Austin Donohue was the leader of the Newcastle upon Tyne City Council during the early 1960s. He was a visionary who sought to turn Newcastle into a world-class, European-style city through the demolition of the city's slums and their replacement with high-rise council estates, but he did so through corrupt means, accepting bribes from the businessman John Edwards to approve the construction of the low-quality high-rises. Donohue and Edwards were both arrested on corruption charges in 1974.
Biography[]
Austin in 1964
Austin Donohue was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom to a family of working-class Irish Catholics. He became involved in the Labour Party and, by 1964, had become Leader of the Newcastle City Council. In 1964, shortly before the general election, he proposed large architectural reforms in northern England; he claimed that tenement rowhouses were a thing of the past, and stressed the need for highrise council flats, similar to the highrise housing projects in the United States. Donohue sought to create a forum for "the visionary ideas of the best young architects, the risk-taking capital of the boldest businessman, the man in the streets...and our political abilities to get things done," and pioneer "a modern Labour Party with new ideas," and the Council supported his plan to build a high-rise council flat on Willow Lane after Donohue's business partner John Edwards bribed the housing committee chair Hugh Connors. After the new Prime Minister Harold Wilson decided not to give Donohue a cabinet post, Donohue resigned as council chair in order to embark on his project to rebuild the North unfettered, hiring Labour aide Nicky Hutchinson as his assistant. In 1966, Hutchinson decided to quit his job with Donohue after discovering Donohue and Edwards' corrupt relationship, and he took incriminating evidence with him. Donohue went on to become President of the Northern Television Franchise by 1967, but he came under increasing scrutiny due to his corrupt methods, and his company failed due to its overtly political nature. Edwards abandoned his friendship with Donohue in favor of Conservative Party MP Claude Seabrook, but, in 1974, both of the original partners in crime were arrested for corruption. The council flats, which were intentionally of poor quality, were demolished in 1979.