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Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2011

17 Mar 2011 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Clydebank Blitz 70th Anniversary

McNulty, Des Lab Clydebank and Milngavie Watch on SPTV

I thank Margaret Curran very much for her intervention. I think that other Glasgow members are well aware that the Luftwaffe lightened its load as it escaped home and was under orders to wait until it was over a heavily populated area before it dropped its spare bombs, which destroyed Glasgow tenements in various places, from the west end of the city to the east. It was not just Clydebank that was affected. However, Clydebank was the target, and Clydebank went up in flames, not just from the bombing but from the incendiary devices that lit up the town so that the bombs could subsequently fall. As well as the death and destruction that the bombs caused, there were horrendous fires, in Singer’s wood yard for example.

For many people in Clydebank, the memory of the blitz and the evacuations and what happened to them and their relatives is present. At the 70th anniversary service in Kilbowie St Andrew’s church at the weekend, I talked to people who, as young children, experienced being bombed or their relatives being injured and, in a couple of cases, being killed in the bombing. This is probably the last big anniversary at which we will have people alive who lived through the blitz, so it is important that their memories and records are not lost.

I pay tribute to West Dunbartonshire Council, which has done a terrific job over the years, particularly on the 60th and 70th anniversaries, to ensure that appropriate and dignified ceremonies have been held to commemorate what happened in the blitz and, to some extent, to ensure that the events were not just for Clydebank but for Scotland.

The moderator of the Church of Scotland gave the sermon at the service. His sermon was excellent. He said that he had spoken to a person in Edinburgh who had lived in Clydebank at the time of the blitz and had helped to rescue people. That person had met a man who had lost his young daughter and had said to him, “I hope we’re not going to do this to other people’s weans.”

The sense in Clydebank of a lack of rancour towards the German people, as well as solidarity with the Polish people who were in Clydebank at the time and helped not just to minimise the effect of the bombing on naval targets but to rescue people from houses, has continued. At the service, I sat next to the German consul and behind the Polish consul, and there were representatives from the Polish navy in the audience. After the ceremony we went to the monument that is a memorial to the crew of the ship, Piorun, which was berthed in Clydebank at the time. The sailors helped greatly to deal with the consequences of the bombing.

The survival of Clydebank after the blitz is a story of a long, slow process of regeneration. Clydebank was picked as a target because it was such an industrial centre. Singer’s was there, the shipyards were there and engineering factories were there. It was an important centre of munitions production for the war effort. That is why it was a target. The destruction of factories and workplaces had a profound and long-term effect on the town’s economy and the destruction of the houses had a profound effect on its social fabric.

It probably took 20 years for Clydebank to recover and to be physically rebuilt, and after that it was affected by the Thatcher recession of the 1980s. Probably only in the past 10 years has Clydebank been in a position to begin to recover from the economic destruction that it has suffered. That is why Clydebank wants not only to remember what happened in the blitz but to look forward to a positive future. Scotland should help Clydebank to achieve that.

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