People and places from Brucehill which was one of the most deprived areas of Dumbarton in the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties – and unfortunately it is still listed as an area of deprivation.
By Bill Heaney
It was the early 1960s, an era of unemployment, poverty wages for long hours worked and poor housing.
The rent money was hard to come by for most Dumbarton families.
There was a lot of debt for new furniture for “lucky” families who had been allocated houses in the schemes, places like Castlehill, Brucehill, Bellsmyre and Westcliff.
It was the era of “curtains in the windaes nae sheet on the beds” and “fur coats and nae knickers”.
Dennystown and some of the children who lived there.
Local families were emerging slowly from the poverty and deprivation of places like Dennystown and The Vennel.
And of single ends and room and kitchens in damp, decaying tenements with peeling walls, outside toilets and overflowing sewers.
It was the time of “lend us a shilling ‘til Friday” and asking the neighbours for a penny for the gas, a drop of milk or a cup of sugar.
There were few cars and no taxis as we know them today, although buses (Central SMT) supplied a good local service.
Local clippies who collected the fares on the Brucehill bus.
You could get a green ticket (a single) into the town or a raspberry ticket (a return) to exotic places like Helensburgh and Balloch for a day trip, which was a treat.
Few people ever ventured further up the A82 past Jackie Stewart’s garage at Dumbuck.
The journey to Glasgow was an expedition. You tried for the front seat on the top deck of the bus and counted the TV aerials to pass the time.
There was great excitement if you then had to get the Auchenshuggle tram up to the Barras market from Argyle Street up to the Gallowgate.
Lots of families lived on a pittance from the UAB, the then equivalent of Universal Credit, or unemployment benefit which they collected from the ‘Burroo’, which was housed in what later became The Railway Tavern at the bottom of College Street.
There were no supermarkets, unless it was ‘The Store’ where there were plain loaves and margarine for the end of the week when the “good butter” had run out.
Men went to work in the shipyards and factories with ‘pieces’ in their pocket, wrapped in grease proof paper, which was usually the wrapping off a sliced plain loaf. Pan loaves were for posh people, who didn’t like dark crusts.
Local people talked about neighbours putting on accents which were “too pan loaf”.
A trio of chancers – Donald Trump, Jonathan McColl and Boris Johnston.
Entertainment for children was the ABC Minors in the Rialto and any of the four cinemas – The Picture House, The Regal, The La Scala and The Rialto – were for the adults and where teenagers went ‘winching’ on Friday and Saturday nights.
Summer breaks were taken down the Whale’s Back or Havoc Shore where the Public Health people never gave any warnings that what swimmers were diving off was a concrete sewage pipe.
The men – and it was all men – in the pubs drank whisky and beer, principally on Friday nights when a good number of them squandered their wages and got drunk.
Some women had to turn their husband’s moleskin breeks upside down to get what remain of their ‘broken pay’ to feed the family for the next seven days of misery, much domestic violence the stress of no one speaking to one another all week.
There was then the hiding from the women who came round to collect the Provident Supply Company instalments.
Or maybe it was the coal man or the ‘pack’ man – or the rent man, who always wanted the most money, whether it was for the privilege of living in private property or a council house.
The families who lived in the town at that time were full of hope. Many of them had been living “on the parish” which meant them wearing rough hobnail boots or even going in bare feet.
It was much like it is today in the most deprived parts of the town with Foods Banks, although these are much better stocked with clothing and food and even power cards for those who run out of gas for cooking or who can’t afford to light the living room.
Who knew then that in the 21st century under a devolved SNP government, on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, so many people could be returned to that nightmare scenario of poverty and disease?
Who knew that we would be listening to the same old party political rhetoric from those in power, the elite with their knees firmly on our necks?
Who knew we would be so unlucky (foolish) to be “led” by the likes of Boris Johnston, Donald and Cllr Jonathan McColl?
Then it was TB and measles and scarlet fever and now it is coronavirus, cancer, atrocious, expensive housing (if you can get a house at all) and tragedies such as Grenfell Tower and the George Floyd murder.
The Sword of Damocles has been hanging over the Vale of Leven Hospital for many years. Our health services in general leave much to be desired. The Vale is earmarked for closure. The new QE2 Hospital has been placed in special measures by a First Minister and Health Secretary who are making a bourach of the handling of this pandemic.
We have been lied to from the outset about their ability to cope with it – they haven’t – and 2,500 lives have been lost while they have struggled to catch up.
They placed us all in lockdown too late and implemented the wrong method of dealing with it, initially through herd immunity, before being forced into a U-turn and making testing their priority, which it should have been from the outset.
In Dumbarton, they had already made the unforgivable mistake of closing the community care homes and moving most of our old folk into Crosslet, which is difficult and dangerous to reach.
Big homes with large numbers of residents are a magnet for diseases such as coronavirus.
Have they installed that vital crossing yet over the A82 at the foot of Argyll Avenue? No?
On a good day, the forbidding architecture of Crosslet care home looks like the headquarters for a branch of the secret service. It’s worse than the old poor house in Townend Road.
The appalling stories of the regime there from the care workers in the aftermath of the worst effects of the epidemic would make you vow to ensure your family would never send you there.
However, back to the rent money.
MSPs Jackie Baillie and Pauline McNeill and Labour leader Richard Leonard.
At least some people are trying to lessen the burden of high rents on the poorest and most deprived people in our community.
Jackie Baillie MSP for Dumbarton, the Vale and Helensburgh, has called on MSPs to support Scottish Labour’s Fair Rents (Scotland) Bill
The Covid 19 emergency has created the biggest economic crisis in living memory. Thousands of Scots are furloughed and on reduced income, whilst many more are at risk of becoming unemployed.
Renters will disproportionately contribute to those numbers, as they are more likely to work in the insecure precarious jobs most affected by this crisis.
You can’t believe that care workers are on less than £10 an hour.
Scottish Labour this week lodged their Fair Rents (Scotland) Bill, which seeks to protect private sector tenants by introducing measures to limit rent increases, give tenants a new right to apply for a fair rent to be determined, and increase the availability of public information about private rent levels in Scotland.
Ms Baillie said: “This legislation was important before the Covid 19 outbreak, and is even more crucial now.”
The proposed bill is the result of 18 months of work by Scottish Labour MSP Pauline McNeill and the Govan Law Centre in Glasgow.
Jackie Baillie added: “Recent years have seen the percentage of people’s incomes being spent on their housing costs which continue to rise and rise.
“Young people and people in low paid precarious work have been the worst affected by these increases over the years and now they are going to have to bear the brunt of the economic fallout caused by Covid 19.
“It’s vital that we regulate the Private Rented Sector to protect these people from unfair rent rises.”
Scottish Labour Leader Richard Leonard MSP added: “Addressing housing inequality is one of my main priorities as leader of Scottish Labour.
“Good quality, affordable housing dramatically improves the life outcomes of people in everything from health to education, that’s why this legislation is so desperately needed.
“This policy was designed with the radical traditions of Mary Barbour in mind, traditions of opposing exploitative housing practices and protecting ordinary people.”
Cllr Jonathan McColl, leader of the SNP administration on West Dunbartonshire Council, refuses to comment to The Dumbarton Democrat, as do all of his council colleagues and Martin Docherty-Hughes, the MP for West Dunbartonshire.
* Mary Barbour & Rent Strike 1915
The Rent Strike 1915 and “Mrs Barbour’s Army”
After the First World War started in 1914, thousands of workers flocked to Glasgow to jobs in the shipyards and munitions factories. Property owners calculated they could raise rents for tenement flats, thinking that as the demand for housing outstripped supply, if sitting tenants would not pay up others would. Besides, many men were away fighting or were bring held in German prisoner of war camps, and the landlords thought the women would be a soft touch. Instead, fury was aroused. Women were already campaigning against the poor maintenance of their dwellings and the greed of the landlords in failing to carry out repairs. The rent strike was the response.
ENDS