#may16 — Public Fediverse posts

CW: Occasional Foul Language. Always Political.

On May 16th, join civil and voting rights groups in a National day of Action in Montgomery, Alabama. Go to allroadsleadtothesouth.com for more details. #votingrights #50501movement

Link: https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3mlgp6xxpcs2a

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Reposted from 50501: The People's Movement

Join the Movement at https://fiftyfifty.one

This robot is unaffiliated w/ 50501

Replies here are only seen in the Fediverse, not on Bluesky. 50501 volunteers do not monitor this account.

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#Coup #Activism #FederalGovernment #USpol #Trump #NoKings #elections #50501Movement #WeAreTheResistance #WeHaveFriendsEverywhere #FDT #PeoplesMovement #FiftyFiftyOne #StopICE #protest #organize

#votingrights #civilrights #MontgomeryAL #May16 #NationalDayOfAction #AllRoadsLeadToTheSouth #GetOutToVote #VotingTogether #ALcommunity #50501movement

CW: Occasional Foul Language. Always Political.

On May 16th, join civil and voting rights groups in a National day of Action in Montgomery, Alabama. Go to allroadsleadtothesouth.com for more details. #votingrights #50501movement

Link: https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3mlgp6xxpcs2a

----------------------------

Reposted from 50501: The People's Movement

Join the Movement at https://fiftyfifty.one

This robot is unaffiliated w/ 50501

Replies here are only seen in the Fediverse, not on Bluesky. 50501 volunteers do not monitor this account.

----------------------------

#Coup #Activism #FederalGovernment #USpol #Trump #NoKings #elections #50501Movement #WeAreTheResistance #WeHaveFriendsEverywhere #FDT #PeoplesMovement #FiftyFiftyOne #StopICE #protest #organize

#votingrights #civilrights #MontgomeryAL #May16 #NationalDayOfAction #AllRoadsLeadToTheSouth #GetOutToVote #VotingTogether #ALcommunity #50501movement

CW: Occasional Foul Language. Always Political.

On May 16th, join civil and voting rights groups in a National day of Action in Montgomery, Alabama. Go to allroadsleadtothesouth.com for more details. #votingrights #50501movement

Link: https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3mlgp6xxpcs2a

----------------------------

Reposted from 50501: The People's Movement

Join the Movement at https://fiftyfifty.one

This robot is unaffiliated w/ 50501

Replies here are only seen in the Fediverse, not on Bluesky. 50501 volunteers do not monitor this account.

----------------------------

#Coup #Activism #FederalGovernment #USpol #Trump #NoKings #elections #50501Movement #WeAreTheResistance #WeHaveFriendsEverywhere #FDT #PeoplesMovement #FiftyFiftyOne #StopICE #protest #organize

#votingrights #civilrights #MontgomeryAL #May16 #NationalDayOfAction #AllRoadsLeadToTheSouth #GetOutToVote #VotingTogether #ALcommunity #50501movement

Brock Purdy: "Everyone's timing is a little different. For me, at the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win for this organization. I'm not the kind of guy that wants any drama associated with anything. I'm here for this organization, my teammates in the locker room, and I want to be really professional about it.

"I want to be clean about it, respectable and just get something done and get back to work."

That was in January. Aged like wine. #May16 is the most significant pillar of this contract

Brock Purdy: "Everyone's timing is a little different. For me, at the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win for this organization. I'm not the kind of guy that wants any drama associated with anything. I'm here for this organization, my teammates in the locker room, and I want to be really professional about it.

"I want to be clean about it, respectable and just get something done and get back to work."

That was in January. Aged like wine. #May16 is the most significant pillar of this contract

Brock Purdy: "Everyone's timing is a little different. For me, at the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win for this organization. I'm not the kind of guy that wants any drama associated with anything. I'm here for this organization, my teammates in the locker room, and I want to be really professional about it.

"I want to be clean about it, respectable and just get something done and get back to work."

That was in January. Aged like wine. #May16 is the most significant pillar of this contract

Brock Purdy: "Everyone's timing is a little different. For me, at the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win for this organization. I'm not the kind of guy that wants any drama associated with anything. I'm here for this organization, my teammates in the locker room, and I want to be really professional about it.

"I want to be clean about it, respectable and just get something done and get back to work."

That was in January. Aged like wine. #May16 is the most significant pillar of this contract

Brock Purdy: "Everyone's timing is a little different. For me, at the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win for this organization. I'm not the kind of guy that wants any drama associated with anything. I'm here for this organization, my teammates in the locker room, and I want to be really professional about it.

"I want to be clean about it, respectable and just get something done and get back to work."

That was in January. Aged like wine. #May16 is the most significant pillar of this contract

16. Mai ist weltweit der UNESCO Tag des Lichts / INTERNATIONAL DAY OF LIGHT / IDL. Seit 2018 jährlich. Dchwerpunkt ist die wissenschaftliche Seite des Lichtes. Doch auch die biologische Bedeutung des Lichts ist spannend und grundlegend.

Details zum Tag des Lichts im Mai-Kalender der Umwelttage: https://www.baldwald.de/umwelttage/umwelttage-im-mai.html
___
#sonne #licht #light #sun #natur #nature_lovers #baldwald #umwelttage #welttage #worldday #may16 #16mai

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of May 16

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1747392264.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May16 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of May 16

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1747392264.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May16 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of May 16

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1747392264.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May16 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of May 16

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1747392264.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May16 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of May 16

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1747392264.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #May16 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

📜#Histoire d'un jour - 16 mai 2024 : L'île en colère, la fracture calédonienne https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=1412

#Anniversaire #16Mai #May16 #16deMayo #16Maggio #5月16日 #16مايو #France #NouvelleCaledonie #politique #politics

📜#Histoire d'un jour - 16 mai 2024 : L'île en colère, la fracture calédonienne https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=1412

#Anniversaire #16Mai #May16 #16deMayo #16Maggio #5月16日 #16مايو #France #NouvelleCaledonie #politique #politics

📜#Histoire d'un jour - 16 mai 2024 : L'île en colère, la fracture calédonienne https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=1412

#Anniversaire #16Mai #May16 #16deMayo #16Maggio #5月16日 #16مايو #France #NouvelleCaledonie #politique #politics

📜#Histoire d'un jour - 16 mai 2024 : L'île en colère, la fracture calédonienne https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=1412

#Anniversaire #16Mai #May16 #16deMayo #16Maggio #5月16日 #16مايو #France #NouvelleCaledonie #politique #politics

Happy #Lagwagon Day!

#May16 #punkrock #fatwreck

Happy #Lagwagon Day!

#May16 #punkrock #fatwreck

Happy #Lagwagon Day!

#May16 #punkrock #fatwreck

Happy #Lagwagon Day!

#May16 #punkrock #fatwreck

Happy #Lagwagon Day!

#May16 #punkrock #fatwreck

#Lagwagon #May16 🤘

🗞️La journée du 16 mai 2024 en quatre actualités politiques https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=701

#BreakingNews‌ #Breaking_News‌ #news #infos #16Mai #16Maggio #16deMayo #May16

🗞️La journée du 16 mai 2024 en quatre actualités politiques https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=701

#BreakingNews‌ #Breaking_News‌ #news #infos #16Mai #16Maggio #16deMayo #May16

🗞️La journée du 16 mai 2024 en quatre actualités politiques https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=701

#BreakingNews‌ #Breaking_News‌ #news #infos #16Mai #16Maggio #16deMayo #May16

KAPU-Bar ::: #may16 ::: KAPU Jam Session - Eidenberger/Pressmair/Conic/Kočnik ::: #KAPULinz #Linz
https://www.kapu.or.at/event/2024/05/16/kapu-jam-session

Song of the Day May 16 2024

In honor of the birth of Janet Jackson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson

Janet Jackson - “Rhythm Nation”

https://youtu.be/OAwaNWGLM0c?si=mHABGqW8iQBSU54V

#SongOfTheDay #SOTD #SOTD2024 #May16 #JanetJackson #RhythmNation #Soul #Dance #RNB #Music #MusicVideo #1990s

Song of the Day May 16 2024

In honor of the birth of Janet Jackson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson

Janet Jackson - “Rhythm Nation”

https://youtu.be/OAwaNWGLM0c?si=mHABGqW8iQBSU54V

#SongOfTheDay #SOTD #SOTD2024 #May16 #JanetJackson #RhythmNation #Soul #Dance #RNB #Music #MusicVideo #1990s

Song of the Day May 16 2024

In honor of the birth of Janet Jackson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson

Janet Jackson - “Rhythm Nation”

https://youtu.be/OAwaNWGLM0c?si=mHABGqW8iQBSU54V

#SongOfTheDay #SOTD #SOTD2024 #May16 #JanetJackson #RhythmNation #Soul #Dance #RNB #Music #MusicVideo #1990s

🍼🪦 16 mai, un jour, une vie, un décès https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=699

#Anniversaire #Birthday #16Mai #16Maggio #16deMayo #May16

🍼🪦 16 mai, un jour, une vie, un décès https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=699

#Anniversaire #Birthday #16Mai #16Maggio #16deMayo #May16

#Celebrate #NationalHonorOurLGBTEldersDay on #May16.

Join a #Celebration Near You or Take Part #Virtually

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Aging #Representation #Culture

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874581/0/en/Celebrate-National-Honor-Our-LGBT-Elders-Day-on-May-16.html

#Celebrate #NationalHonorOurLGBTEldersDay on #May16.

Join a #Celebration Near You or Take Part #Virtually

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Aging #Representation #Culture

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874581/0/en/Celebrate-National-Honor-Our-LGBT-Elders-Day-on-May-16.html

#Celebrate #NationalHonorOurLGBTEldersDay on #May16.

Join a #Celebration Near You or Take Part #Virtually

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Aging #Representation #Culture

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874581/0/en/Celebrate-National-Honor-Our-LGBT-Elders-Day-on-May-16.html

#Celebrate #NationalHonorOurLGBTEldersDay on #May16.

Join a #Celebration Near You or Take Part #Virtually

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Aging #Representation #Culture

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874581/0/en/Celebrate-National-Honor-Our-LGBT-Elders-Day-on-May-16.html

#Celebrate #NationalHonorOurLGBTEldersDay on #May16.

Join a #Celebration Near You or Take Part #Virtually

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Aging #Representation #Culture

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874581/0/en/Celebrate-National-Honor-Our-LGBT-Elders-Day-on-May-16.html

This thread was originally written and published in March 2024.

For no good reason, I decided to make a chart that shows the changing political make-up of Edinburgh’s municipal government in the last 124 years. It’s a graph whose changing colours and gradients tell lots of different political and historical stories about municipal government in that time, so let’s pick apart 124 years of Edinburgh’s political local history and find out what was going on and why, shall we?

First things first, we need to get a few things out of the way. In doing so it helps to avoid coming to the wrong conclusions about the graph and helps to understand what’s going on in the background and how the local electoral system has changed over time.

Until 1974, people voted for the Town Council, which was the elected1 component of what was known formally as the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh but almost universally as just the Corporation. The city was divided up into wards, as it is now, and each ward had three councillors, one of whom was elected each year on rotation. Each councillor served a three year term after which they retired but could stand again for re-election. This meant that voters were expected to vote annually for one councillor, the ballots of which were always held in the first week of November until in 1948 they were shifted to May. If a councillor stepped down or died during their term of office there would either be a by-election or if it was close to the next election then two seats would be up for grabs. Very occasionally, the entire Town Council was up for vote, e.g. after the amalgamation of Edinburgh and Leith in 1920 and when the date of ballots moved from November to May in 1948.

In 1974, voters went to the polls to vote for members of the new District Council. The District was the lower tier of municipal government established by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Edinburgh, Mid-, East and West Lothian Districts together formed the upper tier; Lothian Regional Council. This new system came into effect on May 16th 1975 and had votes every three (later four) years for the entire council, with a single councillor elected per ward on a first-past-the-post system. In 1995, voters went to the polls for the unitary authority of the City (of Edinburgh) Council as a result of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which abolished the Regional Councils and devolved their powers to new unitary authorities based roughly on the Districts (or closely, in the case of Edinburgh). City Council elections followed the same electoral system as the District until 2007, when the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 changed this to a multi-member ward system, with three or four councillors elected every five years by proportional representation.

n.b. The graphs do not show the results of any intermediate by-elections, or the proportion of votes cast, it only shows the proportion of seats on the council that were held by each political grouping after the election of that year.

1920s. Moderates and Socialists

Our graph starts at 1920, when a full Town Council election was held on account of Leith having just been incorporated in to the City under the terms of the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. The city was completely dominated at this time by the purple of the Moderates – not a formal party, but a political bloc of small-c conservatives, Liberals, Unionists, Liberal-Unionists and Independents who were strongly aligned to the Church of Scotland and whose purpose was largely to keep the right sort of people running the city and keep the red Socialists2 of Labour out.

The Moderates were effective in the latter purpose but inevitably Edinburgh’s first Labour councillor was elected on November 2nd 1909 when dentist John Alexander Young was returned for the Dalry ward. Although by 1930 Labour had crept slowly up to sixteen councillors – after a jump from 6 to 14 in 1926, (just shy of 1/4 of the Council – there was still no sign of the city “going red” as was threatening in Glasgow. Just peeping in at the top in 1930 is the thin grey line of a single independent councillor, Alexander Thomson, who would shift his allegiance to the Moderates in 1933.

1930s. Progressives and Protestants

Between 1930 and 1940 there were two big changes in the Town Council – none of which actually affected who actually ran the City. In 1936 the loose, purple assemblage of the Moderates re-constituted themselves as the dark blue band of the Progressives, a more formally constituted party to counter the threat posed by Labour. On the formation of the Glasgow Progressives, where by now Labour was in control of the Town Council, the Scotsman described them as “an organisation which would effectively combat the Socialist menace, break down the apathy of many citizens, and co-ordinate all Moderate opinion in the city.” The other big change during this time was the brief but rapid rise and fall of the black band of John Cormack’s Protestant Action Society.

Protestant Action were an extreme, anti-Catholic organisation whose basic platform was “No Popery“. Cormack made a habit of causing trouble wherever he could, stoking sectarian tensions in overcrowded and underprivileged wards, whipping up his supporters into violence and occasional riots, but always careful to be able to absolve himself of the blame. He formed his party in 1933 and in 1934’s election it got one councillor on 6% of the popular vote. By 1935 it got 21% and three seats, peaking in 1936 with a worrying 31% of the vote and nine seats. But not even Cormack’s force of oratory could hold his unruly grouping together; the established Protestant power of the Orange Order would have little to do with them. They picked fights with the fascists and the communists and then they picked fights amongst themselves. Support for Protestant Action soon waned and in the last pre-war municipal election of 1938 they had dropped back to 12% and 6 seats. John Cormack however would cling on to his seat in South Leith, becoming the “Father of the Council” in 1956 as its longest serving member. This seniority entitled him to the office of Bailie, one that conferred significant authority. He retired in 1961.

Post-war. Labour Rising

On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Government suspended municipal elections for the duration and so the Town Council sat, as it was, for the duration. Its representation did change however in 1940 when Dalry Labour councillors David Stephen (1938 election intake) and George Boath (1939 by-election) resigned their party and changed allegiance to the dark red band of the Communists. With no by-elections possible, they continued to serve under this particular banner until elections re-started in 1945 when they were duly voted out at the first opportunity.

In line with the national trend, Labour saw an upsurge in post-war popularity, with its share of 40% of the popular vote translating to an increase to 27 seats, or 40% of the Town Council. This position was reversed in 1949 when they went back to 15 seats and 22% of the popular vote. Again this mirrored popular, national discontent with the Labour government and a recovery in Conservative fortunes. It was not until 1955 that Labour had managed to regain the ground it had lost to the Progressives six years previous, so the political status quo in the city was maintained throughout the decade. Protestant Action lost their seats coming up for re-election in 1945 and 1946, with only John Cormack able to cling on, as the thin black line at the bottom of the graph, from 1947 onwards.

1955-65. Progressive Decline

The story of the next ten years was one of a long, slow waning in the fortunes of the Progressives. Throughout the decade Labour was able to make ground against them, until by the 1962 election both parties polled 38.5% of the popular vote, and in 1963 for the first time ever in Edinburgh Labour briefly surpassed the Progressives by this measure, 39.6% vs. 36.0%. But the three year system meant it was a long, slow process to effect political change although Labour had narrowed the gap between them and the Progressives to a single seat (32 vs. 33) by 1964, they were never quite able to bridge it. It cannot be seen in this chart, but in 1965 the Labour local vote collapsed to 27.9%, their worst since 1949, and the Progressives recovered to 58% after a run of five bad years. A new entrant onto the political scene in 1957 was Lady Morton (Hilda Sherwood Morton), who was elected for the orange strip of the Liberals in Merchiston ward. She was the first of her party to do so after it began to stand a few candidates in the city in 1955; by 1963 they had picked up four more for a total of five.

1965-74. End of the Old Order

The next ten years following 1965 saw the first big shake-ups on the Edinburgh local political scene beyond the glacially slow 50 year rise of Labour. Most importantly, it was the decade in which party political politics, which had been more or less kept out of Municipal Government for the last 50 years, finally took over. Firstly, in 1962 the Unionist party started standing candidates. This was a centre-right political party that stood for Westminster elections in Scotland and that was aligned to the (English) Conservatives. In other parts of Scotland the National Liberal Party stood; both they and the Unionists took the Conservative whip in the House of Commons. In 1965 the Unionists formally merged with the Conservatives to form the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, joined in 1968 by the National Liberals. Just as the Moderates had given way to the Progressives, so to did the Progressives give way to the Conservatives, but over a much longer timescale. Note that the press had long called both the Progressives and the Unionists “Tories“. Most of the Progressive old guard continued to stand as such, but new candidates stood instead as Conservatives. The result was that after their first candidates were elected in 1962, the light blue band of the Conservatives gradually and seamlessly usurped the old party, which finally died out alongside the long-established Town Council in 1974.

During this period, the Labour party found its position for a while squeezed between the strengthened Tory bloc and the insurgent yellow blob of the Scottish National Party, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after Winnie Ewing’s breakthrough victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In 1968 they swelled to 35% of the popular local vote in Edinburgh and by 1969 had ten councillors, before rapdily collapsing back to local indifference by 1972 with just 2.9% of the vote. The first Scottish nationalist candidate had stood for the Town Council way back in 1932 but no more stood until 1956-59 when their handful of candidates polled less than 1% of the popular vote.

By 1972, the SNP threat had gone, the Progressives were in terminal decline and Labour was recovering, and as a result it finally managed to become the largest party on the council, with 33 seats to the opposition’s 30. It had only taken them 63 years since their first councillor was sworn in! Their leader, Jack Kane, was elected Lord Provost that year, the first Labour holder of that post. With the final elections to the old Town Council in 1973, Labour had 34 seats and finally had a majority!

1974-95. District Days

In 1974, the residents of Edinburgh went to the polls to vote for their new District Council, which replaced a system of local Government that had been going in one form or another for the past 700 years or more. Interestingly, although archaic titles such as Lord Provost and Bailie were meant to be swept away, they were kept on as honorific positions. The District Council performed many of the functions of the old Edinburgh Corporation, but strategic issues such as Transport, Education, Regional Planning, Police and Fire were run by the upper tier of Regional Councils.

The results of the first election saw the Conservatives come out as the largest party, with one more seat than Labour. They lacked an overall majority but got it at the next ballot in 1977, with 34 of 67 seats. This marked the high point of the Conservative party in Edinburgh’s local government, and they have been in decline ever since. After the election of 1984, Labour increasingly dominated local politics. At the final District Council election in 1992, they took 30 of 62 seats, with the (by now) Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. But by now there were more than two big parties in local politics and the single member wards with first-past-the-post electoral system did not function fairly. The Liberal Democrats in 1992 got 15% of the popular vote but only 3% of the seats. The SNP got 14% of the vote and no seats! Labour were flattered by the system, getting 48% of the seats on 29% of the vote.

1995-. The Rainbow Council

It was all change again in 1995, when voters at the local elections now went to choose their City Council, a unitary authority based largely on the boundaries and functions of the old District but with the additional responsibilities of the Regions, which would disappear the following year, also. There was no fundamental changes however; Labour continued to dominate, the Conservatives continued their decline and the Liberal Democrats filled the void for the sort of voter who would once have been religiously Moderate or Progressive but who found they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Conservative due to national issues. By 2003, Labour retained a slim majority (31 of 59 seats), with the Liberal Democrats the next largest bloc on 15.

The SNP had a real problem however – they were reliably getting 15-30% of the popular vote in the Council elections but rarely picked up seats; they gone 1.7% of the seats on 21.5% of the vote in 1999. Labour in contrast had more than 50% of the seats on less than one third of the vote. This democratic deficit was remedied in 2007 when a new system of multi-member wars elected by Single Transferable Vote (proportional representation) was brought in. This had the immediate effect of giving the long-suppressed SNP a huge boost, with one fifth of the popular vote and council seats gained that year. The change was disastrous for Labour however, whose commanding position was built on the shaky foundations of an unrepresentative electoral system and their number of seats more than halved, to one much more in line with their overall popularity. The changes also let in the Scottish Green Party, who after standing candidates in one form or another in the city since 1980 finally picked up 3 seats. Rainbow politics had finally arrived!

The story of the rest of the period covered by our graph is largely now the story of Scottish and British national politics. The Conservatives continued to decline in popularity, but got a post-2014 Independence Referendum boost; the Liberal Democrats were punished heavily in 2012 after their coalition government at Westminster with the former party, and their recovery has been slow and largely concentrated in their traditional base of the west of the city. Labour have been largely unable to capitalise on these changes however – caught between any number of local and national issues – as the SNP and Green popular vote has held up and continued to creep upwards, with a combined 40% in 2017 and 2022.

The last local election in 2022 was one fought heavily on manifestos of national issues, despite these not being something that any local Council has any jurisdiction in. As a result, it saw the Conservative turn in their worst ever result for the Moderate-Progressive-Conservative bloc in the 122 years of our graph, with just 18% of the vote and 14% (nine) seats. Labour managed only 19% of the vote and 20% of the seats, their second-worst result in 100 years and yet somehow managed to pull various political strings and favours to run a minority administration; something the SNP failed to have sufficient support from their opposition to do, despite remaining the largest party by both seats and popular vote.

Who knows what 2027 might bring!

1. There was an honorary seat on the Town Council for each of the Deacon Conveners (senior office holders) of the Merchant Company and the Incorporated Trades, meaning two members of the Town Council were unelected ↩︎
2. The Scotsman perceived the Socialists as an extreme threat to the established order of the city and was strongly and persistently hostile to them in the 1920s through to the 1940s. In its reporting it almost always referred to them as just “the Socialists” ↩︎

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur

https://threadinburgh.scot/2024/03/07/the-thread-about-122-years-of-local-political-change-in-edinburgh-from-moderates-and-progressives-to-communists-and-protestants/

#Edinburgh #LocalPolitics #May16 #politics #Written2024

Moderates, Progressives, Communists and Protestants: the thread about 122 years of local political change in Edinburgh

For no good reason, I decided to make a chart that shows the changing political make-up of Edinburgh’s municipal government in the last 124 years. It’s a graph whose changing colours and gradients tell lots of different political and historical stories about municipal government in that time, so let’s pick apart 124 years of Edinburgh’s political local history and find out what was going on and why, shall we?

First things first, we need to get a few things out of the way. In doing so it helps to avoid coming to the wrong conclusions about the graph and helps to understand what’s going on in the background and how the local electoral system has changed over time.

Until 1974, people voted for the Town Council, which was the elected1 component of what was known formally as the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh but almost universally as just the Corporation. The city was divided up into wards, as it is now, and each ward had three councillors, one of whom was elected each year on rotation. Each councillor served a three year term after which they retired but could stand again for re-election. This meant that voters were expected to vote annually for one councillor, the ballots of which were always held in the first week of November until in 1948 they were shifted to May. If a councillor stepped down or died during their term of office there would either be a by-election or if it was close to the next election then two seats would be up for grabs. Very occasionally, the entire Town Council was up for vote, e.g. after the amalgamation of Edinburgh and Leith in 1920 and when the date of ballots moved from November to May in 1948.

In 1974, voters went to the polls to vote for members of the new District Council. The District was the lower tier of municipal government established by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Edinburgh, Mid-, East and West Lothian Districts together formed the upper tier; Lothian Regional Council. This new system came into effect on May 16th 1975 and had votes every three (later four) years for the entire council, with a single councillor elected per ward on a first-past-the-post system. In 1995, voters went to the polls for the unitary authority of the City (of Edinburgh) Council as a result of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which abolished the Regional Councils and devolved their powers to new unitary authorities based roughly on the Districts (or closely, in the case of Edinburgh). City Council elections followed the same electoral system as the District until 2007, when the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 changed this to a multi-member ward system, with three or four councillors elected every five years by proportional representation.

n.b. The graphs do not show the results of any intermediate by-elections, or the proportion of votes cast, it only shows the proportion of seats on the council that were held by each political grouping after the election of that year.

1920s. Moderates and Socialists

Our graph starts at 1920, when a full Town Council election was held on account of Leith having just been incorporated in to the City under the terms of the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. The city was completely dominated at this time by the purple of the Moderates – not a formal party, but a political bloc of small-c conservatives, Liberals, Unionists, Liberal-Unionists and Independents who were strongly aligned to the Church of Scotland and whose purpose was largely to keep the right sort of people running the city and keep the red Socialists2 of Labour out.

The Moderates were effective in the latter purpose but inevitably Edinburgh’s first Labour councillor was elected on November 2nd 1909 when dentist John Alexander Young was returned for the Dalry ward. Although by 1930 Labour had crept slowly up to sixteen councillors – after a jump from 6 to 14 in 1926, (just shy of 1/4 of the Council – there was still no sign of the city “going red” as was threatening in Glasgow. Just peeping in at the top in 1930 is the thin grey line of a single independent councillor, Alexander Thomson, who would shift his allegiance to the Moderates in 1933.

1930s. Progressives and Protestants

Between 1930 and 1940 there were two big changes in the Town Council – none of which actually affected who actually ran the City. In 1936 the loose, purple assemblage of the Moderates re-constituted themselves as the dark blue band of the Progressives, a more formally constituted party to counter the threat posed by Labour. On the formation of the Glasgow Progressives, where by now Labour was in control of the Town Council, the Scotsman described them as “an organisation which would effectively combat the Socialist menace, break down the apathy of many citizens, and co-ordinate all Moderate opinion in the city.” The other big change during this time was the brief but rapid rise and fall of the black band of John Cormack’s Protestant Action Society.

Protestant Action were an extreme, anti-Catholic organisation whose basic platform was “No Popery“. Cormack made a habit of causing trouble wherever he could, stoking sectarian tensions in overcrowded and underprivileged wards, whipping up his supporters into violence and occasional riots, but always careful to be able to absolve himself of the blame. He formed his party in 1933 and in 1934’s election it got one councillor on 6% of the popular vote. By 1935 it got 21% and three seats, peaking in 1936 with a worrying 31% of the vote and nine seats. But not even Cormack’s force of oratory could hold his unruly grouping together; the established Protestant power of the Orange Order would have little to do with them. They picked fights with the fascists and the communists and then they picked fights amongst themselves. Support for Protestant Action soon waned and in the last pre-war municipal election of 1938 they had dropped back to 12% and 6 seats. John Cormack however would cling on to his seat in South Leith, becoming the “Father of the Council” in 1956 as its longest serving member. This seniority entitled him to the office of Bailie, one that conferred significant authority. He retired in 1961.

Post-war. Labour Rising

On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Government suspended municipal elections for the duration and so the Town Council sat, as it was, for the duration. Its representation did change however in 1940 when Dalry Labour councillors David Stephen (1938 election intake) and George Boath (1939 by-election) resigned their party and changed allegiance to the dark red band of the Communists. With no by-elections possible, they continued to serve under this particular banner until elections re-started in 1945 when they were duly voted out at the first opportunity.

In line with the national trend, Labour saw an upsurge in post-war popularity, with its share of 40% of the popular vote translating to an increase to 27 seats, or 40% of the Town Council. This position was reversed in 1949 when they went back to 15 seats and 22% of the popular vote. Again this mirrored popular, national discontent with the Labour government and a recovery in Conservative fortunes. It was not until 1955 that Labour had managed to regain the ground it had lost to the Progressives six years previous, so the political status quo in the city was maintained throughout the decade. Protestant Action lost their seats coming up for re-election in 1945 and 1946, with only John Cormack able to cling on, as the thin black line at the bottom of the graph, from 1947 onwards.

1955-65. Progressive Decline

The story of the next ten years was one of a long, slow waning in the fortunes of the Progressives. Throughout the decade Labour was able to make ground against them, until by the 1962 election both parties polled 38.5% of the popular vote, and in 1963 for the first time ever in Edinburgh Labour briefly surpassed the Progressives by this measure, 39.6% vs. 36.0%. But the three year system meant it was a long, slow process to effect political change although Labour had narrowed the gap between them and the Progressives to a single seat (32 vs. 33) by 1964, they were never quite able to bridge it. It cannot be seen in this chart, but in 1965 the Labour local vote collapsed to 27.9%, their worst since 1949, and the Progressives recovered to 58% after a run of five bad years. A new entrant onto the political scene in 1957 was Lady Morton (Hilda Sherwood Morton), who was elected for the orange strip of the Liberals in Merchiston ward. She was the first of her party to do so after it began to stand a few candidates in the city in 1955; by 1963 they had picked up four more for a total of five.

1965-74. End of the Old Order

The next ten years following 1965 saw the first big shake-ups on the Edinburgh local political scene beyond the glacially slow 50 year rise of Labour. Most importantly, it was the decade in which party political politics, which had been more or less kept out of Municipal Government for the last 50 years, finally took over. Firstly, in 1962 the Unionist party started standing candidates. This was a centre-right political party that stood for Westminster elections in Scotland and that was aligned to the (English) Conservatives. In other parts of Scotland the National Liberal Party stood; both they and the Unionists took the Conservative whip in the House of Commons. In 1965 the Unionists formally merged with the Conservatives to form the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, joined in 1968 by the National Liberals. Just as the Moderates had given way to the Progressives, so to did the Progressives give way to the Conservatives, but over a much longer timescale. Note that the press had long called both the Progressives and the Unionists “Tories“. Most of the Progressive old guard continued to stand as such, but new candidates stood instead as Conservatives. The result was that after their first candidates were elected in 1962, the light blue band of the Conservatives gradually and seamlessly usurped the old party, which finally died out alongside the long-established Town Council in 1974.

During this period, the Labour party found its position for a while squeezed between the strengthened Tory bloc and the insurgent yellow blob of the Scottish National Party, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after Winnie Ewing’s breakthrough victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In 1968 they swelled to 35% of the popular local vote in Edinburgh and by 1969 had ten councillors, before rapdily collapsing back to local indifference by 1972 with just 2.9% of the vote. The first Scottish nationalist candidate had stood for the Town Council way back in 1932 but no more stood until 1956-59 when their handful of candidates polled less than 1% of the popular vote.

By 1972, the SNP threat had gone, the Progressives were in terminal decline and Labour was recovering, and as a result it finally managed to become the largest party on the council, with 33 seats to the opposition’s 30. It had only taken them 63 years since their first councillor was sworn in! Their leader, Jack Kane, was elected Lord Provost that year, the first Labour holder of that post. With the final elections to the old Town Council in 1973, Labour had 34 seats and finally had a majority!

1974-95. District Days

In 1974, the residents of Edinburgh went to the polls to vote for their new District Council, which replaced a system of local Government that had been going in one form or another for the past 700 years or more. Interestingly, although archaic titles such as Lord Provost and Bailie were meant to be swept away, they were kept on as honorific positions. The District Council performed many of the functions of the old Edinburgh Corporation, but strategic issues such as Transport, Education, Regional Planning, Police and Fire were run by the upper tier of Regional Councils. The District also expanded the boundaries of the City to include outlying areas such as Currie, Balerno, Kirkliston and South Queensferry, which had previously been semi-independent Districts (or in the case of Queensferry, a Burgh) within the old Midlothian County (thank you to Paul Cockburn for pointing this fact out).

The results of the first election saw the Conservatives come out as the largest party, with one more seat than Labour. They lacked an overall majority but got it at the next ballot in 1977, with 34 of 67 seats. This marked the high point of the Conservative party in Edinburgh’s local government, and they have been in decline ever since. After the election of 1984, Labour increasingly dominated local politics. At the final District Council election in 1992, they took 30 of 62 seats, with the (by now) Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. But by now there were more than two big parties in local politics and the single member wards with first-past-the-post electoral system did not function fairly. The Liberal Democrats in 1992 got 15% of the popular vote but only 3% of the seats. The SNP got 14% of the vote and no seats! Labour were flattered by the system, getting 48% of the seats on 29% of the vote.

1995-. The Rainbow Council

It was all change again in 1995, when voters at the local elections now went to choose their City Council, a unitary authority based largely on the boundaries and functions of the old District but with the additional responsibilities of the Regions, which would disappear the following year, also. There was no fundamental changes however; Labour continued to dominate, the Conservatives continued their decline and the Liberal Democrats filled the void for the sort of voter who would once have been religiously Moderate or Progressive but who found they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Conservative due to national issues. By 2003, Labour retained a slim majority (31 of 59 seats), with the Liberal Democrats the next largest bloc on 15.

The SNP had a real problem however – they were reliably getting 15-30% of the popular vote in the Council elections but rarely picked up seats; they gone 1.7% of the seats on 21.5% of the vote in 1999. Labour in contrast had more than 50% of the seats on less than one third of the vote. This democratic deficit was remedied in 2007 when a new system of multi-member wards elected by Single Transferable Vote (proportional representation) was brought in. This had the immediate effect of giving the long-suppressed SNP a huge boost, with one fifth of the popular vote and council seats gained that year. The change was disastrous for Labour however, whose commanding position was built on the shaky foundations of an unrepresentative electoral system and their number of seats more than halved, to one much more in line with their overall popularity. The changes also let in the Scottish Green Party, who after standing candidates in one form or another in the city since 1980 finally picked up 3 seats. Rainbow politics had finally arrived!

The story of the rest of the period covered by our graph is largely now the story of Scottish and British national politics. The Conservatives continued to decline in popularity, but got a post-2014 Independence Referendum boost; the Liberal Democrats were punished heavily in 2012 after their coalition government at Westminster with the former party, and their recovery has been slow and largely concentrated in their traditional base of the west of the city. Labour have been largely unable to capitalise on these changes however – caught between any number of local and national issues – as the SNP and Green popular vote has held up and continued to creep upwards, with a combined 40% in 2017 and 2022.

The last local election in 2022 was one fought heavily on manifestos of national issues, despite these not being something that any local Council has any jurisdiction in. As a result, it saw the Conservative turn in their worst ever result for the Moderate-Progressive-Conservative bloc in the 122 years of our graph, with just 18% of the vote and 14% (nine) seats. Labour managed only 19% of the vote and 20% of the seats, their second-worst result in 100 years and yet somehow managed to pull various political strings and favours to run a minority administration; something the SNP failed to have sufficient support from their opposition to do, despite remaining the largest party by both seats and popular vote.

Who knows what 2027 might bring!

1. There was an honorary seat on the Town Council for each of the Deacon Conveners (senior office holders) of the Merchant Company and the Incorporated Trades, meaning two members of the Town Council were unelected ↩︎
2. The Scotsman perceived the Socialists as an extreme threat to the established order of the city and was strongly and persistently hostile to them in the 1920s through to the 1940s. In its reporting it almost always referred to them as just “the Socialists” ↩︎

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This thread was originally written and published in March 2024.

For no good reason, I decided to make a chart that shows the changing political make-up of Edinburgh’s municipal government in the last 124 years. It’s a graph whose changing colours and gradients tell lots of different political and historical stories about municipal government in that time, so let’s pick apart 124 years of Edinburgh’s political local history and find out what was going on and why, shall we?

First things first, we need to get a few things out of the way. In doing so it helps to avoid coming to the wrong conclusions about the graph and helps to understand what’s going on in the background and how the local electoral system has changed over time.

Until 1974, people voted for the Town Council, which was the elected1 component of what was known formally as the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh but almost universally as just the Corporation. The city was divided up into wards, as it is now, and each ward had three councillors, one of whom was elected each year on rotation. Each councillor served a three year term after which they retired but could stand again for re-election. This meant that voters were expected to vote annually for one councillor, the ballots of which were always held in the first week of November until in 1948 they were shifted to May. If a councillor stepped down or died during their term of office there would either be a by-election or if it was close to the next election then two seats would be up for grabs. Very occasionally, the entire Town Council was up for vote, e.g. after the amalgamation of Edinburgh and Leith in 1920 and when the date of ballots moved from November to May in 1948.

In 1974, voters went to the polls to vote for members of the new District Council. The District was the lower tier of municipal government established by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Edinburgh, Mid-, East and West Lothian Districts together formed the upper tier; Lothian Regional Council. This new system came into effect on May 16th 1975 and had votes every three (later four) years for the entire council, with a single councillor elected per ward on a first-past-the-post system. In 1995, voters went to the polls for the unitary authority of the City (of Edinburgh) Council as a result of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which abolished the Regional Councils and devolved their powers to new unitary authorities based roughly on the Districts (or closely, in the case of Edinburgh). City Council elections followed the same electoral system as the District until 2007, when the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 changed this to a multi-member ward system, with three or four councillors elected every five years by proportional representation.

n.b. The graphs do not show the results of any intermediate by-elections, or the proportion of votes cast, it only shows the proportion of seats on the council that were held by each political grouping after the election of that year.

1920s. Moderates and Socialists

Our graph starts at 1920, when a full Town Council election was held on account of Leith having just been incorporated in to the City under the terms of the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. The city was completely dominated at this time by the purple of the Moderates – not a formal party, but a political bloc of small-c conservatives, Liberals, Unionists, Liberal-Unionists and Independents who were strongly aligned to the Church of Scotland and whose purpose was largely to keep the right sort of people running the city and keep the red Socialists2 of Labour out.

The Moderates were effective in the latter purpose but inevitably Edinburgh’s first Labour councillor was elected on November 2nd 1909 when dentist John Alexander Young was returned for the Dalry ward. Although by 1930 Labour had crept slowly up to sixteen councillors – after a jump from 6 to 14 in 1926, (just shy of 1/4 of the Council – there was still no sign of the city “going red” as was threatening in Glasgow. Just peeping in at the top in 1930 is the thin grey line of a single independent councillor, Alexander Thomson, who would shift his allegiance to the Moderates in 1933.

1930s. Progressives and Protestants

Between 1930 and 1940 there were two big changes in the Town Council – none of which actually affected who actually ran the City. In 1936 the loose, purple assemblage of the Moderates re-constituted themselves as the dark blue band of the Progressives, a more formally constituted party to counter the threat posed by Labour. On the formation of the Glasgow Progressives, where by now Labour was in control of the Town Council, the Scotsman described them as “an organisation which would effectively combat the Socialist menace, break down the apathy of many citizens, and co-ordinate all Moderate opinion in the city.” The other big change during this time was the brief but rapid rise and fall of the black band of John Cormack’s Protestant Action Society.

Protestant Action were an extreme, anti-Catholic organisation whose basic platform was “No Popery“. Cormack made a habit of causing trouble wherever he could, stoking sectarian tensions in overcrowded and underprivileged wards, whipping up his supporters into violence and occasional riots, but always careful to be able to absolve himself of the blame. He formed his party in 1933 and in 1934’s election it got one councillor on 6% of the popular vote. By 1935 it got 21% and three seats, peaking in 1936 with a worrying 31% of the vote and nine seats. But not even Cormack’s force of oratory could hold his unruly grouping together; the established Protestant power of the Orange Order would have little to do with them. They picked fights with the fascists and the communists and then they picked fights amongst themselves. Support for Protestant Action soon waned and in the last pre-war municipal election of 1938 they had dropped back to 12% and 6 seats. John Cormack however would cling on to his seat in South Leith, becoming the “Father of the Council” in 1956 as its longest serving member. This seniority entitled him to the office of Bailie, one that conferred significant authority. He retired in 1961.

Post-war. Labour Rising

On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Government suspended municipal elections for the duration and so the Town Council sat, as it was, for the duration. Its representation did change however in 1940 when Dalry Labour councillors David Stephen (1938 election intake) and George Boath (1939 by-election) resigned their party and changed allegiance to the dark red band of the Communists. With no by-elections possible, they continued to serve under this particular banner until elections re-started in 1945 when they were duly voted out at the first opportunity.

In line with the national trend, Labour saw an upsurge in post-war popularity, with its share of 40% of the popular vote translating to an increase to 27 seats, or 40% of the Town Council. This position was reversed in 1949 when they went back to 15 seats and 22% of the popular vote. Again this mirrored popular, national discontent with the Labour government and a recovery in Conservative fortunes. It was not until 1955 that Labour had managed to regain the ground it had lost to the Progressives six years previous, so the political status quo in the city was maintained throughout the decade. Protestant Action lost their seats coming up for re-election in 1945 and 1946, with only John Cormack able to cling on, as the thin black line at the bottom of the graph, from 1947 onwards.

1955-65. Progressive Decline

The story of the next ten years was one of a long, slow waning in the fortunes of the Progressives. Throughout the decade Labour was able to make ground against them, until by the 1962 election both parties polled 38.5% of the popular vote, and in 1963 for the first time ever in Edinburgh Labour briefly surpassed the Progressives by this measure, 39.6% vs. 36.0%. But the three year system meant it was a long, slow process to effect political change although Labour had narrowed the gap between them and the Progressives to a single seat (32 vs. 33) by 1964, they were never quite able to bridge it. It cannot be seen in this chart, but in 1965 the Labour local vote collapsed to 27.9%, their worst since 1949, and the Progressives recovered to 58% after a run of five bad years. A new entrant onto the political scene in 1957 was Lady Morton (Hilda Sherwood Morton), who was elected for the orange strip of the Liberals in Merchiston ward. She was the first of her party to do so after it began to stand a few candidates in the city in 1955; by 1963 they had picked up four more for a total of five.

1965-74. End of the Old Order

The next ten years following 1965 saw the first big shake-ups on the Edinburgh local political scene beyond the glacially slow 50 year rise of Labour. Most importantly, it was the decade in which party political politics, which had been more or less kept out of Municipal Government for the last 50 years, finally took over. Firstly, in 1962 the Unionist party started standing candidates. This was a centre-right political party that stood for Westminster elections in Scotland and that was aligned to the (English) Conservatives. In other parts of Scotland the National Liberal Party stood; both they and the Unionists took the Conservative whip in the House of Commons. In 1965 the Unionists formally merged with the Conservatives to form the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, joined in 1968 by the National Liberals. Just as the Moderates had given way to the Progressives, so to did the Progressives give way to the Conservatives, but over a much longer timescale. Note that the press had long called both the Progressives and the Unionists “Tories“. Most of the Progressive old guard continued to stand as such, but new candidates stood instead as Conservatives. The result was that after their first candidates were elected in 1962, the light blue band of the Conservatives gradually and seamlessly usurped the old party, which finally died out alongside the long-established Town Council in 1974.

During this period, the Labour party found its position for a while squeezed between the strengthened Tory bloc and the insurgent yellow blob of the Scottish National Party, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after Winnie Ewing’s breakthrough victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In 1968 they swelled to 35% of the popular local vote in Edinburgh and by 1969 had ten councillors, before rapdily collapsing back to local indifference by 1972 with just 2.9% of the vote. The first Scottish nationalist candidate had stood for the Town Council way back in 1932 but no more stood until 1956-59 when their handful of candidates polled less than 1% of the popular vote.

By 1972, the SNP threat had gone, the Progressives were in terminal decline and Labour was recovering, and as a result it finally managed to become the largest party on the council, with 33 seats to the opposition’s 30. It had only taken them 63 years since their first councillor was sworn in! Their leader, Jack Kane, was elected Lord Provost that year, the first Labour holder of that post. With the final elections to the old Town Council in 1973, Labour had 34 seats and finally had a majority!

1974-95. District Days

In 1974, the residents of Edinburgh went to the polls to vote for their new District Council, which replaced a system of local Government that had been going in one form or another for the past 700 years or more. Interestingly, although archaic titles such as Lord Provost and Bailie were meant to be swept away, they were kept on as honorific positions. The District Council performed many of the functions of the old Edinburgh Corporation, but strategic issues such as Transport, Education, Regional Planning, Police and Fire were run by the upper tier of Regional Councils.

The results of the first election saw the Conservatives come out as the largest party, with one more seat than Labour. They lacked an overall majority but got it at the next ballot in 1977, with 34 of 67 seats. This marked the high point of the Conservative party in Edinburgh’s local government, and they have been in decline ever since. After the election of 1984, Labour increasingly dominated local politics. At the final District Council election in 1992, they took 30 of 62 seats, with the (by now) Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. But by now there were more than two big parties in local politics and the single member wards with first-past-the-post electoral system did not function fairly. The Liberal Democrats in 1992 got 15% of the popular vote but only 3% of the seats. The SNP got 14% of the vote and no seats! Labour were flattered by the system, getting 48% of the seats on 29% of the vote.

1995-. The Rainbow Council

It was all change again in 1995, when voters at the local elections now went to choose their City Council, a unitary authority based largely on the boundaries and functions of the old District but with the additional responsibilities of the Regions, which would disappear the following year, also. There was no fundamental changes however; Labour continued to dominate, the Conservatives continued their decline and the Liberal Democrats filled the void for the sort of voter who would once have been religiously Moderate or Progressive but who found they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Conservative due to national issues. By 2003, Labour retained a slim majority (31 of 59 seats), with the Liberal Democrats the next largest bloc on 15.

The SNP had a real problem however – they were reliably getting 15-30% of the popular vote in the Council elections but rarely picked up seats; they gone 1.7% of the seats on 21.5% of the vote in 1999. Labour in contrast had more than 50% of the seats on less than one third of the vote. This democratic deficit was remedied in 2007 when a new system of multi-member wars elected by Single Transferable Vote (proportional representation) was brought in. This had the immediate effect of giving the long-suppressed SNP a huge boost, with one fifth of the popular vote and council seats gained that year. The change was disastrous for Labour however, whose commanding position was built on the shaky foundations of an unrepresentative electoral system and their number of seats more than halved, to one much more in line with their overall popularity. The changes also let in the Scottish Green Party, who after standing candidates in one form or another in the city since 1980 finally picked up 3 seats. Rainbow politics had finally arrived!

The story of the rest of the period covered by our graph is largely now the story of Scottish and British national politics. The Conservatives continued to decline in popularity, but got a post-2014 Independence Referendum boost; the Liberal Democrats were punished heavily in 2012 after their coalition government at Westminster with the former party, and their recovery has been slow and largely concentrated in their traditional base of the west of the city. Labour have been largely unable to capitalise on these changes however – caught between any number of local and national issues – as the SNP and Green popular vote has held up and continued to creep upwards, with a combined 40% in 2017 and 2022.

The last local election in 2022 was one fought heavily on manifestos of national issues, despite these not being something that any local Council has any jurisdiction in. As a result, it saw the Conservative turn in their worst ever result for the Moderate-Progressive-Conservative bloc in the 122 years of our graph, with just 18% of the vote and 14% (nine) seats. Labour managed only 19% of the vote and 20% of the seats, their second-worst result in 100 years and yet somehow managed to pull various political strings and favours to run a minority administration; something the SNP failed to have sufficient support from their opposition to do, despite remaining the largest party by both seats and popular vote.

Who knows what 2027 might bring!

1. There was an honorary seat on the Town Council for each of the Deacon Conveners (senior office holders) of the Merchant Company and the Incorporated Trades, meaning two members of the Town Council were unelected ↩︎
2. The Scotsman perceived the Socialists as an extreme threat to the established order of the city and was strongly and persistently hostile to them in the 1920s through to the 1940s. In its reporting it almost always referred to them as just “the Socialists” ↩︎

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https://threadinburgh.scot/2024/03/07/the-thread-about-122-years-of-local-political-change-in-edinburgh-from-moderates-and-progressives-to-communists-and-protestants/

#Edinburgh #LocalPolitics #May16 #politics #Written2024

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#May16 #rock #punkrock #LetsTalkAboutFeelimgs

Happy #Lagwagon day y'all 🤓

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Today In Metal History 🤘 May 16th, 2023 🤘 DIO, NAZARETH, FOGHAT, IRON MAIDEN, SABATON
MUSICIANS WE LOST R.I.P. Ronald James Padavona (RONNIE JAMES DIO; BLACK SABBATH, DIO, HEAVEN & HELL, RAINBOW, ELF): July 10th, 1942 – May 16th, 2010 R.I.P. Darrell Antony Sweet (NAZARETH): May 16th, 1947 – April 30th, 1999 HEAVY BIRTHDAYS Happy 77th Roger Earl (FOGHAT) - ...

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Today In Metal History 🤘 May 16th, 2023 🤘 DIO, NAZARETH, FOGHAT, IRON MAIDEN, SABATON
MUSICIANS WE LOST R.I.P. Ronald James Padavona (RONNIE JAMES DIO; BLACK SABBATH, DIO, HEAVEN & HELL, RAINBOW, ELF): July 10th, 1942 – May 16th, 2010 R.I.P. Darrell Antony Sweet (NAZARETH): May 16th, 1947 – April 30th, 1999 HEAVY BIRTHDAYS Happy 77th Roger Earl (FOGHAT) - ...

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Today In Metal History 🤘 May 16th, 2023 🤘 DIO, NAZARETH, FOGHAT, IRON MAIDEN, SABATON
MUSICIANS WE LOST R.I.P. Ronald James Padavona (RONNIE JAMES DIO; BLACK SABBATH, DIO, HEAVEN & HELL, RAINBOW, ELF): July 10th, 1942 – May 16th, 2010 R.I.P. Darrell Antony Sweet (NAZARETH): May 16th, 1947 – April 30th, 1999 HEAVY BIRTHDAYS Happy 77th Roger Earl (FOGHAT) - ...

https://bravewords.com/news/today-in-metal-history-may-16th-2023-dio-nazareth-foghat-iron-maiden-sabaton

#May16 #MetalHistory #Dio #Nazareth #Foghat #IronMaiden #Sabaton #BraveWords

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#BraveWords
Today In Metal History 🤘 May 16th, 2023 🤘 DIO, NAZARETH, FOGHAT, IRON MAIDEN, SABATON
MUSICIANS WE LOST R.I.P. Ronald James Padavona (RONNIE JAMES DIO; BLACK SABBATH, DIO, HEAVEN & HELL, RAINBOW, ELF): July 10th, 1942 – May 16th, 2010 R.I.P. Darrell Antony Sweet (NAZARETH): May 16th, 1947 – April 30th, 1999 HEAVY BIRTHDAYS Happy 77th Roger Earl (FOGHAT) - ...

https://bravewords.com/news/today-in-metal-history-may-16th-2023-dio-nazareth-foghat-iron-maiden-sabaton

#May16 #MetalHistory #Dio #Nazareth #Foghat #IronMaiden #Sabaton #BraveWords

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#BraveWords
Today In Metal History 🤘 May 16th, 2023 🤘 DIO, NAZARETH, FOGHAT, IRON MAIDEN, SABATON
MUSICIANS WE LOST R.I.P. Ronald James Padavona (RONNIE JAMES DIO; BLACK SABBATH, DIO, HEAVEN & HELL, RAINBOW, ELF): July 10th, 1942 – May 16th, 2010 R.I.P. Darrell Antony Sweet (NAZARETH): May 16th, 1947 – April 30th, 1999 HEAVY BIRTHDAYS Happy 77th Roger Earl (FOGHAT) - ...

https://bravewords.com/news/today-in-metal-history-may-16th-2023-dio-nazareth-foghat-iron-maiden-sabaton

#May16 #MetalHistory #Dio #Nazareth #Foghat #IronMaiden #Sabaton #BraveWords

Song of the Day May 16 2023

In honor of the birth of Janet Jackson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson

Janet Jackson - "Alright"

https://youtu.be/JgeAUejUZhg

#SongOfTheDay #SOTD #SOTD2023 #May16 #JanetJackson #Alright #CabCalloway #CydCharisse #NicholasBrothers #1990s #Music #MusicVideo

Song of the Day May 16 2023

In honor of the birth of Janet Jackson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson

Janet Jackson - "Alright"

https://youtu.be/JgeAUejUZhg

#SongOfTheDay #SOTD #SOTD2023 #May16 #JanetJackson #Alright #CabCalloway #CydCharisse #NicholasBrothers #1990s #Music #MusicVideo