GLASGOW'S beleaguered Lord Provost Pat Lally received support from an unexpected source last night when actor and producer David Hayman compared his plight with that of the victims of McCarthyism in the United States earlier this century.
Mr Hayman, who was receiving a Lord Provost's Award for services to the arts, claimed the Lord Provost had not had a fair hearing in terms of the allegations made against him by the Labour Party.
Earlier yesterday, Lord Provost Lally had expressed his ''astonishment'' at a Labour Party decision not to give any reason or explanation for an 18-month suspension imposed on him after a recent disciplinary hearing.
Receiving the award at a ceremony in the City Chambers last night, Mr Hayman stated: ''I was brought up to believe that the immutable truth of any kind of compassionate justice was you were offered the dignity of innocence before being found guilty.
''I think over the last few months, Pat Lally has not been afforded that dignity at all and the party and the media have hung, drawn, and quartered him without much evidence. I just think that is shameful.''
Mr Hayman said he was not in a position to judge whether or not Pat Lally was guilty of breaking Labour Party rules but he felt the Lord Provost was being subjected to the same kind of pillorying of radicals that were hunted down in the US by the infamous Senator McCarthy.
Mr Hayman is perhaps best known for playing the part of Jimmy Boyle in the 1980s hit TV drama A Sense of Freedom and is now a leading film maker as well as stage actor and director.
The Herald yesterday revealed that evidence led against the Lord Provost before the party's national constitutional committee last month was, at best, extremely thin.
The decision to remove the Labour whip for 18 months and ban him from holding party office for a similar period was the culmination of an 11-month investigation into a wide range of issues, sparked by the so-called ''votes for trips'' allegations made by the former Labour group leader, Councillor Robert Gould.
Mr Lally was found to have breached Labour Party rule 2A8, this being a sustained course of conduct comprising abdication of individual and collective responsibility entrusted to him in his role as a public representative of the party which has been prejudicial to the reputation and operational effectiveness of the party.
It is understood this involved the undermining of Mr Gould, who will himself face an NCC hearing in the next few weeks, charged, ironically, with failing to provide adequate leadership to the strife-torn Labour group.
Last week, Mr Lally sought clarification of how the NCC found he had broken rule 2A8.
NCC secretary Eric Wilson replied: ''It has always been the position of the NCC that no reason or explanation is given regarding their decisions.''
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