Retiring Councillor Kath Ryall not ready to give up championing Old Kilpatrick

After five years as a councillor for Clydebank Waterfront, the Old Kilpatrick resident has the standard retirement plans of spending more time with friends and family.

But she also wants to be involved in Action Old Kilpatrick championing area causes and projects.

For someone who has fought injustice and championed organising from unions to communities, she isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

Kath only retired for about eight months between her time working in the trade union movement and standing for the Clydebank Waterfront ward in 2012.

She already knows her second retirement will involve more Old Kilpatrick work, a community she’s lived in for 20 years.

“Action Old Kilpatrick is a great example of active citizenship,” she tells the Post in Clydebank Town Hall’s Labour group office. “We need to have that if we are really going to make a difference.

“I’m looking forward to doing more with them, and spending time with my partner and family. It’s been difficult to have as much time as I would like for family and friends. This is not a part-time job.”

Kath grew up in a deeply Christian household with a strong sense of morality, but not in an overbearing way, she says. “It was good fun Christianity,” she adds.

From university studying comparative literature and fine arts, at 22 she started her first job as a social worker in Northumberland.

In the 1970s she worked with people who had physical disabilities or long-term illnesses as a result of their working lives, particularly in mining.

After studying social work at Stirling University, she went on to become involved with trade union movement, as branch secretary and shop steward at the National and Local Government Officers Association (Nalgo – the predecessor to Unison).

Kath says: “It seemed to be another avenue to do things that I thought were right. I found myself increasingly involved in the trade union movement.

“My identity is bound up in the movement more than anything else.”

Kath also lectured in trade union studies in Fife, bringing up the next generation of shop stewards and safety reps, a “fantastic job” but a rare one for a woman at the time.

Like her union position before it, Kath was one of the few women to hold senior roles when most were dominated by men.

“For me it was about keeping alive the flame of the trade union movement, as an agent of social justice,” she says. “We had our backs up against the wall in the 1980s. It was very much about defence against obliteration.”

A Labour Party member for 44 years, Kath was committed to her trade union work, so much so she didn’t feel she could stand for elected office.

“I retired on my 60th birthday,” she says, “and was elected on my 61st. And I will be retired again on my 66th birthday.

“In time terms, it’s quite a small term. But I really enjoyed my five years as a councillor and I think it’s been incredibly worthwhile.

“I thought I knew a lot about local government because I covered this area. But I have learned a huge amount and I feel if I had been standing again, I hope I would have been able to do a better job.

“It’s been absolutely fascinating. I would have thought I would have been aware of the scope of local government but I have learned just how much it affects people’s everyday lives.

“The decisions local government makes are not small – they have genuine importance on the quality of people’s lives.

“I would recommend for any young person considering a career in politics that local government is probably the best way to learn what politics can do.”

Kath says the Labour group took the view that long-term financial planning was the best approach to regenerate West Dunbartonshire and hopes that trend will continue with whomever forms the next administration.

But there are aspects of politics she will not miss.

“I think there’s a small minority within the council chamber that think machismo and misogyny is still okay,” she says.

“I was quite shocked at the beginning of my term to find that they were still around.

“It felt to me like going back 40 years. Some women councillors were treated differently. I feel anxious going into the chamber.

“If you’re going to have good politics, you can’t have those attitudes. Good politics is about respect for constructive debate.”

Kath recounts spending a month on secondment in South Africa in 1992 as one of the most inspiring events of her life, and where classes would go well past 11pm as each person was given time to speak.

“It’s a respectful culture of debate which is the right thing for the labour and trade union movement and politics in general,” she adds.

But the independence and Brexit referendums were both emotive issues for Kath and brought“genuine pain” from both results.

Kath says: “The divisions on those issues go deep and they are very fundamental – they’re not always rational and we have to find a way to have rational, evidence-based debate and vision.

“We have to be able to have those debates in a way that’s respectful because if we don’t, there will be a very poor quality of decision making.”

But Kath has found her time as councillor inspiring as well as hard work, particularly meeting residents who are doing “a whole load of good things”.

“There’s people doing great things and that’s very humbling,” she says.

“People are genuinely altruistic – that’s the basis of a successful community.”