Paddison electoral and fiscal geographies

Abstract

Electoral geographies I: maps and power…I well remember a conversation I had, as a callow final year undergraduate, with Ronan during the 1983 UK General Election campaign. The conversation took placeas was common thenin the pub after, if memory serves, a meeting of the Glasgow University Geographical Society (who was giving that evening's lecture, and what it was on, are sadly lost in the mists of time: reader, if you were the speaker, I apologise!). I fancied myself as a bit of a radical, and was holding forth on the prospects for Michael Foot's Labour party. Like some Labour supporters in more recent elections fought by more recent (and even more unelectable) Labour leaders, I argued (more in hope than anything else) that Foot could still beat Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives. After all the policies were so much more attractive than the Conservatives' offer. The Conservatives had presided over deep recession, high inflation and unemployment, and the hollowing out of manufacturing industry. Foot's rallies (against nuclear weapons, against unemployment, etc.) drew large and enthusiastic crowds. And the only poll that mattered was the final vote in election day itself. There was all to play for. Voters would be persuaded by the forces of light, reason and justice, and Mrs T would be swept from office, consumed by a crisis of capitalism her government's policies had done so much to exacerbate.Ronan's response was gentle, but on the money: "I'm not so sure…". He then elaborated his reasons for (deep) scepticism regarding Labour's chances. There was a deep split on the centre-left between Labour and the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Michael Foot's personal ratings with voters were dire: he was seen variously as an unreconstructed member of the far left, as too old and infirm for the top job in UK politics, and evenfor some on the leftas too much of a turncoat from the true path of socialism after his period in government under Wilson and Callaghan. Add to that the Falkland Effect, the beginning of economic recovery in the south and midlands, and the Conservatives'' massive 20-point poll lead, and the outcome was all but certaina sweeping Conservative majority, a thumping Labour defeat (from the perspective of 2019/20, plus ça change…!).Needless to say, Ronan was right, I was wrong. I'd taken to heart half of Gramsci's famous aphorism: optimism of the will. But Ronan knew this was no good unless tied to the other halfpessimism of the intellect. It was an object (though well taught and supportive -Ronan discussed it as though between equals) lesson. Look the facts square in the face, and see them for what they are, not for what you hope they might be.

Radical geography from the Drumlin: an academic commemoration of Ronan Paddison (1945–2019)

“…This 1976-1977 issue also saw the first glimpse of what Ronan was beginning to bring to Glasgow Geography: positioned in the 'Jogsok Top Ten' (as in musical 'chart hits'), 'Ronan and the Hot Rods' were performing 'You're More than a Number' (Drumlin, 1976b, n.p. : 'Jogsok' being the Student Geographical Society), the likely implication being that Ronan was emphasising to students the deficiencies of a purely quantitative approach to geographical study, notwithstanding his own statistical capacities as reported in this issue by Pattie (2020). Subsequently, as I will show, sightings of Ronan in Drumlin tended to be fuller and open to much more 'interpretation', such as in the article 'Focus on Ronan Paddison' (Drumlin, 1983, n.p.…”

“…(Paddison, 1982, p. 15) A host of theoretical-historiographic considerations permeate this passage, demonstrating Ronan's familiarity with older disciplinary approaches: regional description, locational analysis (identified here, with great acuity, as 'the geometry of social relations') and engaging Peet's own rejection of quantitative geography, behavioural geography, humanistic geography (enmired in 'the intricacies of human experience') and also the 'liberal' or 'welfare geography' tradition closely associated in the UK with David M. Smith (the target, I suggest, when Peet was attacking 'vague moral humanism': see Smith, 1977Smith, , 1979. Ronan's reflection has a tone that suggested his distaste for such crude dismissals of other, non-Marxist endeavours, past and present, andas in the quote belowhe confessed his own training in behaviouralism (and note the behavioural bent to a political geography textbook that Ronan co-authored: as well as quantification (see also Pattie, 2020). He noted how Marxist geography set up camp in opposition to behaviouralism -'one of the bète-noirs of the radical' (Paddison, 1982, p. 15)and also to humanistic geography, yet Ronan supposed that these more human-facing positions should still be valued for 'the understanding they give of man [humanity] in space' (Paddison, 1982, p. 15).…”

“…The next seven pieces in the SI alight upon more focussed conceptual and substantive manoeuvres within Ronan's oeuvre: Gordon MacLeod on perhaps Ronan's most distinctive offering, with complex philosophical and empirical twists, in the shape of 'the fragmented state' (MacLeod, 2020); Charles Pattie on Ronan's dabbling with both fiscal and electoral geography, the latter deploying statistical methods to expose the grubby politics of constituency 'redistricting' (Pattie, 2020); Steven Miles on Ronan's early recognition of the need to interrogate and critique 'culture-led urban regeneration' (Miles, 2020); Vee Pollock on how the culture-cities axis morphed for Ronan into concerns about public art and urban politics (Pollock, 2020); John McKendrick on Ronan's brush with attempts to measure, map, interpret and draw inferences from the construct 'quality of life' (McKendrick, 2020); Lazaros Karaliotas on Ronan's remarkably prescient late work on post-politics and 'the post-political city' (Karaliotas, 2020); and Emma Laurie and Chris Philo on the relatively marginal but intriguing early statements by Ronan (and coauthors) about 'the Arab city' or even 'the post-colonial city' (Laurie & Philo, 2020). Some features of Ronan's scholarship are admittedly not touched upon at all directly, notably geographies of planning, governance, public administration, retailing, education and housing.…”