Festival spats, a crisis over the tattoo, high winds and fancy tartan

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jun 13, 2004 | by Vicky Allan

ACCORDING to the Edinburgh City Council website, the correct etiquette when greeting Lesley Hinds is to address her as Lord Provost, continuing to do so until she requests that you call her by name.

I meet her at the City Chambers. It is an imposing building, with a sweeping flower-lined staircase leading up to heavy wooden doors. A brass plate is sternly etched with the words Lord Provost; there is a whiff of old gentlemen's club and century-old testosterone. But it is just a few steps through to a big airy room where a group of women are sitting round a table chatting and drinking tea. I shake Hinds's hand and tell her: "I think I'm supposed to call you Lord Provost." She laughs. "Probably that is the protocol. I don't use it much. I use it with my kids. I say, 'Do you know who I am?'"

Meeting Hinds is a little like having an audience with the Queen - and in fact she is the Queen's representative in Scotland - only to find that actually she's just your bolshy next door neighbour. Bodily, she has the frame of a bull terrier, compact and square- jawed, with a muscularity that makes you wary that at any moment she might just bite your arm off. "I always imagine she's a bit of a snarler," one friend told me before the interview. But she doesn't seem prone to snapping. Rather, our time together is casual, rattled through with laughter, and eased along by Susan Hart, who vaguely describes herself as "communications assistant" and appears to be there as a softening line of defence. There is an air of casual good humour. Indeed it's almost a little too sisterly. When Hinds wanders off to have her photograph taken we discuss whether she should wear a jacket to cover up her chest. "Some people don't seem to think the Lord Provost should have breasts," says Hart.

It is just over a year since Labour councillor Hinds took up her position, making the 47-year-old the second female Lord Provost in Edinburgh's history, and it has not been an easy one. What can look outwardly like a Miss Worldish dream job, one four-year long ride of parties, presentations and meet-and-greets, has brought with it problem after problem. First there was a comment she made as chair of the Edinburgh International Festival board suggesting that the Festival needs to be more inclusive of the Edinburgh community, which became blown up by the press into a full-scale "criticism".

Does she regret her interjection? "I don't think anybody would disagree with what I said at all," she answers. "If you talked to [Festival director] Brian McMaster, he wouldn't. The Festival doubles the population. We need to just think about what everybody who lives in this city can get out of it as well."

Hinds believes many Edinburgh citizens are too intimidated to attend the Festival - and that the arts establishment isn't making an effort to reach them. "I've had people say to me, 'Theatres are there, you can just go to them. You buy your ticket and you go in.' That's all very well if you're a confident person, you've always done that, but actually going about doing that, not knowing what to wear, is everybody going to be dressed up, where am I going to sit, can be hard. I think art should be accessible for all."

Next there was the Hogmanay debacle, when the capital's annual party was cancelled due to strong winds battering the temporary staging at the ancient Ross bandstand, forcing Hinds to face a marathon of interviews and statements. It wasn't her decision to call the whole thing to a crushing halt, but she was there as a representative, the face of the city through all its problems, the focus for all disgruntled citizens. "I always say," she says, "if somebody had been killed by falling whatever from the Ross bandstand the first criticism would have been, 'Why was this not postponed?' I think we've learned from it. I think there'll be more contingencies and more 'what happens if the weather isn't very good?'"

More recently she has been at the centre of a controversy surrounding the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) invitation to the Tattoo this year. Hinds is chair of the Tattoo board, so does bear some direct responsibility for this. However, she points out, this was arranged long before her appointment - and was an invitation for both a group of dancers and the PLA. "When I knew it was a definite invite," she says, "I suppose I tried to put what my view was. I thought the invite would be controversial and I thought a lot of people would be unhappy with it. The PLA does, I suppose, give an image to a lot of people of repression. But on the other hand there are many people who think, well, the way to change China is by having a dialogue with the country."

Hinds is a fusion of dedicated Old Labour - she joined the Party in 1979 "because of Thatcher" - and old-fashioned respect for "history and tradition". She seems curiously tickled by the pomp and regalia of her seven-century old position, appearing to enjoy the hierarchical frisson that comes with her secondary role as Lord Lieutenant, the Queen's representative in Edinburgh. This means, after all, she's important. "If you're in a room," she explains, "you're the most high, you're the most important person if the Queen's not there. I always remember the first time I realised this. I was at an installation of the head of the army at the castle and it was a day after I'd become Lord Provost. It was pouring down with rain and I thought, 'What have I let myself in for?' And the guy who was going to install him said, 'Lord Provost would you like to stand forward as first citizen?' Jack McConnell was behind me. That was when I first thought, 'Ooh, this job's quite important.'"