a company that turned a deaf ear to every entreaty to pause for breath before inflicting needless economic vandalism on a city that deserved a lot better?

After being forced into a grudging confirmation of the donation, the council seems keen to suggest there is nothing to see here, that it’s no big thing, just a big-hearted gesture from a public-spirited company. A bit of good news that would be churlish to question.

Because multinational food conglomerates with billionaire owners are known for this kind of thing.

Because it’s perfectly normal for these kinds of companies to make these kinds of gestures while insisting on absolute secrecy. Because it’s just as normal for local authorities to grab the money and keep it shut.

But, you know, perhaps it really is just a generous, no-strings, legacy-building good deed? Perhaps there really is no quid for the quo?

Perhaps there were no discussions between Pladis and the council over the future of the McVitie’s site before it was sold to developers for another huge but secret sum?

Perhaps there really are no questions to ask or answer?

Or perhaps councillors might stop tugging their forelocks and pull up the blinds. It’s beyond time.

Louise Gilmour is GMB Scotland secretary