Meeting of the Parliament 24 February 2026 [Draft]
I start by thanking Marie McNair for bringing the debate to the chamber. Like others, I pay tribute to the resilience of the people of Clydebank. They paid a heavy price, with direct strikes by the German Luftwaffe in one of the most destructive bombing raids of the second world war almost 85 years ago.
As we have heard, the raid started on Thursday 13 March 1941, just after 9 pm, when 236 German bombers arrived above Clydeside. Towns along the River Clyde were targeted because of their shipyards and factories, which were the engines of Scotland’s war effort. Even Dumbarton was not spared, as a plane got lost and mistook the town for Clydebank, with the result that high-explosive devices and parachute mines destroyed more than 100 homes and claimed 17 lives in the town. As Jamie Hepburn rightly noted, misdirection measures were subsequently implemented, with starfish bunkers presenting a series of decoy fires that directed German bombers away from Dumbarton in further raids.
However, in Clydebank, the devastation was significantly worse. As Marie McNair rightly said, 528 people lost their lives that night, a further 617 were seriously injured and thousands more were hurt, cut or traumatised by the blast. Some 12,000 dwellings were destroyed. Every community, from Bowling and Old Kilpatrick through Dalmuir, Radnor Park, Parkhall, Mountblow, Whitecrook and Duntocher to Yoker, was razed to the ground. The next day, almost 40,000 people started the great evacuation out of the area. Some ended up walking to Glasgow, others to Kirkintilloch. The lucky ones came to Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven.
I came across a letter from Thomas Kearns, a riveter who fled his home the day after the raid with his family and moved to Main Street, Alexandria. He wrote it to his pal Patrick Diamond. Unfortunately, Patrick never received it, because the censor would not let it through, such was the detail it contained. I will share some of it with the chamber. The letter talked about
“a ‘Murderous Attack’ on the poor defenceless women and children in their homes, terrorising and sending to eternity the peaceful and industrious citizens of the industrious town of Clydebank.”
Thomas continued:
“We were just sitting at the fire after the children got to bed, the gunfire started, this made us a bit panicky naturally, a hurried dressing of the children and rush down to the close level with our neighbours and there we remained for 9½ hours, with the bombs and land-mines dropping from the moon-light heavens.
They seemed never to cease … The buildings began to rock with the heavy high explosives, windows began to blow in, doors and ceilings, slates and plaster with mixtures of soot and God knows what.
The building was on fire at the bridge end, and to keep Goering’s Bombers with a good target Singer’s enormous piles of wood got set to a raging furnace which could be seen for miles and high. They peppered away, never a lull in all this time.”
Time prevents me from sharing more, but I commend the letter to members.
Within weeks of that devastation, production resumed along the Clyde. Thomas Kearns, who wrote that letter, was among those who had returned to work. The people along the Clyde were not intimidated, and the same spirit endures today. The threats that we face today may be different, but they are present and evolving. We need to make sure that the lessons of the second world war are never forgotten.
A previous generation rebuilt the towns along the Clyde from the ashes. Today, as we remember those who lost their lives, their homes and their families in the blitz, let us honour them by paying tribute to their determination to rebuild and to defend their nation.