Meeting of the Parliament 24 February 2026 [Draft]
I am grateful to Marie McNair for lodging her motion, which gives us the opportunity to mark the 85th anniversary of the Clydebank blitz—two nights that left an indelible mark not only on Clydebank and Clydeside, but on all of Scotland.
I grew up in Glasgow, a city that, through gaps in tenements that are now largely filled but that were there when I was a child, bore the scars of wartime bombing. However, I was driven to speak in the debate today mainly in memory of my grandparents’ generation and, in particular, in memory of what my grandmother told me of her experience of home-front living in Dumbarton, not too far down the river from Clydebank.
We know that the river was a vital artery of the war effort, which made its communities a target. I see that Jackie Baillie is due to speak, and she will probably speak more about this, but we know that Dumbarton was targeted on the same night as the Clydebank blitz. Thankfully, it suffered nowhere near the same devastation as Clydebank. Of course, a few months later, there was another bombing raid on Dumbarton, but, because of the experience of the previous raid, various mitigations had been put in place, including the misdirection measures and decoy targets that were installed on Lang Craigs moor, so the town was spared a similar fate. Indeed, I recall my grandmother telling me that her father, who was an inspector at the Garshake waterworks and was required to check on those waterworks the next day, said that, if those decoy measures had not been put in place, Dumbarton would definitely have suffered the same fate as Clydebank.
Marie McNair has laid bare the horrors of the Clydebank blitz. In two nights, more than 400 Luftwaffe bombers dropped more than 1,000 bombs, and 528 people were killed and 617 seriously injured. In the retelling of the history of war, there is often a tendency to use numbers like that, but they are not just abstract figures. Among the dead and injured were mothers, fathers, children, sons and daughters, workers and neighbours.
As has already been said, of the roughly 12,000 houses in Clydebank, only a handful—seven—escaped any form of damage, which is quite a staggering thing to imagine, and more than 4,000 were completely destroyed. By the morning after the second raid, there were not only the dead and the injured, but tens of thousands of homeless people. Contemporary accounts describe families walking towards Glasgow, carrying what little they could salvage, with smoke still rising behind them.
We also know that the immediate aftermath brought scenes of extraordinary courage. We know that firefighters—many drafted in from surrounding areas—battled flames that lit up the night sky. Rescue workers and volunteers dug through rubble in search of survivors. Churches and halls became shelters. Neighbouring towns opened their doors. That is a salient reminder that, in the face of incomprehensible hardship, anger and sadness, solidarity prevailed.
The suffering did not conclude with the last bomb. Displacement, overcrowding and trauma persisted for years. The psychological toll was borne quietly by a generation. Despite that, Clydebank endured. It rebuilt its homes and its civic institutions. It sustained its proud industrial tradition and heritage. It did so because its people possessed a resilience forged in adversity and a determination that their community would not be defined solely by destruction.
As we mark and commemorate this 85th anniversary, we should pay tribute to those who lost their lives and to all those who were injured and displaced. We commend the bravery of those who saved others in those dark days and who laboured in the long years of rebuilding that followed. To remember is not merely to look back, but to honour sacrifice and reaffirm our commitment to peace, community and solidarity.
We remember Clydebank.