Periods
Clydebank, 1945-1980
By John Hood
Even before the end of the Second World War in August 1945, Clydebank Town Council had begun to plan for the burgh's post-war regeneration, with local council planners (helped by War Damages Commission officials) drawing up a re-development plan. At the same time Clydebank, along with eighteen other local authorities, sat on the Clyde Valley Regional Planning Committee to produce an outline development plan for the entire Clyde Valley area. Set up in 1943 by Thomas Johnston, Secretary of State for Scotland, three of the Committee's main aims were to improve housing; re-generate local industry and improve transport links.
Reconstruction
Although the major planning issues raised by the Committee affected each of the nineteen local authorities, Clydebank's priorities were somewhat different from the others. This was mainly due to its almost unparalleled growth between 1870 and 1914, and to the after-effects of the Clydebank Blitz in 1941. The former meant that the burgh had long outgrown its boundaries, resulting in, among other things, a scarcity of land suitable for development; the latter had left large swathes of Clydebank in ruins. Also, the burgh's rapid growth during the late 1800s and early 1900s had left it criss-crossed with roads, railway lines and a canal, making any planned re-development difficult.
In 1949, when the Committee's Report was finally published, the specific recommendations for Clydebank included the proposal that any population overspill resulting from new industrial growth be accommodated "north of the Great Western Boulevard", where it was felt that "a well-planned community... would stand on one of the finest sites in the region". In order to acquire the land required for this proposed housing, the Clydebank Burgh Order Confirmation Act was passed that year. The existing Clydebank Burgh boundaries were thereby extended by the acquisition of 633 acres to the north-east of the village of Hardgate, where modern-day Faifley was built.
Housing
In an effort to replace quickly the housing stock destroyed or badly damaged during the Clydebank Blitz, however, some temporary remedies were put in place. For example, ex-army and prisoner-of-war camps in the Hardgate area were converted into living accommodation. In many locations experimental temporary houses were erected, such as the Blackburn prefabricated houses (or "prefabs") - an initiative in which Clydebank led the way in Scotland. In addition to temporary housing, the council began the construction of permanent homes. These were built initially at two locations in the Whitecrook area, and were followed by developments at Drumry and Mountblow. By the end of 1948, 403 temporary houses had been built and a further 2,000 permanent homes were under construction. At the same time, the council had begun issuing compulsory purchase orders to enable it to acquire sub-standard tenement properties, so that it could re-develop areas which had been most affected by the Clydebank Blitz. The first area to be treated in this way was a 70-acres site in Radnor Park and Boquhanran.
By 1954, and with the post-war housing developments at Whitecrook, Mountblow and Drumry largely finished, the burgh's planners turned their attention to the construction of new multi-storey buildings. The prototype for this new housing, and Clydebank's first "high rise" building, was an eight-storey block at Mountblow which was completed in 1954. As this form of construction attracted extra government subsidies, Clydebank proceeded to build a further fourteen multi-storey blocks at various locations, including Dalmuir, the Central and Clydebank East areas, and other blocks at Mountblow.
Finally, in 1955 the town council began to build houses on ground acquired in the 1949 extension to the burgh boundaries - at modern-day Faifley. By the late 1950s, the combined efforts of the council and Scottish Special Housing Association had resulted in the completion of 589 three- and four-apartment council houses, with another 982 under construction. In all, a total of 5,895 new houses were built in Clydebank between 1945 and 1956. By the early 1960s, and with the Faifley housing programme largely completed, the council also began to improve housing. This included replacing the prefabs (which had by then greatly exceeded their life expectancy), demolishing some of the older tenements around the junction of Dumbarton and Glasgow Roads in order to erect new housing, and carrying out further re-construction in the Radnor Park area.
Industry
By the 1950s Clydebank's traditional industrial base had begun to show decline. This was most marked within the shipbuilding and manufacturing industries. Between 1952 and 1981, for example, the numbers employed locally in these industries fell from 68 per cent of the total number of people employed in Clydebank, to around 21 per cent. The decline of the Clydebank Shipyard began in the early 1950s, when increased competition from abroad, and the trend towards larger vessels, forced John Brown & Co to take on a number of loss-making contracts. Despite several attempts to diversify into, for example, land boiler manufacture and oil rig platform work, by the early 1960s the financial state of the business left management with no option but to separate the Engine Works from the Shipyard, and thereafter (in 1967) for the shipyard to merge with four other Clydeside yards to form Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. The announcement on 30 July 1971 that UCS was to go into liquidation and the Clydebank yard to close left the town "in mourning". However, the famous "Work-in", led by local man Jimmy Reid and other Clydeside shop stewards, brought the plight of shipbuilding on Clydeside to a worldwide audience. The yard was sold in 1972 to the Marathon Manufacturing Co for the manufacture of self-elevating drilling platforms.
The other major local employer, the Singer Manufacturing Co, had been fighting increased foreign competition from the mid-1940s. Although the introduction of a new range of sewing machines in 1954 saw off its European competitors, new, low-cost Japanese models were soon flooding the market. At its peak in 1960, the Singer Manufacturing Co's Kilbowie factory employed slightly over 16,000 people. However, the workforce at Clydebank had been reduced to 6,000 within a decade. Despite a £7.8 million modernisation programme being carried out between 1961 and 1965, the factory was closed in June 1980.
Other industrial casualties between 1945 and 1980 included Babcock & Wilcox, Turners Asbestos Co and Manlove Tullis, although they were not employers on as large a scale as Singer and John Brown & Co. There was a success story to boost local morale, however: the former Clydebank Engine Works, which had been re-constituted as John Brown Engineering in 1966, re-invented itself as a manufacturer of heavy duty industrial gas turbines and competed successfully in international markets.
Transport
From the late 1950s onwards, the problems created for planners by Clydebank's pattern of road, rail and water transport were greatly lessened, with the closure of various transport links. In 1962, tramway operations within the burgh were replaced by bus services provided by Central SMT and Glasgow Corporation. The Forth and Clyde Canal closed in 1963. In 1964, the former Lanarkshire & Dumbartonshire line was closed, along with the three stations in the burgh. However, cross-river traffic was greatly improved with the opening of the Erskine Bridge in 1971.
Religion, Education and Health
The Clydebank Blitz affected the lives of the residents of Clydebank for many years after the end of the Second World War. German bombing destroyed many churches and schools. For some years, until churches could be replaced with new permanent buildings, congregations either worshipped with neighbouring congregations or in temporary structures - often erected by the congregation members themselves. The first of the new permanent churches, Duntocher Trinity Church, was opened in 1952.
Schools also suffered badly, with many damaged or totally destroyed. They were hastily repaired where possible but, more often than not, pupils were taught in wooden hutted classrooms, erected within the ruins of their blitzed schools, until such times as these temporary buildings could be replaced with new purpose-built schools. The first of these was opened in the mid-1950s.
Public health developments included the opening of district clinics throughout the burgh (centralising GP practices and other related services), the largest being the Clydebank Health Centre, which opened on Kilbowie Road in 1973.
Regeneration
Local government reorganisation in 1975 included Duntocher, Hardgate and Old Kilpatrick within the boundaries of the new Clydebank District. One of Clydebank District Council's most pressing problems was the worsening level of unemployment. From late 1979 (and with the impending closure of the giant Singer Factory), a band of local clergy, trade unionists, business people and politicians joined together under the banner of the Clydebank Campaign for Employment to lobby for new jobs to replace thousands that had been lost due to industrial decline. A Scottish Development Agency (SDA) Task Force was set up in July 1980 and, at the same time, the Clydebank Campaign for Employment pushed for Clydebank to be named as one of the seven new UK Enterprise Zone proposed by the government. These zones were to be set up to encourage new employment through a number of business incentives. In the event, Clydebank was chosen as Scotland's first (and at that time, the country's only) Enterprise Zone.