Chaos in Handforth council meeting!

In the last couple of days you might have seen some rather explosive footage of an online meeting of the Handforth Parish Council.

Handforth is a small community very close to the city of Manchester in the United Kingdom. It is a small, peaceful, and obscure little community, or at least it was until excerpts of the recent upheaval and debauchery of a local parish council meeting went viral online and put Handforth on the map (and not in a good way). In a few days several thousands times more people have watched the video than actually live in Handforth itself.

Local councils such as parish or community councils exist to serve as constructive and pragmatic instruments of democracy, most often dealing with quite innocuous and anodyne subjects, usually in a civil and cordial way. However, inescapably local council business is sometimes tedious, frustratingly bureaucratic, and, as the recent footage shows, can even trigger super heated arguments. I happen to know this quite well because *sigh*, I am a local councillor.

I normally avoid anything that goes viral like the plague (or Covid-19), but several people sent me the video. The meeting itself actually took place last December, but has only surfaced recently. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, meetings which would usually take place in person are having to take place virtually. This makes them easier to record and subsequently distribute online for millions to gawk at, should they prove entertaining enough.

The meeting itself:

The meeting is noteworthy for several occurrences, with numerous instances of chaos, interruptions, confusion, and interference, but most of all for a very climactic moment of arguing and aggression.

This specific video starts out with the clerk advising people mute their microphones to minimise disruption.
Mere minutes later one councillor can be heard answering the telephone, saying:
"Oh hiya, yeah, I'm just in a meeting at the moment, can I give you a call back when it finishes? OK. Alright. Bye, bye."

Before the meeting officially starts there is much fractious discussion between councillors and the acting clerk, mostly about whether the meeting itself should be being held at all. When the meeting does eventually officially start, the chair argues with the acting clerk about whether the meeting is legal, and who has the power to exclude people from it. He tells her;

"You have no authority here! No authority at all!", immediately before being evicted from the meeting by her.

The acting clerk told the council now they could elect a chair, which was followed by the vice chair decreeing "I take charge!" and yelling"Read the Standing Orders! READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM!"

The general atmosphere of the beginning of the meeting is very tense, angry, with lots of both passive aggressiveness and overt aggressiveness. Other lines that stand out include:
"What are you talking about? You don't know what you're talking about!"
"We're trying to have a Teams meeting, you fool!" (in a voice similar to Gollum)
"The man is a complete disgrace!"
& a very sarcastic "Welcome to Handforth"

Also there was a great deal of diabolical cackling to be heard.

One person commented about their concerns that the issues being discussed would be prejudicial if the recording of the meeting somehow went viral on the internet.

Whatever, you can watch it yourself.

Who knew local councils were such hotbeds of fury?

Whether you are a councillor or not, the footage of the meeting is funny because of the general confusion, and the (seemingly) surprising level of animosity in what most people would expect to be a peaceful and boring meeting. Also, in the United Kingdom, people generally stereotype those living in small rural communities as very simple and petty folk, so to see them arguing so vociferously during such a trivial meeting like squabbling children as if what they were talking about was really momentous, is equally quite amusing.

But if you are also a councillor, the footage can furthermore be funny because it is (strangely) relatable. You may be very surprised to know that local council meetings are not just occasionally known to have arguments, they are actually quite susceptible to it. Thus numerous videos of arguments in other local councils have been surfacing in the wake of this one.

In our own council meetings, insults have been thrown, not long ago a member of the public angrily called an elderly councillor an idiot. I even heard of a case from before I joined the council two years ago where someone angrily tossed their keys at someone else, narrowly missing them. I take no pleasure in relaying this, and do not mean to bring our council into disrepute, but it does at least show that, even at the lowest echelons of democracy in obscure rural areas, politics and high tempers are ubiquitous. If it happens in places like this I guarantee you it happens in every local council at some point or other.

Whilst it's easy to laugh at the silliness of grown adults behaving like wound up toddlers, and of seeing volunteer local councillors behaving like little despots, in all seriousness this sort of behaviour isn't helpful and teeters on inappropriate, even bullying. There are Codes of Conduct which should be followed, but the rules are often bent or even fully broken, at all levels of government.

It does not help when high level politicians set a poor example, but bullying in the UK parliament is common. In the House of Commons, bullying (both overt and covert), arguing, name-calling, and yelling are very commonplace.

Final thoughts:

If you are ever thinking of joining a council or similar body, don't let anything I've said put you off. Good for you for wanting to contribute and make a positive difference. However, be mindful how easy it is to get drawn into this sort of petty heated argument. Tension begets more tension, and if someone is patronising or insulting, it can be very tempting to stoop to their level. Just keep cool, calm, composed, collected, and professional.
Because you never know who might end up watching your meltdown.