At first I thought: nothingís changed here, nothingís going to change. I spent part of my childhood in Greenock, and came back in 1999 to stand in next-door Port Glasgow as a candidate in the first Scottish Parliament elections. In my first spell there, the great estuary of the Clyde was lined for mile after mile with clanging, sparking shipyards, and every shop-sign in West Blackhall Street read ëSCWSí ñ Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society. When I returned nearly 50 years later, the yards had vanished. There were a few charity shops, an Asda; in grey housing schemes up the hillside, a shrunken population waited quietly for the council to repair broken doors and fences. The young, it was said, traded heroin if they needed cash for clothes and clubbing. The young with the energy to get out of their beds, that is.

LRB 2 June 2011 | PDF Download