Highland councillor calls for elections poster ban
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
A HIGHLAND councillor is launching a campaign to ban election posters and stickers on lamp posts.
Carolyn Caddick from Inverness claims she suffered abuse mainly from angry men who "lost the plot" while she was putting up posters for Danny Alexander, the area’s former Liberal Democrat MP.
The councillor, who has thrown her hat in the ring for the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2016, believes posters inflamed tensions in the run-up to the general election.
She plans to put forward a Notice of Motion to Highland Council calling for election posters to be banned from council property.
The Liberal Democrat councillor for Inverness South spent the weekend taking the posters down and said the reception from some members of the public was "aggressive and unpleasant".
"We suffered a great deal of abuse," she said.
"The language was pretty choice and it was, generally speaking, men, of a whole variety of ages, from young to middle-aged, who were saying things like ‘I’m glad you lost’ and ‘you’re just traitors anyway’.
"They’ve just lost the plot when it comes to democracy and to people having different views. It was the same during the referendum."
SNP Black Isle councillor Craig Fraser said he could sympathise with Cllr Caddick’s experiences because the same things happened to him when he was putting up posters and handing out leaflets for the SNP in 2001.
"You couldn’t give our leaflets away at that time and now everything has changed," he said.
"I had dogs set on me, I was sworn at, spat at, so I know where Councillor Caddick is coming from. I think we do need to have a sensible discussion about posters. I think there might be some middle ground here and I think a review of the current policy would not be unreasonable."
Last December, a similar motion calling for a total ban on posters on council property was rejected by the council.
At the time, Councillor Caddick voted against the motion, which was put forward by Black Isle Independent councillor Isobel McCallum.
But Councillor Caddick regrets her decision.
She said: "I couldn’t vote with Councillor McCallum at the time because I just felt the posters were good for democracy and I thought things would go back to the way they were pre-referendum, but they haven’t and personally I think the posters just inflame the situation. They don’t help people to chose how to vote."
When the council has considered any such motion the subject matter or topic cannot be raised again by Notice of Motion within the following six months.
Councillor Caddick will put forward her motion after summer recess.
