Talk:Scottish Enterprise: History

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-923X.1992.tb00915.x?journalCode=poqu

looked interesting in this context: can I get into it

reformatted bit to go back in

Further Reading

Much writing and analysis has been undertaken on SE, which has followed its unsteady past. Below is a summary of a range of sources which contain contextual and historical observations.

• Kerevan G. & Don G. (2003) The Voyages of the Starship “Scottish Enterprise,” Lessons and Ideas For Scotland’s Economic Agency, The Policy Institute.

This presents two reports from the right-wing think tank. The first asserts that Hughes' ideas stemmed from the example of the US approach to tackling poverty.

"Rather than wait on Federal action that only produced more bureaucrats and the next round of riots, senior business executives across America’s urban wastelands were taking matters into their own hands.' (Kerevan & Don, 2003:4)

The aim here was to help the poor "In the black ghettos of Los Angeles and Boston, with their burned out houses and shuttered supermarkets". Hughes' initial aim for SE "was to eliminate Scottish unemployment." (Hansard 1992, Debates for 18 Nov.) The question of why public money was used is ducked by the notion that with SE, Hughes thought: "in due course, the public money would be phased out and replaced with private sponsorship." That is hard to believe in the era of PFI, and harder to believe since it actuality shows no signs of manifestation and evidence to the contrary is in abundance.

It also states that Crawford Beveridge, the first chief executive of the new SE, was influenced by the ideas of the American business guru, Michael Porter:

"who preached that national global competitiveness was boosted by having dense clusters of supporting companies specialising in particular markets... With a skilled, cheap and English-speaking workforce to hand one that was also easy to fire, thanks to Mrs Thatcher - Beveridge soon tapped into the 1990s high tech boom." (Kerevan & Don, 2003:7)

• Reid G. C. (1997) Making Small Firms Work: Policy Dimensions and the Scottish Context, Centre for Research into Industry, Enterprise, Finance and the Firm, University of St Andrews.

This states that Hughes bypassed the SDA without consultation and gained direct access to Downing Street and was subsequently invited to a meeting at Chequers. There, he met the Secretary of State for Employment, then Norman Fowler:

"who had already been influenced by the Director of Employment and Training Policy in Massachusetts, who was proselytising for the concept of Private Industry Councils (PICs). These PICs allowed the business community to take an active role in spending training funds of the US Federal Government. Business could play a role in enterprise stimulation, which included the design of training schemes and even extended to influence over school curricula. These PICs were moderately successful in cities like Atlanta, New York and Boston." (Reid, 1997:13)

This then, with its mention that 'training funds' came, not from the business community, but from the US Federal Government, would then contrast sharply with the Policy institute's version of events — and possibly consign to the realm of fiction any 'phasing out' of the dripping roast of public funds. The report also adds that Hughes was: "Borrowing much from the Massachusetts ‘growth coalition’ idea," adding, somewhat conspiratorially, that "hardly anyone was explicitly involved" in the formation of this grandiose democratic project to aid the poor via 'trickle-down' economics.

• Young A. (2005) mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940 Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers? Sunday Herald, Dec 4. This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:

"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."

It also noted that by 1999, Bill Hughes, was calling for his creation to be scrapped and replaced with a series of local venturing companies, investing real risk capital in growing new Scottish companies. "Scottish Enterprise needs to be shaken not stirred, " Hughes is quoted as saying, along with "It's the structures that are the problem, not the people."

• Sutherland J. N. (2003) An Analysis of the Policy Background to the Establishment of a Creative Industries Network in the Dundee Area in the late 1990’s, University of Edinburgh, Moray House School of Education.

This report points out in specific relation to SE, that Quangos were:

"“readily associated with Conservative control of a country that had not endorsed Conservative policies” and that it was perceived “the Conservatives were appointing their own supporters to the [quangos] committees.” ... SE was lampooned as “the Conservatives ‘Scottish solution to a Scottish problem’ … the brainchild of Glasgow businessman and leading Tory, Bill Hughes.” ..., “Quangos must thus be, almost by definition, a matter of concern for anyone committed to democratic accountability.”'(Sutherland, 2003:6)

Notes

1. ^ The Glasgow Herald, May 1, 1993.
2. ^ The Glasgow Herald, November 11, 1993.
3. ^ The Glasgow Herald, 10 July, 93.
4. ^ Lobster, no.26 p16.
5. ^ The Financial Times, 13 April, 1994.
6. ^ Covert Action, No 39, p28.
7. ^ The Scotsman, January 12, 1993.