To meet Bentley McGowan you might at first have thought that the only odd thing about him was his extraordinary Christian name, though few knew it - he was called Benny throughout his too-short
life. His father, a well-off bookmaker, sorry, a turf accountant, called Corrie McGowan, (''Don't be Sorry; Bet with
Corrie'') had given Benny his exotic name because he had just bought a magnificent motor car on the proceeds of his income.
To understand Benny the fighter for working people's rights, you have to understand his Christian name to begin with. Benny was brought up in a background that was both reasonably affluent and very working class, the son of a bright bookie who lived in the very tenements of Govan where his clients lived, too.
Benny, despite his later academic achievements, was deeply rooted in the working class. Benny left St Gerards in Govan when he was 15 and ended up working in the shipyards for some years, including UCS. During this time, he began to attend night classes studying for various highers before entering Strathclyde University in 1972. After graduation, he worked in the economics departments of both Strathclyde and what is now Caledonian University. He worked for a time with the trade union studies unit and hundreds of union officials were educated under his skilled tutelage.
Benny lived modestly in a large and rather well-set flat in Pollokshields for most of his life, married to Alice, a district nurse, and with daughter, Claire.
He walked his dog every morning in Queen's Park, the one I shared with him. When Claire was a toddler, I often met him and her in my own morning walk through the park. Benny was telling the wee girl the names of all the trees; he knew the Latin nomenclature for them, too.
But this domestic - and Benny was very domestic - portrait is not enough, for Benny McGowan in his quiet way was a very influential economist indeed. More than 20 years ago, he had presaged what has become perhaps the most important factor in the British economy: pensions. He became prominent in this, what seemed at the time an obscure field of economics. He divined that the massive influence of pension funds would become a major feature of financial, and of course social, investment. In this he was well before his time.
At first I thought him a bit off the wall. Pensions indeed! I was wrong and a lot of us were, because Benny McGowan had seen that the massive power of the financial involvement of pension funds were crucial to the economy of Britain.
By the 1980s, Benny was the expert in this field, advising every major trade union, including his own, the Educational Institute of Scotland, as well as being an adviser to the Labour Party and the Scottish Parliament. There was an occasion when, to the consternation of Benny's bosses at the Central College of Glasgow, where Benny worked for more than two decades, Donald Dewar, then secretary of state for Scotland, turned up at his workplace because he needed essential information for the debate that afternoon. The only person who knew
this information was Benny McGowan.
All the above makes him sound boring, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although Benny was a quiet man - and he loved the movie of that name, watching it
assiduously every Christmas Eve - he was every bit as
exotic in his very quiet way, as his colourful father who had been, in truth, a street bookie back in the days when betting was illegal.
If Benny McGowan was quiet and modest, and he was, he was also a senior player in his field. His modesty belied his abilities too: he was awesome in his knowledge of sport, especially in boxing, and in football. He was a Celtic supporter. Other interests included his allotment. ''You can take the boy out of Ireland but you cannot take Ireland out of '', he used to say.
I knew Benny for 30 years and he was something of a fixture in the early evening in Heraghty's Bar, where he would quietly have a modest couple of pints, almost always in the company of his wife Alice. You never saw a more loving couple. A measure of the respect for him could be seen at his funeral, with an enormous crowd of those who had known him, worked with him, been taught by him and had learned from him. At the recent Heraghty's Burns Supper, there was one toast made above them all. It was to Benny McGowan.
Bentley ''Benny'' McGowan, economist and lecturer; born March 31, 1945, died January 14, 2004.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article