If someone in a position of authority is determined to smear you, it is very difficult to recover. Mud sticks.
[WARNING: the subject of this report is the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government. If that bothers you, sign the petition “Please allow Council Petition to investigate Leslie Evans’ role in faked VAC Report“]
Politicians pay officers to assess agencies in receipt of public funding. Such officers frame the narrative and their views hold sway at the highest levels. How can an agency so unfairly smeared row back?
For Update of 17 Jan click here
One such agency was the Video Access Centre in Edinburgh, in 1993 where the Assistant Direction of Recreation, Leslie Evans, faked a Council report in order to starve a community group of funds – because she disapproved of their expediency.
Step back 26 years, to 1992. The Assistant Director (Arts & Entertainment) at Edinburgh District Council (EDC) is one Leslie E. Evans, 34 years old and riding the crest of a wave.
Background
When the GLC was disbanded in 1986, the exodus of gifted bureaucrats brought Roger Jones to Edinburgh as Director of Recreation with all sorts of fancy London ideas, just after Edinburgh had elected its first Labour Council in 1984 and spending on arts and culture was very much on the rise. Lothian Regional Council (LRC) was Labour too – and of a similar mind regarding the arts. EDC had an Arts Dept within Recreation and LRC had an Arts budget within Community Education. So every arts group in Edinburgh had two local authorities they could approach for support. Other agencies had cash to give away too- the European Social Fund (ESF), the Scottish Film Council (SFC), the Scottish Film Production Fund (SFPF), the Scottish Film Training Trust (SFTT) and the Scottish Arts Council (SAC). They were golden days, indeed.
Roger had ideas to develop the city’s artistic and sporting life; Cllr Paulo Vestri, then EDC’s Recreation Convener, gave him support and helped get the Council behind him. The Council’s strapline at the time was “Improving Services- Creating Jobs”; one it managed to stay true to for many years.
At the same time, video production equipment was becoming cheaper and more accessible, Channel 4 was launched, and you could still sign on the dole whilst devoting your waking hours to forging a media career. The result was the emergence of film and video workshops across the UK – and Edinburgh had a plethora. In 1992 there were four in receipt of Council revenue funding: Edinburgh Film Workshop Trust (EFWT), Pilton Video, Edinburgh Video Training Course (EVTC) and the Video Access Centre (VAC). All were scrabbling for resources, each pledged to a different demographic and a different modus operandi.
Now, LRC support generally took the form of “seconded” staff from Community Education. These were inidividuals who had convinced Mac Wilkinson, chief of Community Education at LRC, to put them on the Council payroll but let them work full-time on the video workshop they sought to establish. Such posts were fabulously secure and had all the benefits of being a Council officer (job security, union support, superannuation, mileage allowance, etc) with none of the disadvantages (ie a boring job description). Each such full-time post could be calculated at around £25,000 of revenue funding.
The four workshops spanned the gamut of artistic endeavour– from EFWT, wedded to making worthy documentaries for C4 on the big bucks at £40K annual grant (from LRC and EDC); EVTC, a European Social Fund project which trained 6 unemployed folk a year, on a grant of about £70K pa from EDC/ESF, Pilton Video also on £60K (from LRC/EDC) down to the tiddler VAC, getting by on helping hundreds of unemployed people get out of bed on an annual grant of a £8K, all from EDC.
Leslie’s Involvement
The EDC Councillors were being pressured to fund the sector more; they felt they wanted to learn more about the impact of their cash and redistribute their aid. It was obvious there was duplication taking place; for example, every workshop said they provided access and training. The Councillors were convinced by Roger and Leslie that what was needed was a “Video Funding Strategy” which identified how the sector could be developed- and so who would get more funding– and who would get none. But.. how to create one? Each organisation claimed to be the most deserving. Then Leslie had the bright idea of bringing in an outsider to assess each organisation and compare them. She got an arts consultant, John Adams, from Newcastle to do the business. [Mr Adams is still in Newcastle; he’s now 65 yrs old and presently a media producer and Managing Director of Eye Robots] But this is where things began to go wrong.
For the report Mr Adams wrote, was not the one the Councillors were presented with, when Leslie recommended who should get the raise and who should be shown the door. That she was exposed and humiliated at the time, only led to her wrath, and the charity she had in her sights was the tiddler who had not only failed her “Political Correctness” test, but had exposed her ham-fisted attempts to skew the truth.
So how did this all come about? VAC’s first mistake had been to allow those on the Employment Training (ET) scheme to train on and use their equipment (ET meant dole plus £10/week – it was voluntary). The Co-ordinator of EVTC not only rented them a broom cupboard to run their project from but sat on their Board. This man, John McVay, hated the ET scheme and declared that VAC must ban such trainees from the building. VAC demurred and their lease was terminated forthwith. John’s twin brother, Derek, was (and still is) the paramour of Leslie Evans, so she soon knew of the affair and decided that VAC needed watching.
VAC moved into a bigger, more expensive space above Edinburgh Film Workshop Trust (EFWT) and continued to provide cheap access (50p/hr) and free training to anybody on the dole. But to become the “go-to” destination for wannabe video-makers – a place where folk would want to came to, involved extensive leafletting to promote the service- and it was difficult to attract the kind of customer Leslie wanted to see there. Where were the ethnic minorities?, Leslie asked. She insisted that VAC (on a miniscule budget with a worker employed but one day a week- who spent that day giving free training) set about attracting black people in the same way that the others with four full-timers were struggling to do.
The best that VAC could do, under highly straitened circumstances, was to take the cartoon people in the posters they used to advertise their services – and shade their faces in as coloured – with some carefully applied Letraset. These were sent to ethnic minority groups, who never complained; they seemed happy to put up the posters. Leslie only noticed what VAC had done when she saw a “before” and “after” poster in the VAC Annual Report. She was horrified- and made her feelings clear. She, along with sidekick, Principal Arts Officer Lynne Halfpenny [now Director of Culture at CEC], told VAC that their actions were tantamount to racist. They accepted no excuses and from that moment on, VAC was doomed – an early victim of political correctness. Leslie began to properly plan VAC’s demise. Their revenue grant, which had been rising (under Roger Jones’s and Recreation Convener Cllr Paolo Vestri’s watch) by 30% a year, was suddenly frozen at £ 8.7k pa. Promises of 3-year funding on an upward curve were withdrawn. Roger, a very decent man, lacked the balls to stand up to his junior, Leslie, a formidably ambitious and uptight woman. By this time, Cllr Vestri had moved on and Steve Cardownie took his place as Recreation Convener.
Leslie thought there were too many video projects in Edinburgh and she needed authority to “rationalise” them. Thus it was that on 30th March 1992 the Recreation Committee signed off her proposal for “A Video Policy for Edinburgh“. It was agreed to spend £1,500 to hire an external consultant to research the sector and draft a report. It’s not clear how John Adams was chosen to become the patsy for Leslie’s endeavour, but she knew that groups in Scotland worked together so presumably fixed on Newcastle because there she would find someone who couldn’t easily be influenced (or traced?) by Edinburgh activists. Also, being close to Scotland and having an active film and video-making culture helped. John was a lecturer in media and an independent producer, so had the requisite knowledge.
And so the saga of the workshops’ evaluation by the Newcastle man began. After meeting Council officer Andrew Ormston in Edinburgh to take the commission, John visited each of the four workshops and carried out numerous ancillary interviews.
He did a careful appraisal of each and VAC was optimistic that his evident enthusiasm for the various schemes they ran for their 250+ users, producing around 150 videos a year (with free training, cheap access, regular newsletter and schemes such as spoof ad competitions, pub video nights, mini-festivals, etc) might get them back in the Recreation Dept’s good books.
But they were to be disappointed. The report on the organisations working in the “grant-aided cultural sector”, when it was presented to Recreation Committee, in Dec 1992, (with a cover sheet explaining why John Adams was chosen) mentioned none of those things. It was as if VAC were a minor hobby project where nothing they did was of any value to anybody. The other charities’ work, on the other hand, were wreathed in glory.
Leslie’s Lies
The Video Funding Strategy, based on the report, was passed by Committee on 14th Dec 1992. It stated in the Summary, penned by Ms Evans:
“5. EDC’s Recreation Committee should seek to increase the level of cultural grant allocated to Video in Pilton, and EFWT and to financially support EVTC in the future. Substitution of funding within the video sector should be considered.
6. EDC Recreation should establish clear access policies with VIP, EFWT and EVTC to ensure that access to video equipment and training continues to develop.”
The key phrase above, advocating “Substitution of funding within the video sector” (also recorded in the minutes) was the one that signalled impending doom for VAC. Its cash was to be split 3 ways to the other workshops.
The VAC Committee only received the report and Video Funding Strategy on the 7th January 1993, by this letter that Leslie Evans wrote to Oscar Van Heek, the then VAC Co-ordinator – after the Recreation Committee had signed it off. They were were dismayed by what they read.
They met with Ms Evans in January 93 to protest and were informed that their concerns about the report were irrelevant since it had already been published and “there was no appeals procedure”. She suggested, based on the Video Funding Strategy, that VAC seek to amalgamate with EFWT. Since EFWT was the big fish, funding-wise, and VAC the minnow, it was clear that it would really be a case of becoming subsumed within the richer, better staffed organisation. What was worse, was that EFWT told VAC that they would have to cut the access activities if they were to take VAC’s activities on board.
So – the VAC Committee were being told by Leslie that their grant was to be redistributed to EFWT (essentially a Channel 4 production agency), EVTC (with Leslie’s partner’s brother in charge) and Pilton Video (based in Pilton, it ticked all the right boxes, but it was really a production scheme for the lefty manager’s community action ideas)- with a small remnant of VAC’s access work tagged onto each agency’s activities, as compensation for the many who would suffer keenly from VAC’s demise.
In her Funding Strategy, Leslie penned the following tribute to this community project that had hundreds of enthusiastic users from all over the city, many unemployed – using the VAC experience to make careers for themselves in the arts [many went onto work in the industry]. She wrote that:
“VAC is underfunded, in unsuitable accommodation, under-resourced and appears to be on the point of collapse, relying on voluntary help to continue operations. The facilities VAC offers have fallen so far behind contemporary requirements (that significant investment would be required) to pay for acceptable levels of management and staffing.”
Clearly, the fact that they had used their £8,000 EDC grant to lever in a further £10,000 from low hire fees, cheap membership and grants from other bodies, cut no ice with Ms Evans. None of VAC’s training, output, events or career development work was mentioned. And in those days, volunteering was sneered at. Clearly VAC was a sick beast, best disposed of quietly.
Disbelief
The VAC Treasurer, Pete Gregson, still couldn’t believe that the Newcastle man who seemed so interested and positive about their work seemed to have so little good to say about it. Mr Gregson thought he should go digging and in September ’93 managed to locate the man who had written the report. Over the phone, it became clear from what John Adams said, that what had been circulated to the Recreation Committee was rather different from the report he had prepared. Yet Leslie Evans was claiming that the “bad” report was his work! On the 1st October 1993 Pete sent this letter to John seeking to see what he had written. By return, John kindly sent VAC a copy of what he’d written and the VAC Committee were able to see just how much had been deleted. For Leslie had been hard at work on the word processor, removing anything of merit relating to VAC’s work. But how was VAC, with little cash, to communicate that to the Councillors who had signed it off?
VAC’s strength was in having their 250+ members spread across the city, living in every ward of every Councillor. Under the leadership of Stef Penney, VAC chairperson (now known as novelist of The Tenderness of Wolves, etc) and with guidance from Stephen Chester, then reporter for the List magazine, Pete and the rest of the Committee got to work. That October, the VAC Committee prepared a page by page comparison of the two reports, photocopied the lot and armed the members to go to work, where they arrived at Cllr surgeries across the city, with paperwork showing how their arts project had been obliterated by Leslie’s angry keystrokes. There were many blank spaces where Leslie had removed anything positive that Mr Adams had to say about VAC’s activities; it was crystal clear where the gaps were, for she had left Mr Adams’ words about the other projects exactly as they’d been before.
Pete Gregson went out with one of the less confident VAC members, a Leith resident, to visit Cllr Steve Cardownie, the then Convener of Recreation, at his Leith surgery. Steve saw Pete and immediately set about chasing him out of the building, declaring that his surgery was for locals, not outsiders (having come from the Scottish Socialist Party himself into Labour but seven years before, he certainly knew the danger outsiders could be). Steve was a kind of Ken Livingston figure, not shy of voicing an opinion, and firmly wedded to the people. When he realised that Pete’s companion was, in fact, a local, his attitude softened. After 15 minutes studying the faked report, he realised that he and his fellow Councillors were being duped.
Every Cllr in the city was getting similar visits and fairly soon it became clear to many that the senior arts officer in the Recreation Dept was being economical with the truth. Nobody actually mentioned Leslie Evans by name, but it was clear that it could have only been her, as the whole Video report idea had been her baby.
In April 93, VAC had written to Cllr Cardownie, appealing for a review of the report’s recommendations. As is usual in these matters, it is the officers who dealt with correspondence and not surprisingly, VAC received nothing more than an acknowledgement by way of reply. VAC wrote again in September, again receiving only an acknowledgement. Then Lynne and Leslie informed them that the Dept’s final funding decisions would be announced in the near future. VAC knew they would be excluded from these.
Having visited councillors across the city in their surgeries, VAC arranged a deputation to the Recreation Committee to make their case formally. On the 8th November 1993 the VAC Committee trooped into the old Council Chamber with 15 users in hand to help make their case. Needless to say, Ms Evans was oblivious to the impending humiliation. When invited to speak by Cllr Cardownie, VAC’s chairperson and treasurer indicated to the Committee that they thought the report informing the Video Funding Strategy was inaccurate. [Whilst all Cllrs present were well aware that there were two quite different versions of the report, a “before” and an “after”, VAC thought it might not be the best idea to come out and accuse Leslie Evans directly.]
Nailed in Public
Now, it is simply not the done thing for a Cllr to ever criticise an officer at a public meeting. Politicians might only address their concerns to the Head of Department (HOD), who get paid shedloads to take the flack. Those below departmental head know they can get away with not owning up to manipulations and misrepresentations, because that is what HODs such as Roger Jones are for: in those days, officers didn’t even have their name anywhere in the papers. However, on this rare occasion, Cllr Steve Cardownie stepped over that thin red line, by fingering one such officer. Is it possible, he thundered, that a very senior officer (there could only be one!) had tampered with the report, thereby undermining its validity and “independence”? You could hear a pin drop. All eyes turned on Leslie, who became bright, bright red with fury and froze, stock still. You could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.
The Committee moved onto other business and the VAC deputation watched as the report was noted, but not acted upon. The Video Strategy was dead before it had lived.
The minutes of the meeting show
“The Committee agreed to receive the deputation who indicated that the Centre had an entirely voluntary membership of approx. 250 people and had produced approx. 154 videos during the recent year. The Centre offered a unique outreach service with 24-hr a day access to the equipment (which had recently been renewed following receipt of a capital grant from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts). Currently they were attempting to find alternative accommodation which would permit access to people with disabilities. The deputation expressed concern that the Video Strategy, which they considered inaccurate and already out of date, would prejudice their position in relation to securing support and financial assistance from the Council and other bodies.
Therefore the Committee resolved ..[.a) that VAC got their annual grant..] b) that the Director of Recreation be instructed to meet reps of the Centre to discuss the points raised with a view to reporting to Committee on any amendments required to the Video Funding Strategy report [it was never amended]. c) that, in principle, the Committee agrees to continue to support VAC, provided, however, that the Centre continues to provide good quality productions and d) that in future when the Committee commissions external consultants to produce reports, a schedule of time allocated in producing each part of the report, be annexed to the final document.”
Thus, the Councillors, in effect, unanimously rejected Leslie’s recommendations. It was very rare for an officer’s agreed proposals to be so comprehensively reversed. Indeed, the last point (d) was a signal to her to desist hoodwinking Committee again.
The Aftermath
However, although VAC held onto their grant, it was clear that Leslie needed revenge and was never going to let them grow. Over progressive years the grant was trimmed, with Leslie and Lynne claiming greater need elsewhere. As their funding was cut to below £5K, a year or two later, Leslie and her sidekick Lynne, convinced the Committee that all arts organisations receiving less than £5K be cut completely, the better to help the bigger ones grow. VAC waged another campaign around the Councillors, which meant their grant was reduced by less, but year after year, Leslie found a way to reduce the funding. Year after year VAC fought back to try and get her recommendations over-turned, but it was hard exhausting work. The golden rule, they had learnt, was never to get on the wrong side of Local Government officers, for they wielded considerable power.
Certain Cllrs, such as Donald Gorrie (later MP and MSP) valiantly challenged Leslie and Lynn to defend their funding recommendations on VAC. In the meantime, VAC did do some fantastic projects, setting up Young People Speak Out (YPSO) (an outreach project making videos with young disadvantaged people) in late 1993 and sharing premises with them till 2006.
(YPSO Logo) and Annual Report 03/04
VAC morphed into the Film & Video Access Centre (FVA) when it aquired 16mm production equipment and thence into Edinburgh Mediabase with digital editing in 2002, building to a turnover of £40,000 pa, training and resourcing vast numbers to make some amazing work, in spite of steady cuts in Council funding – and with some brilliant empowering work with black video-makers under its belt too.But Leslie and Lynn continued to cut the funding, down to around £4,300 pa.
Leslie moved away to another Council, but by that stage the funding patterns had become set in stone. Somehow or other VAC continued until 2006, then closed, more from exhaustion than anything else.
Glasgow has its own version, Glasgow Media Access Centre (GMAC), still going strong. Back in ’93 the then Glasgow District Council were funding it to the tune of at least £15,000 and SRC provided free premises (Pete Gregson ran that for a couple of years at that time.). Luckily, there were no machiavellian arts bureaucrats scheming to undermine citizens’ video access at GDC and the arts organisation was well-used and democratically accountable to its users, much as VAC was.
GMAC now flourishes and VAC is dead and gone, thus proving that the actions of one bitter bureaucrat can have far-reaching impacts. What happened to the other workshops? Most projects had one highly driven impresario behind them and as these folk retired or moved away, the projects folded. At this time the only one remaining that gets Council cash is Pilton Video, now known as Screen Education Edinburgh. Being well-funded, it depends less on driven volunteers, and benefits from strong Council support. Nowadays, it caters mostly for school pupils.
Edinburgh is arguably artistically poorer these days in the screen industries field, thanks to the actions of Ms Evans. Those aspirants wanting to break into the business are best advised to get the train to Glasgow, where a Council that was truly sympathetic to giving cameras to the people has supported GMAC since its inception – and the city is the richer for it.
John Adams
John Adams will testify that his report was manipulated. 25 years on, the fact his work was twisted still rankles with him. To get in touch with John, contact Pete Gregson at postmaster@roseburn32.plus.com
Quote from John Adams 10th Jan 2019
“I have no axe to grind with her [Ms Evans], she doesn’t mean anything to me and as I recall, we never met. I was diligent about the process, travelling to Edinburgh three or four times to interview the principles of these organisations before writing and submitting the report.
“A while later I got an angry letter from Pete. It seemed clear that the document that had been published had been doctored.
“My view was that all the organisations were trying to do something for their local communities and I was very sympathetic to that. It seemed clear to me that all were underfunded, particularly VAC; ridiculously so in their case.
“From what I gather, all the positive things I said about VAC were redacted and the argument was used to cut their funding.
“My feeling in the end about all is that I was used as a patsy. I felt totally used but there was nothing I could do about it. Subsequently I set up my own business and the lessons learned from this rather bitter experience, helped me to develop a good bullshit detector.
“The fact is that the report as presented is different to the one I submitted.”
Footnote
It is said Leslie Evans caused Edinburgh Council to lose millions in the Usher Hall Lottery debacle of ’98, which led to the resignation of Roger Jones, the best and most popular Head of Department the Council ever had. When Roger was forced to resign over the loss, Leslie had the temerity to give him a leaving card comparing him to Churchill – he was a hero, she said. If she truly felt that way, maybe she could have ‘fessed up and taken the rap, resigning in his place? Not our Leslie…
STOP PRESS! In Jan 2019, Pete Gregson lodged a complaint to CEC asking for the 1992 falsification of the Council report to be investigated and the culprit named and shamed. Their legal team said they could not do that, because the fakery had not happened “within the past year”. Whereupon he lodged a petition on the Council’s Petitions Portal seeking the investigation; the Council then decided on the 24th Jan 2019 that was invalid too because it would draw out “details that could damage a person’s reputation or discriminate against them.” You can view the “invalid” petition on the Council website here: www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory_record/1067141/investigate_1992_video_funding_strategy_council_report
The next plan is to set up a Change.org petition.. watch this space. It will be launched as soon as the furore around the Alex Salmond police allegations dies down
By hook or by crook the truth will out..