 | 'I had to say that. A man came round to my house and put a shotgun to my head in front of my 13-year-old daughter.' A Labour activist who had publicly accused Mrs Irene Adams, MP for Paisley North of being 'off her head'. |  |
| 'I had to say that. A man came round to my house and put a shotgun to my head in front of my 13-year-old daughter.' A Labour activist who had publicly accused Mrs Irene Adams, MP for Paisley North of being 'off her head'. | |
The close links between the company and the local Labour Party have thrown FCB into the centre of the scandal surrounding the suicide of the Labour MP for Paisley South, Gordon McMaster, two weeks ago.
Irene Adams, the Labour MP for Paisley North who linked FCB to drug dealing, provoked an angry row with local Labour activists who have resolutely defended the integrity of the company. Mrs Adams also claimed gangsters had tried to infiltrate the Labour Party in Paisley North to oust her in an attempt to silence her crusade against drug barons centred in Ferguslie Park.
At its peak, FCB employed 120 people in an area ravaged by unemployment and Mrs Adams, and SNP activists on Renfrewshire District Council who called for an inquiry into its activities, were accused of threatening jobs.
FCB was set up in 1987 with almost £200,000 of public money from the Scottish Office, Renfrew District Council and Strathclyde Regional Council. The organisation soon became a local employment powerhouse under the gift of political patronage and key Labour Party figures were appointed to the board of directors.
A Strathclyde regional councillor, Harry Revie, an ally of the Labour MP for Renfrew West and Inverclyde Tommy Graham and who acted as his election agent, became a director, as did a Renfrew district councillor, Olga Clayton.
John McIntyre, chairman of Craigielea Labour Party branch, which covers Ferguslie Park, and chairman of the Ferguslie Park Community Forum, also became a director. There is no suggestion that any of the directors are responsible for the missing £320,000.
FCB soon began to win substantial contracts to look after local authority property. In November 1987 it won an £86,000 contract to provide neighbourhood security in the Westburn and Dalkeith areas of Ferguslie Park. In 1989 it was commissioned to provide security at Nith Place, Johnstone, and Moorfoot Avenue, Paisley, and was given an extension of the Ferguslie Park project.
Two years later FCB won another extension for the scheme and a supplementary estimate of the contract value of £54,080 was approved. Further contracts worth £54,152, £281,000, £110,000 and £70,000 were nodded through.
By 1994, the FCB empire had expanded rapidly and was responsible for looking after empty housing throughout the district. Before long, however, questions began to be asked about FCB's performance, and, more worryingly, reports that two members of one of Ferguslie Park's most notorious drugs families were linked to the company.
In 1994, Mrs Adams became increasingly alarmed at information she was hearing from existing and former FCB employees, who were all too terrified to be identified in public, about the involvement of criminals in the company.
They told her that two well known drug dealers were employed by the company and that drugs were being sold from company premises.
Early in 1995, Mrs Adams went public with her allegations about FCB, which she outlined in Parliament. She called for a full investigation into alleged criminal links with FCB.
Her attacks caused uproar and intensified local infighting in the Labour Party. One activist publicly accused Mrs Adams of being "off her head". Senior Labour sources said that when the man was challenged about this at a Labour Party meeting in Paisley Town Hall, he said: "I had to say that. A man came round to my house and put a shotgun to my head in front of my 13-year-old daughter."
Stewart Gillespie, who is now serving life for murder, was wearing an FCB jacket when he stormed round to the door of a local man who had damaged his car and shouted to an associate "Shoot the bastard". The gun did not go off, but six months later he ordered the killing for which he is now imprisoned.
Mrs Adams's crusade led to her and her family receiving death threats and being given police protection. Pressure was growing in Renfrewshire District Council for a full inquiry into FCB. SNP councillors claim they were frustrated by the Labour Party, which was determined to try to keep the lid on the scandal.
In March 1996, the council published the results of the inquiry which was eventually ordered into the company. Councillor Jim Mitchell, the deputy leader of the SNP group on the council, said yesterday: "There was every effort by the Labour administration not to take part in the inquiry that was set up by the council. They threw every hurdle they could in the way.
"FCB were getting contracts without any competition and I was getting endless complaints about vandalism from council houses the company was supposed to be protecting.
"Council houses in two areas which were evacuated during the floods were supposed to be protected by FCB but people were watching cars being burned out and houses vandalised. I put evidence to the inquiry that FCB security was non-existent. Constituents were asking where was this security that the council was supposed to be supplying.
"I got the council to ask the company where their security was, but FCB didn't even have the courtesy to write back to the council."
The inquiry concluded that FCB had been given preferential treatment over other potential tenderers because it was allowed to decide when it would submit to the tendering process so that "the interests of the company were placed before the interests of the council".
FCB was found to have failed to submit regular reports on incidents. In a damning reference to payments for hours worked, the inquiry found that it had to rely on the company being honest in informing them how many hours staff were working. The report found: "This cannot, in any circumstance, with any contractor, be a satisfactory basis on which public money is paid out."
Shift reports had been destroyed in all but two neighbourhood offices and there were no spot-checks to ensure that staff were at work. Of the records left, one report from a single guard had been filled out in three distinctly different handwriting styles. On another occasion, two sets of incident sheets for the same period were filled in by different people, signed in different handwriting from the guard's and submitted without arousing suspicion.
FCB had also falsely claimed to be a member of the British Security Industry Association. The report also found Ms Clayton and Mr Revie had a "clear conflict of interest" because they had to represent the best interests of their councils but were also directors of a firm in dispute with their councils.
The council did not look into the allegations of criminality made by Mrs Adams because these were the subject of a police investigation. The inquiry team has submitted its report to the Crown Office, but was asked recently for further reports.
The latest scandal to tarnish the FCB centres on £321,336 missing from the accounts of FCB and FCB Services.
The companies liquidator, Colin Hastings, has taken the unusual step of sending his report to the Crown Office. In his report, Mr Hastings doubts the existence of an army of casual workers supposedly employed by the community businesses who were allegedly paid £321,336. The money was paid to this division of workers known as Division Three over 14 months. The liquidator states in his report he can find "no evidence" that the cash was paid to these employees nor is there any trace of National Insurance or income tax paid on their wages.
Labour sources said they were aware of former FCB employees who were unable to claim unemployment benefit when they were made redundant because the Department of Social Security and the Inland Revenue could not trace them.
The liquidator's report continues: "Division Three would appear to be the main source of draining cash from the companies illegally." The companies' clerk, according to the report, didn't process the wages for the Division Three workers in the same way as other staff. The report says the amount of money the companies should have expected to make in profits was "almost equal" to the total paid to casual staff, which the liquidator describes as "more than pure coincidence ...
"No employee from Division Three approached the liquidator to make a claim in respect of their loss of employment, which is a most unusual situation.
"This, together with the facts outlined earlier, begs the question did these employees actually exist at all and is Division Three merely a smokescreen for cash to be withdrawn from the companies?"
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