Dan Brown - An Honest Man, A Friend To Many
I first met Dan Brown in the early 1990s when were on opposite sides of the negotiating table at COSLA, the umbrella body representing Scotland’s local councils.
Dan was the spokesperson for the Employers’ Side - the Employers’ Side Joint Secretary - and I had the equivalent job for the joint trade unions, via my role Unison’s Head of Local Government and chief negotiator in Scotland.
We often had to resolve difficult, sometimes intractable, problems that put us at loggerheads with each other, but our discussions and negotiations were always professional, respectful and friendly - never angry, personal or acrimonious.
Everyone respected Dan - he was a likeable down-to-earth guy, someone you could trust, a man of his word who played things straight and had a great sense of humour - including the ability to laugh at himself.
When I left Unison Dan told me he would greatly miss working with me, but a few years later we were thrown together again when, unbeknown to each other, we found ourselves appointed to a public body set up to advise Scottish Ministers in 2005/06 - the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee, or SLARC for short.
SLARC was charged with the task of developing a new salary structure for elected councillors who back in those days were paid via a cumbersome system of attendance allowances.
Two previous attempts to do this had failed miserably because the predecessors to SLARC were stuffed with councillors and political party nominees who had a vested interest in the outcome.
Whereas Dan and myself, and the others appointed to SLARC in 2005/06 (Ian, Marlene, Kate, Jack, Declan and Liz), had no political affiliations or party loyalties - we were all independent minded individuals from very different backgrounds, and we just got on with the job without fear or favour.
Those were good times - SLARC met regularly, normally in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Dan and I usually went for lunch afterwards followed by a few drinks, sometimes quite a few drinks, and we became very firm friends.
Dan and his wife Irene came over to Spain on the Costa Brava where we have a house. We also travelled together to Madrid where we squeezed in visits to Toledo, the spiritual home of the Spanish Inquisition, and Segovia with its famous Roman aqueduct
When the days of SLARC came to an end Dan and I continued to meet up regularly to solve the problems of the world when he would talk very fondly about growing up in Leith, of his Dad, of his son Iain and daughter Louise, of whom he was very proud, and of his two grandchildren, Laird and Lara.
My only regret is that I never got to go to Easter Road with Dan to watch his beloved Hibernian Football Club.
When I last saw him in hospital I told Dan he had to get back on his feet as I was planning to get us hospitality tickets for Easter Road when the new football season got underway - but sadly we ran out of time.
My favourite memory of Dan goes back to the mid-1990s when Dan rose to greater heights as COSLA’s Head of Organisational Development because he was a principled and honest person.
A young woman member of staff at COSLA contacted me (she was a Unison member) with a complaint of bullying and harassment against two very senior male officials at COSLA - more senior, more powerful men than Dan.
Attempts to resolve the issue informally broke down and so a formal complaint was made to the elected councillors who oversaw the running of COSLA - Rosemary McKenna was COSLA President at the time and Rosemary went on to become an MP.
The complaint was taken very seriously and resulted in a swift independent inquiry into the allegations, in a matter of days, which was conducted at pace by Neil McIntosh, the Chief Executive of the giant Strathclyde Regional Council.
Neil was very widely respected in Scottish local government - he had previously been Chief Executive of Dumfries & Galloway Council at the time of the Lockerbie Disaster, before being recruited to Strathclyde, and going on on to become Sir Neil McIntosh.
The McIntosh inquiry interviewed all the key people involved in the complaint - including myself, the woman who made the original aallegations and Dan Brown.
Dan resisted the temptation to close ranks with his more senior male colleagues - instead he spoke up and told the truth and what he knew about the treatment of female staff at COSLA.
The end result was that the two alleged bullies were invited to resign from their positions at COSLA, once Neil McIntosh shared his report, and both did so soon afterwards.
But it took real courage to stand up and be counted, to do the right thing rather than the easy thing.
Dan Brown was that kind of man - he brought a little sunshine into my life and I was proud to have him as my friend.
Mark Irvine
24 July 2025
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