There's a price for gentrification. I've met the people paying it

The Herald Scotland

13-07-2025

It turned out that on the other side was a family who very much disagree with the theory that the new bridge and the flats and the regeneration is 100% good for Govan. One of the people from the council said to me that gentrification wasn't part of the picture with the bridge and the flats because the development was bringing in people with a bit of money in their pockets to support the services and wasn't displacing a community. The Stringfellow family, the family living on the other side of the fence near the bridge, beg to differ.
The bottom line is that Glasgow City Council want to expand the development of the Govan side of the bridge and want the Stringfellow family off the site so they can build more flats and landscape the area. The Stringfellows – who are travellers and make their living, or used to, from taking their rides and shows round Scotland – say they've been on the site for more than 40 years and should have the right to remain. I say 'used to make their living' because the family say the council blocked off the exit at the site, meaning the Stringfellows can't get their trucks in and out so effectively can't work.
The situation between the two sides is pretty tense it has to be said and will come to a head in September when the council's attempt to evict the Stringfellows reaches the Court of Session. The council argues a straightforward commercial lease applies therefore the family can be evicted with 28 days' notice, but the Stringfellows' lawyers will argue that not giving the family the same rights as other council tenants is discrimination based on the fact they don't live in a house. They also argue that the youngest member of the family, who's five, has protection under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
I went to visit the family the other week and it's obvious the situation is taking its toll. The patriarch Jimmy, who I liked a lot even though he wasn't taking any nonsense from me, told me he had 'stainless steel skin' and was up for the fight. But his health isn't what it was and his daughter Chanel said the case had aged her parents. She said her mum Diane cries and cries at night because she doesn't know where she's going to be; she doesn't know if her family is about to be split up.
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Obviously, court cases cannot be decided on emotions alone but I genuinely do not understand why the council is so insistent on this one. The Stringfellows have lived in their Govan yard for 44 years and there's a lot of support for them in the community. It's also striking that just across the river in the transport museum there are exhibits celebrating Glasgow's travellers and yet here is the council seeking to evict travellers from their homes. We either respect their non-traditional way of life or we don't.
The case the council is making seems to be that one family shouldn't be able to stand in the way of a development that will benefit many more people and improve Govan and I do understand that new flats, and hopefully new businesses, will be good for the area. The man from the council told me the development of the bridge area isn't gentrification because a community isn't being displayed. But the truth is that an important part of the community absolutely is being displaced. The Stringfellows want to stay where they are in Govan and the council is telling them they can't.
What's particularly frustrating is that I think a compromise is possible. I'm sure Jimmy isn't always easy to deal with, but he showed me plans they'd had drawn up by an architect that would allow the development to go ahead, albeit on a slightly reduced scale, and allow the family to stay where they are. The council say they've looked at the plans and they aren't feasible. But most of the land the Stringfellows live on wouldn't be built on anyway so the question here is one of proportion: is it proportionate to evict the Stringfellows when most of the flats could be built anyway, or built elsewhere? If we respect the right of the Stringfellows to live the way they want to, and if we respect the diverse history of Govan and the history of travellers, the answer must be no.
Jimmy Stringfellow at home in Glasgow. (Image: Colin Mearns)
So, despite what the man from the council said to me, this does look like the downside of gentrification. There have definitely been some great improvements in the area – the renovation of the shop fronts, the restoration of the library and gates in Elder Park, and the bridge itself, all of these things have been good for a part of Glasgow that has great potential because it was largely spared most of the big 1960s planning disasters that decimated other working-class communities in the city. So let's not get it wrong now.
And it's still not too late to introduce a bit of compassion into the process. The council say they've made exhaustive attempts to engage with the family without success and that they've proposed a number of alternative sites that would allow them to continuing living in caravans as they do at the moment, and all of that may be true.
But answer me this. Have they really tried to put themselves in the place of the family? Have they imagined what it might be like to feel, as Jimmy put it to me, caged in like monkeys at the zoo? The Stringfellows aren't opposed to the development and regeneration of Govan, they're just asking for a bit of respect for the way they live and the right to stay in the place that's been their home for more than 40 years. I don't think that's unreasonable And I don't think their eviction is necessary. Let them stay.