Obituary: Pat Rogan - Councillor who drove through a huge programme of slum clearance in Edinburgh

Published on Monday 31 October 2011 00:00

Born: 17 January, 1919, in Edinburgh. Died: 26 October, 2011, in Edinburgh, aged 92

PAT Rogan, the first Labour Party chairman of housing in Edinburgh, was the man credited with inspiring a huge programme of slum clearance in the capital in the 1960s.

Born and brought up in West Richmond Street, Rogan was the son of a stonemason and followed his father in a way, becoming a bricklayer. First elected to the Town Council for the Holyrood ward in 1954, he retained his seat at all subsequent elections until 1970, his position never seriously challenged within the Labour Party or by political opponents.

In the 1950s, Edinburgh’s stock of housing was in pitiful state in certain areas of the city, and the population of the Old Town was estimated to have fallen to 2,000. Rogan set to work with a will, though it often took long years to get results – in the 1960s he campaigned for fully nine years for a development at St Leonard’s, with the government eventually approving the scheme.

It was in November 1959 that Rogan came to prominence when the so-called penny tenement – the landlord had once offered to sell it for a penny – in Beaumount Place in his ward collapsed after torrential rain, with residents miraculously escaping death.

He went to war on behalf of his constituents and was instrumental in getting them swiftly rehoused, and he then helped persuade the Town Clerk, William Borland, to prepare a report that showed how Edinburgh could be met with the bill for 6,000 collapsing slum houses. A slum clearance programme swiftly followed.

After that incident and its aftermath, Rogan became the first Labour councillor to chair the city’s housing committee in 1962, elected even though Labour was in a minority because all sides of the council could see that he had the vision and energy to tackle the housing problems with a policy of preserving good architecture where possible but demolishing outright slums.

He took Labour’s candidate in the 1964 general election, Harold Wilson, on a tour of some of those slums, and the future prime minister pronounced them the worst he had ever seen.

A fine orator with a turn of phrase that often irritated opponents, another target for Rogan’s acerbic wit was the secrecy of council meetings.

It is perhaps unfair in hindsight to see Rogan as a principal member of a band of Labour councillors who saw the Edinburgh Festival as a distraction to their work of improving the lot of the capital’s citizens, but he was to the fore in the long controversy over the council’s purchase of the King’s Theatre from Howard & Wyndham for £175,000 in 1969. The Edinburgh Festival Society had lobbied long and hard for the deal and Rogan memorably said councillors should not be the “lackeys and lickspittles” of the Festival – a quote that was still being used by his Labour predecessors two decades later.

He did not get his way on that purchase, but his contribution to the housing, finance and planning committees was recognised when he was made a bailie and later a magistrate.

Latterly working as a representative for a steel company, his enlightened employer gave Rogan time off for his civic duties. Rogan in turn would urge an allowance system for councillors because he could see that plenty of suitable candidates were put off by the financial disadvantages of council service.

Rogan announced in 1972 that he would retire from council duties at the following year’s elections, but he maintained his interest in civic issues. As a member of the Old Edinburgh Club, he campaigned for the Flodden Wall in his former constituency to be preserved, and the section in the Pleasance is the biggest part of the original fortification from 1513 still standing in the city.

Rogan lived quietly in retirement and if there was any great disappointment in his life away from the political sphere, it was the fact that his beloved Hibernian FC never again reached the heights they achieved during the Famous Five era.

He could wax lyrical about the Five and about the Labour Party of old, and in his seventies he recalled to one interviewer how his lifelong socialism had been sparked by the poverty that he had witnesses in Edinburgh and by an encounter with hunger marchers as a child in the 1920s.

In his final days, Rogan resided at Murrayfield Nursing Home, and on his 90th birthday he went back to the City Chambers for a special party in his honour hosted by former Lord Provost Eric Milligan.

He told that night of what motivated his council service: “The only purpose for my becoming a councillor was to rid the town of the slums. Some of the things were just unbelievable – human faecal matter spilling out on to the pavement, perhaps a dozen families sharing a toilet. Landlords could no longer pay for repairs and they abandoned the property.

“Edinburgh had, for too long, turned a blind eye to its housing conditions and there was a presumption in the council when I arrived that the slums would be tackled in the next 20 to 25 years. I would not accept that.”

Indeed he did not, and thousands of people across Edinburgh benefited from the work of Rogan and his fellow councillors. He and legendary Edinburgh Labour figures such as Jimmy Kerr and Jack Kane endured long years out of office while paving the way for the party’s eventual victory in 1984, which transformed Edinburgh politics out of all recognition.

Rogan was twice married, his first marriage to Jess (nee Foley) ending in divorce. She later became a Labour regional councillor. He married a second time to Labour organiser Georgina Wilson, who predeceased him.

A much-loved father to Brian, Norma – she also served as a Labour councillor in Edinburgh – Pauline and Brendan, Rogan also had nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He is also survived by his brother Peter.

His funeral service will take place at Warriston Crematorium Lorimer Chapel on Friday, 4 November, at 11am. MARTIN HANNAN