Having left school at 15 and worked in a variety of jobs before
establishing a career in social work, Trish Godman may have taken a
slightly different route into politics than many of her fellow
MSPs. "When they [MSPs] all are talking about university and what
they did, and so-and-so that they met at university… I kind of
feel, not out of it, but I basically don't understand what they're
on about because I didn't have that experience." But it is not lack
of experience that sets Trish apart from many of her fellow MSPs in
the Scottish Parliament; it is perhaps precisely the opposite.
Married at 19, with 3 children by 23, and separated by 24, Trish
was living as a single parent in a council house in the Pollok area
of Glasgow when she first got involved in community politics and
joined the Labour party in the mid to late 1960s. "…in those days,
you know, men designed the houses, and the whole letting policy was
ridiculous and I just found it difficult to get anything done.
Silly things like if you had a repair, you phoned up and they took
the number and what the repair was, and by the time they came out
something else had happened but you had to go through the whole
process again." She notes that this isn't the case any
longer, but in a sense things only changed through the grassroots
community politics that she, and so many women, were involved
in. "When I say community politics I mean in a very loose way
- I didn't go to meetings or anything, I just spoke to people in
the street, wrote letters, and all of that kind of stuff."
Considering who she would see as her political inspiration,
Trish has a great admiration for strong women, women who organised
and took part in the Govan rent strikes in 1915; the women who are
not afraid to stand up in their community and say what they think:
"It's women that I meet every day, its women that I know have to
struggle as carers and, in the job I ended up in social work, women
who struggled with domestic violence." However, courage of
conviction and standing by one's principles, which Trish sees as
worthy qualities, are not exclusive to women, and it is her
husband, former MP Norman Godman, who she sees as best embodying
these attributes: "I suppose the one who I think, I know, has stuck
by his principles completely is my husband… he's like me: I'm not
overtly ambitious, I never ever wanted to be a Minister- actually I
don't think I'd be capable of being one, to be honest - but I
wouldn't want to be one, and he was the same, so I think that in
terms of admiring someone it's him, and he certainly gives me a lot
of help and support."
One particular woman is worthy of mention, even though Trish
never got to meet her: her grandmother. Married at the turn
of the century, she asked Trish's grandfather, "my pop", how many
days a week he worked, and when he told her that he had Sundays
off, she replied 'well I'll have Sundays off as well'. "She
never cooked a meal on a Sunday, never lifted a finger on a Sunday.
When you look at the times when she said that, that's an
interesting woman… So I have an admiration for a woman I've never
met."
Describing herself as a "collapsed Catholic", Trish was brought
up as a Catholic and worked for a while with Catholic charity St
Vincent de Paul. On the issue of the churches' involvement in
politics, however, she says: "Obviously they have an opinion, but I
think it would be better if we could work together, I think that
because politicians are dealing with people of all shapes, sizes,
races and beliefs, that you cannot always put your own moral
judgement on what other people do."
It is this concern for equality and fairness which has been a
driving force throughout Trish's political career, and again her
past experiences have shaped her present political
priorities. A member of the Cross-Party Group on Men's
Violence towards Women and Children, women's issues are of
paramount importance to her, and this has also been shown in her
attempts to introduce legislation to outlaw the buying of
sex. An unsuccessful amendment to the Criminal Justice and
Licensing (Scotland) Bill earlier in the year has developed into a
proposed Bill which Trish will launch in the next few weeks.
She will need 18 signatures, from a range of parties, to take her
proposals forward, but is adamant that something must be done: "I
had a policeman a couple of weeks ago saying to me he'd gone into a
brothel in Glasgow… and as they were talking to the women in the
brothel, there were men turning up for their 'appointments' and
there is nothing you can do, it's not illegal, and for me that is
just fundamentally not right." Her work in a psychiatric unit
led her to come into contact with many women who had, at some point
in their lives, resorted to prostituting themselves, and it has
been of concern to Trish ever since.
Trish will be stepping down in May 2011, after serving 3 terms
in the Scottish Parliament, 2 as Deputy Presiding Officer. It is a
role which has given her a very different experience of the
Parliament: "What it has done is made me realise that, for all the
bad publicity we get in here, we get, in the main, things
right. I have to meet a lot of MPs and Senators from other
countries and I think we're getting it right… I think we're closer
to the people of Scotland." She shares a story of a recent
Australian delegation to the Parliament: "we were sorting out the
Festival of Politics, and in the Festival of Politics there's
usually a time when MSPs of all parties just sit and the public ask
them questions, and the Australians looked at me as if we were
totally nuts, that you would actually let the public in to ask you
questions in a forum like that!" She goes on, "the accessibility of
this place, and the availability of MSPs is streets ahead of any
other legislature that I have come across."
One particular area the Parliament had made good progress on was
equality of representation of females and males in the Parliament,
but Trish is increasingly concerned these gains are being lost,
explaining that the Labour candidate chosen to stand for her seat
is male, as are the majority of other candidates who will be
standing in place of female Labour MSPs who are stepping
down. "When I think of the long hard fight… when we started
off in here, we really shouldn't lose that."
Trish is sure that the economy and the proposed cuts will be the
central issue of the election campaign next year. She is concerned
about the level and speed of the cuts proposed by the coalition
Government, and is adamant: "if you are going to be under threat of
losing your job, under threat of losing public services, losing
support for those people who are needy; you have the right to
protest. I have no qualms about that - you have the right to
protest."
Having experienced the "so called 'benefits' system, which I
think is misnamed", herself when she had to claim benefits for a
period of time, Trish is acutely aware that successive governments
have promised to make improvements, but there continues to be
inherent unfairness in the system: "I think there is an
incredible waste of money, I think there are an incredible number
who should pay taxes who don't pay them, which seems to be a skill
in its own; so there are things that can be done… It's alright
saying we're going to fix the benefits system and get all these
people that are dodgers going to work - where they're going to find
the jobs I don't know, but you really need to get involved and
support the voluntary organisations who are dealing with
poverty."
She recalls seeing the queues at her husband's surgeries when he
was an MP in Inverclyde during the years of Thatcherism, and she
sees a similar scenario happening again: "I think if they go
through with the cuts that they're saying at the moment then its
really seriously bad, in terms of what they're saying they're going
to cut and how quickly they're going to do it. I think that, yeah,
they're going to have to do it, but I think there's a way of doing
it that could be slower and much more, 'take the people along with
you'."
In her free time, Trish keeps an allotment where she grows all
of her own vegetables, soft fruit and flowers, of which she is very
proud, having this year won a first prize for her flower border,
and second prize for her overall allotment. "It's a nice
place to be, especially in this job- there's no fax, no telephone,
nobody knows who you are, and you can just enjoy being
outside." After she steps down in May, she is looking forward
to taking a trip to Australia, where she has four grandchildren,
and 2 sons and daughter-in-laws - which will take place while her
allotment is sleeping. On her return, Trish plans to "come back and
look for something to do". Contemplating her retirement,
Trish hopes that "my constituents felt that I was there when they
needed me… I wasn't always able to do what they wanted, because
sometimes that's not possible, but that I was there and I was
available and I was sympathetic of the fact that at that point in
their life they had to come to someone like me". New MSPs entering
the Parliament in May would do well to pay heed to the one piece of
advice she would pass on to them: "listen".