Hansard

I thank Marie McNair for bringing the debate to the chamber.

People might ask why a member from Ayrshire who represents the South Scotland region would ask to speak in a debate about the Clydebank blitz. The truth is that my dad, Bill Mochan, is a Bankie. He has not lived in Clydebank for a long time, but he has always maintained his connection to the town and has spoken with pride, humour and love for Clydebank.

My nana and papa, Annie and Jimmy Mochan, and my Auntie Agnes all lived through the two nights of bombing. My nana and papa did not often speak about those evenings—there was nothing about the fear, the loss of life or the effect that the bombing must have had on them emotionally. Rather, they spoke occasionally about the loss of buildings or the loss felt by other families. On the other hand, Auntie Agnes did speak about the nights themselves—about the noise, the shelters and the devastation as they emerged from the bunkers.

I do not think that I fully understood the events until I was much older. I know now that the Clydebank blitz was one of the most destructive air raids in Scotland during the second world war and had lasting impacts on the town and its people. As others have said, the brutal attack occurred over two nights, on 13 and 14 March 1941. People were killed and infrastructure was damaged, and pretty much the whole population of Clydebank became homeless basically overnight. On reflection, I wonder why my elders did not describe it in that way to me. Perhaps, like so many working-class people throughout history, they accepted the things—often, brutal things—that happened to their communities.

I want to raise three points in my reflections on the Clydebank blitz. First, as my Uncle Jim reminded me last night, the Government covered up what was happening at the time. The media reports cited only a town in western Scotland, while official censorship suppressed casualty figures and imagery of the near-total destruction of the town’s housing. Photos were cropped and film crews were not permitted in. In this day and age, with immediate films, Instagram and all the social media that we now have, it seems unbelievable that such restrictions were able to be put in place.

My second point relates to the rebuilding of Clydebank after the war. The devastation happened in 1941, but I have a childhood memory of sitting in the back of a car—probably in about 1977, more than 30 years later—and asking about a little side building that had an old fireplace and wallpaper that seemed out of its time. My papa replied, “Yes, that came down in the blitz.” That was many years later, so I now think to myself that the Clydebank community, like so many working-class communities, was somewhat abandoned during the rebuilding in favour of perhaps more affluent and less industrial communities.

My final point is how similar that feeling is to the feeling in my community. I live in a working-class ex-mining area. It was not bombed in 1941, but it has definitely been abandoned at times by Governments. Just as the pit closures were an insult to the miners who contributed so much to Scotland’s culture and economy, deindustrialisation in the years after the war led to Clydebank experiencing generations of unemployment, a lack of investment by Governments and an accepted decline in services. Neither the miners nor the shipbuilders created those conditions; rather, their communities fell victim to the social and economic problems that we all know about and have observed. Governments had no contingency plans, provided no support and had no sympathy for communities as times changed and decisions were made that removed opportunities from people in those areas. Working-class communities continue to face those realities.

I pay tribute to the people of Clydebank. I pay tribute to those who lost their lives during the blitz and to the local people who immediately came to people’s aid in many different ways. I also pay tribute to the communities that went on, are resilient and continue to demand that Governments do better.