First, I thank the many members who signed the motion. Once again, a motion about showmen has gained support from members within a day. As an organisation, the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is more than 130 years old, and the guild has a proud history. I welcome to the Scottish Parliament the following chairs and vice-chairs from all the sections in Great Britain. In the gallery today are: President Philip Paris and the president’s wife, Haley Paris; the senior vice-president, John Thurston; the junior vice-president, Keith Carroll; the sergeant at arms, Gordon Cook; past president John Culine; John Flack from the London section; William Percival from the Notts and Derby section; Tommy Charles from the western section; Arthur Newsome from the northern section; Albert Hill from the Lancashire section; Alex James Colquhoun of the Scottish section; and Gary Leach of the Yorkshire section.
The guild was founded in Salford in 1889 as the United Kingdom Van Dwellers Protection Association.
That was a key moment in the recognition of showmen having a lifestyle that is a culture rather than an occupation. Its formation was a key moment in the recognition of showmen as a cultural group, protecting the interests of its members, the travelling showmen who gained their livelihoods by attending funfairs.
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I am the convener of the cross-party group on the Scottish Showmen’s Guild.
To explain how I gained such a cherished position I have to take us back to when this Parliament was first founded and to when I was first elected in 2011. In the early days of the Parliament, the Scottish section of the guild had many meetings with Scottish Government ministers and officials on many issues that showpeople faced. Most of those meetings were on public entertainment licence conditions, which were introduced in the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. That act was not widely used at first in Scotland but, as time went on, it became a bone of contention, which many showmen faced when they tried to apply for licences for funfairs in towns and villages.
In discussions with previous ministers it was felt that a cross-party group for showmen should be set up. Over the first years of the Parliament, Philip Paris, who was the vice-chair of the Scottish section at that time, from 1994 till 2001, and then the chairman of the section from 2001 to 2011, along with others, tried without success to establish a cross-party group in the Parliament. That was a fact that had to be addressed.
In 2011, that desire became a reality due to the work and the determination of Philip Paris who, along with others, approached my friend and colleague Christina McKelvie MSP to take forward the setting up of a cross-party group for showmen. Christina, in her usual way, knew what had to be done to make that happen and approached me as a new member to take that forward as I had previous council experience and had a major theme park in my constituency. I pay tribute to her drive and commitment to see the cross-party group set up.
I well remember the day that Christina introduced me to Philip Paris and his committee, and I was struck by his passion and commitment to the ideals of showmen. The information that he gave me helped in our desire to resolve showmen’s issues.
It has been a pleasure to have worked with Philip Paris and the other Scottish Showmen’s Guild chairmen over the years: George Henry Codona, who is in the public gallery; Alex James Colquhoun; and Billy Hammond. We made a commitment to establish a cross-party group and I now pay tribute to the help that the group has been given by the following people as both deputy conveners and members over the last nine years: Jackson Carlaw, Mary Fee, Andy Wightman, David Torrance, John Mason, Annabelle Ewing, Clare Adamson, Clare Haughey, Christina McKelvie, Maureen Watt, Maurice Corry, Anne McTaggart, Chic Brodie, Claire Baker, Jamie McGrigor, Siobhan McMahon, Ivan McKee and, of course, Annie Wells.
The help and support that each and every past and present MSP has given the cross-party group is appreciated by showmen and myself.
Over the past nine years, the CPG has discussed many issues with Government officials, ministers and other agencies. Over the past years we have held other various meetings with cabinet secretaries and ministers and I wish to thank in particular Michael Matheson, Annabelle Ewing and Ash Denham for their advice, support and help in getting the showmen’s case taken forward in the Parliament.
I thank the Minister for Community Safety, Ash Denham, for taking my breath away when she told me that the Government would be neutral on my proposing my members’ bill to right the wrong with regard to funfair licensing. We have seen several successes, which include showmen being, for the first time, able to record their ethnic background as showmen and show-women in the proposed 2021 census. I wish to record my personal thanks to the census team at National Records of Scotland for all their help in ensuring that showpeople are finally recognised. That will open up other records to showpeople.
That process was in fact started when the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell, and later Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, first met the education liaison officer for the Showmen’s Guild, Christine Stirling and the Deputy First Minister gave her his support in processing help for showmen’s children’s needs to be recognised in local schools.
In the recently passed Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, the Government acceded to showmen’s requests to be exempt from low-emission zones. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity, Michael Matheson, for listening to my submission on behalf of the Scottish Showmen’s Guild and I thank Alex James Colquhoun and Philip Paris for raising the issue in our CPG.
My member’s bill is presently being drafted to resolve the 38-year wrong regarding civic government licensing. In fact, my proposed bill has had the second highest level of support of MSPs in the Parliament’s history; hopefully it will pass all stages when it is finally debated in Parliament in the coming months—I am sure that it will. The help that this Government has given me and showmen in the past nine years has been tremendous and I thank each and every member of this Government for that.
Tonight, I want to place on record the achievements of Philip Paris, the president of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain. As I have said, Philip has been a member of the Showmen’s Guild since he was 18 and was first elected to the committee in 1984. He was vice-chairman from 1994 until 2001 and the Scottish chairman from 2001 until 2011.
Philip can trace his family links back to Napoli in Italy. His ancestors were ice-cream merchants who worked as porters on the North Eastern Railway. Some were lion tamers and horse dealers, and his family members fought with distinction in the first world war.
He was elected as junior vice-president of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain in 2013, then elected as senior vice-president and chair of safety for the guild in 2016. In 2019, Philip was elected as the national president of the guild. Philip is one of only three presidents from Scotland in the guild’s 130-year history, the others being the late T E Brownie, who was president from 1938 to 1941, and the late Jack Cullis, who was president from 1956 to 1958.
Philip continues to operate a ride in various fairgrounds in Scotland. Only last week, I met him and his wife at the Irn-Bru funfair in the Scottish Event Campus, where he was operating his teacup ride. The funfair celebrated its 100th anniversary in Glasgow this year, and I thank the staff of the SEC for inviting my wife—who is also in the gallery—to the opening of the funfair prior to Christmas.
Over the years, I have gotten to know that Philip Paris has all the qualities of an excellent showman. He cares about his heritage and what needs to be done to enrich showpeople’s quality of life, and he is not short in telling us what needs to be done. When Philip talks, we listen. I personally pay tribute to his commitment to showpeople throughout Great Britain and to the fact that he is the third Scot in the history of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain to be its president.
Later on tonight, the guild is holding a reception in the garden lobby, which I am very pleased to have sponsored. I take the opportunity again to invite each and every member here to attend and pay tribute to the work done in every part of Great Britain by showmen—and, of course, show-women—and to pay tribute to and celebrate the guild’s new president, Philip Paris. [Interruption.]