“Bram Peper was a decent and honest man, who pushed himself to the limit in the service of his country.” For example, in 2010, retired general practitioner Henk van Osch concluded his biography of the former mayor of Rotterdam and former minister. Peper (Haarlem, 1940) passed away this Saturday at the age of 82.
Decent and honest were not the first words that many citizens came to mind in March 2000. In that month, Peper resigned as Minister of the Interior in the second Kok cabinet because of excessive declaration behavior as mayor of Rotterdam. Does his biographer’s positive judgment refer to the mayor who made private trips at city expense? The man who barked at the city hall on the Coolsingel who was inferior in rank in front of everyone present?
Prediction is difficult, especially when it comes to the past, historian Jan Romein once said. Peper’s Werdegang is a good example of this. His image underwent the necessary changes. From a warm bath (in the eighties) as an idiosyncratic intellectual with a good sense of themes such as urban renewal, via freezing cold after the outbreak of the so-called receipt affair, to at least lukewarm when it turned out that the worst accusations about unjust declaration behavior turned out to be wrong. Pepper, though rehabilitated, was left as a fragile human being. “I’m not a jerk, rather a softie,” he said of his own condition, which has been increasingly plagued by aches and pains in recent years.
The receipt affair developed into a touchstone in the assessment of this prominent director and intellectual, perhaps incorrectly. When making the final judgment on Peper, the historian of the future cannot ignore the question of what contribution Peper made in the run-up to the Fortuyn revolt in Rotterdam. This resulted in a historic defeat for Peper’s beloved social democracy in 2002, only a harbinger of what would happen two months later at the national level in the elections to the House of Representatives. Although popular in the city for a long time, the sometimes arrogant Peper gradually lost touch with what was once the traditional constituency of social democracy. Fortuyn and other politicians ran off with parts of that electorate.
Bicycle maker
Abraham Peper was born in the war year 1940 as the son of a bicycle repairman, later a metal worker. Father Peper was a communist and was in the resistance, in the same cell in which Hannie Schaft was active. Son Peper attended the HBS-B and played football in his spare time in the first division at RCH in Heemstede – he was selected a few times for the national amateur team. “I was definitely a forward player,” said Peper later. “Then you are by definition talking about inquisitive, talented, and headstrong men. As a center forward you have to attack, see how you get through.” A comparison with Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, the later striker of Ajax, seemed appropriate to him.
However, Peper missed out on a great career in football and went to study social sciences, first at the University of Amsterdam, then at the University of Oslo. In 1972 he obtained his doctorate with a widely read attack (his dissertation went through three editions) on welfare work. He judged that he was not very goal-oriented and result-oriented. And opaque. NRC praised the book as a frontal attack on the “calcified accountability structure” within the jumble of institutions and organizations.
Peper’s background and pursuit of social democratization brought him to the PvdA. He sympathized with the New Left, the influential renewal movement in the party – but he was not part of the hard core. Peper had his own thinking club, together with prominent party figures such as Jan Pronk: the Steenwijkgroep. There he turned out to be an ardent critic of the numerous consultation and advisory structures in the Netherlands. They made the administration sticky, concealed responsibilities and were dominated too much by one political movement, Christian Democracy. Peper thus became a ‘purple’ thinker avant la lettre: the combination of PvdA, VVD and D66 would chase the Christian Democrats out of the government castle more than twenty years later (1994).
Peper also helped formulate the program of social renewal, which gave the major cities more elbow room during the third Lubbers cabinet. The Urban Policy even became an official portfolio in the second purple cabinet. “I make the arrogant comment that I saw things that others did not,” said Peper in January 2016 during a tram ride with journalist Ferry de Groot.
After all, the mayor is a kind of ‘administrative fringe youngster’, Peper sighed
Professor for seven years
Scientifically, Peper looked pale in comparison to great people in his field, such as the sociologist Jacques van Doorn with whom he had been an assistant. Despite seven years of professorship at Erasmus University, Peper never really made a career in science. Helped by his political contacts in party and city, he transferred in 1982 to the mayor’s chamber on the Coolsingel. Fellow party member and mayor André van der Louw became minister in the second Van Agt cabinet that year.
Peper’s first years as mayor coincided with a definitive farewell to Rotterdam as the city battered by war and bombing. The ebbing of the severe economic crisis became visible in the skyline of Rotterdam. The skyscrapers were advancing. South gained new dynamics with numerous construction projects. The former red light district Katen-drecht became hip.
Was this thanks to Pepper? Non-party members, such as fellow townsman and CDA ideologist Anton Zijderveld praised him for his vision. He himself was less enthusiastic. He felt that he had too little room for decision-making, and that he should leave too much initiative to strong aldermen such as Joop Linthorst and Pim Vermeulen, and the power duo of ‘the two Hansen’ (Simons and Kombrink). After all, the mayor is a kind of ‘administrative fringe youngster’, he sighed.
Peper had to rely mainly on cleverness, charm and contacts. For example, he had left a model of the new Erasmus Bridge to be built in the office of the then minister Hanja Maij-Weggen (Transport and Water Management, CDA). Impressed, Maij-Weggen added tens of millions to the gap in the budget for the construction of the bridge.
Peper also used his wanderlust and personal charm to promote the interests of the port city all over the world. With regular VVD politician Neelie Kroes by his side. This ‘purple’, Rotterdam wedding became a feast for the media.
Pepper’s quirkiness also had its charm. Peper was appreciated in the writing world. His correspondence with Gerard Reve about social democracy became legendary. For example, Reve ‘comrade Peper’ pointed out the widespread misconception in social democracy that battle cries should have content. No, Reve wrote, the more meaningless the better. “Franco won the civil war because his soldiers climbed out of the trenches with the slogan: For God and for Spain. And not with the cry: Ten percent wage increase.”
The city loved Pepper less than the writers. The image arose of the arrogant governor who traveled the world, but forgot his own people. “I was not known as a friend of the people, but I did visit everywhere,” he said later. Peper maintained a difficult relationship with prominent, ‘ordinary’ Rotterdammers such as Annie Verdoold – who chased French drug tourists away from Spangen – and Reverend Hans Visser of the Pauluskerk.
Declarations
On October 28, 1999 it took General Newspaper big with the news that Bram Peper “has misused public money and goods on a large scale in the sixteen years that he was mayor of Rotterdam”. A number of Peper’s ex-employees were cited as the source, the majority of whom wished to remain anonymous. Peper was now in The Hague, as minister.
The reporting was a late settlement of Rotterdam residents at the town hall with their arrogant mayor, is the consensus now. Not that nothing was wrong. Even after most of the dust had settled and audits reduced the enormous accusations to small proportions, thousands of guilders in declarations remained irresponsible. The boom that the affair took was partly fueled by the vitriol that had flowed through the corridors during Peper’s mayorship.
Also read this article from the NRC archive: Bram Peper’s maneuvers
It was in this climate that a good Rotterdam acquaintance of Peper from the distant past started to create a furore. Pim Fortuyn and Bram Peper were both sociologists and appreciated each other’s sharp reflections. That changed when Fortuyn saw a job in the municipal administration pass him by, writes biographer Van Osch. Pepper was blamed.
In a column from November 1999 (a month after the AD article) by Elsevier was refused and that Fortuyn promptly put on the internet, he opened the attack on the Peper-Kroes couple. “These nonvaleurs, who as policymakers certainly have something to offer but as people nothing at all, have been terrorizing city and country for years now.” And: “The couple loved to be humiliated by high-ranking officials of their subordinates.”
Augiasstal
At the end of 2001 Fortuyn joined the Liveable Rotterdam party. One of the spearheads: mucking out the augias stable of the Rotterdam town hall with its inward-looking administrative culture, great distance from the street, and PvdA nepotism. In March 2002, the party took a massive victory and became the largest party in the council with nearly 35 percent of the vote.
In the years after the Fortuyn revolt, the city of Rotterdam gradually wanted to draw a line under the painful past with Peper. In 2008, a portrait of the former mayor was even unveiled at the town hall. A photo of the event appears on the front cover of Peper’s biography.
Also read the discussion in NRC of the biography of Henk van Osch
Ronald Sørensen, founder of Liveable Rotterdam and former PvdA member, wrote a column on that occasion. In it he described how he once scolded Pepper in a PvdA meeting because the mayor had lectured a traffic cop who had caught him committing an offence. “I was not heard. The mayor is above the parties, it was said. This was one of the drops that made my PvdA bucket overflow. (…) The principles of equality, which social democracy should stand for, were in practice trampled underfoot by its representative and the clique surrounding him. (…) Pim is no longer there to show his personal aversion. I do, and that’s why I won’t be there when that portrait is revealed.”