Very particularly this was the day Lochgilphead became a community. It moved march organiser Dave Payne, in his speech at the culmination of the rally on Front Green, to say he’d never known what ‘community’ was until today.

It’s always hard for a larger town to develop a community spirit. The prospect of losing the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool – that has kept so many children safe and so many adults healthy – has been a galvanic.

350 people, from babes-in-arms, to toddlers on shoulders, to fit-looking teenagers, to triathletes, to community elders formed – to the heart – a solid and bonded community making it known that they were not going to be overcome on this.

The case

The shared feeling was determination to propel Argyll & Bute Council to address the inherent unfairness of its revenue support for the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool.

This unfairness is not a whinge but a hard fact. It  is relative to the support given to:

• the four pools it owns – Campbeltown, Rothesay, Dunoon, Helensburgh
• the fifth pool it owns – Oban, whose operation it contracts to a third party
• the Islay Pool, like the Mid Argyll, community owned.

Superficially, the Mid Argyll Pool is funded at the lowest level of all the Argyll pools – and significantly so.

It is For Argyll’s contention that, when we are in a position to drill down into figures which the Council has chosen to provide us under Freedom of Information legislation, it will be possible to demonstrate that this is also and clearly the case on a like-for-like basis.

As made clear in the speeches at today’s event, every single pool in Argyll operates at an annual loss. The Council, however, has chosen to be excoriating solely about the Mid Argyll Pool’s operating deficit. It is hard to see this discriminatory behaviour as anything other than a smoke screen to avoid accounting for the disparity in revenue finding for the Mid Argyll pool.

In fact, if the Board of the Mid Argyll pool were given what they are asking for – parity with the other community owned pool on Islay – it would have no operating deficit on current performance.

The community evidence

Today, community support for its pool was evident and absolute. It included:

• Emma and Lorna, with Lorna’s 4 month old daughter, Cerys, for whom the local pool is all but embedded in their gene pool. Emma and Lorna were primary school fund raisers for the pool to be built. They were in the party from their school photographed beside the digger that cut the first sod for the building. They both learned to swim there. They do the early swim before the working day. Lorna is already taking Cerys there – another Mid Argyll water baby.

• Stephen McCormick works for the building company MacLeods and with fellow employees, is putting together a group who will provide voluntary maintenance services to the new pool Board.
• Frances Chisholm and Elizabeth Armstrong are both members of the Over 50s Aquaerobics. Their husbands go to the Over 50s swimming sessions. Elizabeth is taking the newly started adult swimming lessons. She could previously swim a little but without confidence. She has the highest possible praise for her tutor at the adult lessons and has already built a stronger relationship with the water.
• Roger Brock has six children, all of whom have learned to swim at the pool – that’s six safer young Mid Argyll lives. He offers a sharp assessment of the Council’s obduracy in offering parity of funding to the Mid Argyll pool. The focus for his anger is the mess the Council made of the works to the A83 to accommodate the new High School building. In the end the problems created could not be resolved in-house and contractors had to be brought in, expensively, to make sense of the situation. Mr Brock’s argument is that the Council was happy to spend money recovering from its own avoidable incompetence but is not prepared to find the much smaller sum to ensure the survival of a community resource that underwrites community health and well-being.

• Catriona Gorrie and Jean MacPhee use the pool themselves and have seen some of their children -  Robin and Alexander Gorrie and Iona and Calum MacPhee, rise from learning to swim there to showing promise as strong swimmers in the Dolphins.
• Staff from the pool were voluntarily involved in stewarding at the march, along with Board members like Ali and Sally McLeod. Two of the lifeguards, Patrick (pictured above left taking photographs beforehand to record the event) and Kirstie (who is also a freelance personal trainer), are young, highly capable and totally committed to the pool and the service it provides.
• The Triathlon Club runs the notable annual triathlon based at the pool and is one of the strongest local clubs using the pool. This club voluntarily did the heavy lifting when the pool and its former Board collapsed in chaos in March this year. Members of the club are members of the focused new Board, including Chair, Stephen Whiston. While part of a widespread community movement, they have been the engine of the pool’s survival and are, with reason, part of its hope for the future.
• Catherine Moran uses the pool on a regular basis and cannot imagine the impact of its loss across the community.
• Jolyon Gritten, responsible for one of the Council’s successes this year in steering the Core Paths initiative through its development and consultation, said that he and his wife, a fellow professional, would not have come to live and work in this area with their family had it not had a pool. He also cited doctors and dentists working locally, for whom the existence of a pool to support health and safety was a deal breaker in their decision to work here.

The parade

There is no instrument in the world to equal the call of the pipes in raising the spirits for battle. The Mid Argyll Pipe Band, sounding and looking good as usual, gave their services to the parade as a gesture of support. In the pale sunshine that shone on almost all of the event as an omen of the rightness of the cause, the band led off from the swimming pool – with the march, pied piper-like, drawing even more to its ranks as it wound its way through and down the town to Front Green.

The Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Argyll, Mrs Jane MacLeod, was on the march, as were a phalanx of politicians at every level whose very evident support was warmly welcomed.

They included Alan Reid MP (Lib Dem – below right); Jamie McGrigor MSP (Scottish Conservative – below centre); Mid Argyll Councillors Dougie Philand (Independent), Alison Hay (Lib Dem) and Donnie MacMillan (Independent); and Councillor Gary Mulvaney (Scottish Conservative – below left) who had come up from Helensburgh.

Argyll’s MSP, Jim Mather (SNP) was not present. Neither was Councillor Mulvaney’s fellow challenger to Alan Reid in the forthcoming General Election, the SNP’s Mike Mackenzie. This meant that the current ruling party of Government in Scotland, the SNP, was not a part of what was – and felt – a highly significant coming together of a large community in common purpose.

Whatever the reason for this absence, it is unimaginable that it will not have electoral consequences.

The speeches

Aidan Gregory, the father of a family who use the pool, spoke first and powerfully. He reminded everyone of the pitiful provision that had preceded the Mid Argyll Pool – ‘a puddle in a shed in Ardrishaig with a tin roof that leaked’. He talked of the proximity of water to all parts of Mid Argyll and the absolute imperative that young people should know how to swim. He described his own family’s habit of going for a swim, then having lunch in a local restaurant, The Smiddy and finishing off by touring Lochgilphead’s shops. He nailed the point about the overall economic contribution of the pool to the town by saying that if the pool did not exist, his family would spend little time in Lochgilphead but would swim and shop in a single visit to Oban. He raised the question of how many folk in Mid Argyll would be able to afford the cost or the time to continue their swimming by trekking to either Campbeltown or Oban.

Jamie McGrigor, MSP, spoke next. A man who makes an easy connection with his audience, he started with a joke appropriate to the nature of the occasion. He had been given a bright yellow high-vis jacket to wear and said he’d kept wondering where the red toggle was. He underscored the safety imperative of the pool as much as its contribution to health and fitness. He pointed out that Mid Argyll not only has Loch Fyne, freshwater lochs and the Atlantic coast but has the deep and steep-sided Crinan Canal running through it, severing the Kintyre peninsula. There is no doubt that any non-swimmer falling into the canal would be unlikely to survive. Jamie McGrigor declared his absolute commitment to the continuation of the pool and backed this up with information on discussions he has been having with a major corporation on which he hoped to have some good news in the New Year.

Alan Reid, MP, who can be relied upon to be present at community events across Argyll and its islands, succeeded Jamie McGrigor. Having done some telling homework in preparing for the event, he pointed out that the Council’s own website describes the necessity of learning to swim in a local authority area surrounded and penetrated by water. He too pointed out the dangers of the constant presence of water in Argyll.

He committed himself to ‘harrying the Council’ until the matter was positively resolved.

He was applauded for saying that Mid Argyll and Lochgilphead were neglected relative to other areas in Argyll and Bute, that this was simply wrong and that it was a situation that needed to be addressed.

Dougie Philand, the Mid Argyll Councillor (above) whose unqualified support for the new Board in its campaign to secure the future of the pool has made him very much a local hero, spoke next. He was greeted by spontaneous and warm applause. He made it clear that, although he has resigned from the Alliance of Independent Councillors – the leading partner in Argyll and Bute Council’s ruling coalition with the SNP, he has not resigned as a Councillor, nor will he. His enduring commitment is to progress in Mid Argyll. He resigned from the ruling coalition because he could not accept the legitimacy of the Council’s stance on refusing adequate support to the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool.

Dave Payne, organiser (above) of the hugely successful event spoke last. A man whose height befits his energies, he shaped the event with an encompassing imagination and managed it with a high level of organisational ability. Not a member of the board, he says about his initiative: ‘I do the rounds of cubs, rainbows, swimming lessons, school runs etc and everywhere I went, parents were talking about the pool. I know some of the board members and knew they needed to focus on working with the council so I decided independently to organise the march and informed the board of my intentions. It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this but I was buoyed by the anger felt by the community on the issue. I had time available on the day and so I used it.’ His speech hit the facts:

• the significant disparity in Council funding for the Mid Argyll Pool as compared with all other Argyll pools;
• the number of annual swims the pool supports – 40,000;
• the facilities like swimming for pregnant mothers-to-be, managed by midwives;
• the number of local user groups dependent on the pool: 13 local schools; the Dolphins Swimming Club; the Mid Argyll Youth Project; the Over-50s club; the kayakers; the Triathlon Club with the annual Triathlon event; and parents whose children party at the pool.

He paid tribute to all those who had come to the march and who, in a wide variety of ways supported the campaign to save the pool. He pointed out that it was this unyielding support that had already brought changes to the circumstances in which the new Board had to operate. Suddenly, the door to the highest levels of the Council was open to discussion with the Board where is had until very recently been closed. He mentioned that there has now been discussion at this level. Let’s hope it was more positive than a cavilling appearance of movement.

Mr Payne also paid heartfelt tribute to all those who had worked for the pool from its inception – from its Boards, to the skills and effort of the current board fighting for its survival – and to its fantastic staff whose attitude and effort is appreciated by all who use the pool.

He finished by thanking the Police whose generous cooperation in the preparation and management of the event had made it a memorable experience for everyone concerned.

The political lessons

• The force is with the community, the pool and the Board.
• The Council must recognise that – setting the rights of the matter aside -  the longer it prolongs its stalling on adequate support for the Mid Argyll Pool, the more merciless will be the scrutiny paid to its funding of the other pools. It is unlikely to emerge from such scrutiny with procedural integrity intact.
• Elected representatives are elected to get things done, not simply to talk.
• If we were scoring the political parties on their performance, the day would have been carried by the Scottish Conservatives. Jamie McGrigor has been using his own initiative to engage business in what are clearly discussions on possible funding. That is indisputably ‘action’. Councillor Gary Mulvaney travelled from Helensburgh to march with the community and support his fellow Councillors for the area, being notably positive about Dougie Philand’s stance.
• The community, as a result of widespread commitment to the pool and of the bonding that today’s event has created, has a different sense of itself and of its potency. That is likely progressively to become a force to be reckoned with. It has also led to significant offers of additional support to Dave Payne and to the Board.

We learned something important today. In a previous piece on this standoff we said that the Council should accept responsibility for the pool and adopt it.

Listening this morning to Dave Payne talk with pride of the fact that the Mid Argyll pool was owned by its community – and hearing the immediate applause that followed, it is very clear that the Council is not capable of generating and mobilising this sort of support for a community facility. The current Board, with Dave Payne, is and has demonstrated it beyond question.

We therefore fully support the new Board’s intention to carry on running the pool for the community, to build as much community engagement as possible and to sit the Council out until it bows to the inevitable and provides the long overdue equitable support for the Mid Argyll pool.

In its own interests, the Council would be advised to do so sooner rather than later.

Post-event Update: Videos from the event, taken by Richard Sloan, are now on You Tube and are:

• March from the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool at 11 am 19th December 2009
• Aidan Gregory ‘s speech
• Jamie McGrigor’s speech
• Alan Reid’s speech
• Dougie Philand’s speech
• David Payne’s speech

The photographs above are by copyright holders Rebecca Martin and Paul Hadfield and may not be reproduced without permission.

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