11 hours ago
'Mayor of London has more confidence in Springburn than the FM'
I was captivated by the vibrancy of the tenement streets and glimpses inside the cavernous locomotive works, only to be told that most of the scenes we were looking at had been torn down many years before.
Some landmarks still stood, such as Stobhill Hospital, where I was born, and Springburn Public Halls, although by the time I was growing up there, it had long since been abandoned, looming over Springburn Road as a derelict monument to a lost civic pride.
I even used to build my own little Lego replica, imagining how the red sandstone edifice might look if restored to its former glory.
Sadly, my dream was cruelly shattered when the building was unceremoniously demolished just after Christmas in 2012, despite many letters of protest in the pages of this newspaper, including my own.
This was my first experience of the devastation caused by the misguided 'Comprehensive Development Area' clearances of the 1970s and 1980s.
Springburn was severely impacted, with over 80% of its buildings destroyed and 60% of the residents relocated to peripheral housing schemes and new towns, while an expressway carved through the old Springburn Cross.
Springburn had already been dealt a double blow with the liquidation of the North British Locomotive Company in 1962 and the closure of British Rail's Cowlairs Railway Works in 1968, leading to widespread unemployment and economic hardship in the area.
The St. Rollox 'Caley' Railway Works held on until 2019.
Despite a hard-fought campaign to convince both the Tory UK Government and SNP Scottish Government to step in to save the iconic Caley, the works closed its doors, with the last 200 railway engineers made redundant, breaking an industrial tradition going back 163 years.
I stood with those workers throughout the 'Rally Roon the Caley' campaign, raising the closure of the works at Prime Minister's Questions with both Theresa May and her successor, Boris Johnson.
The closure of the Caley led many to conclude that Springburn's days as 'Scotland's Railway Metropolis' were over for good, but I never gave up hope that the works would eventually reopen.
In contrast to the Public Halls, that hope has finally been realised, six years after it closed.
The Caley's new operators, Gibson's Engineering, backed by local businessman and philanthropist, David Moulsdale, have recently won a contract from Transport for London to strip back and overhaul 23 long vehicle wagons.
It is a massive boost for Springburn – something to look forward to after years of disappointment and decline.
The contract will take two years to complete and generate 40 new jobs – hopefully employing several workers who used to work at the Caley before it closed its doors in 2019.
This is a vote of confidence from the Mayor of London in Scottish engineering and the Springburn community.
I am confident that it is the breakthrough necessary to win many more contracts in future.
But it is disappointing that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, seems to have more confidence in Springburn than the First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney.
The Scottish Government stood idly by when the Caley closed in 2019, and despite its recent revival, they still seem disinterested in supporting railway engineering in Springburn, even though state-owned ScotRail operates many trains that are well overdue time and mileage-based overhauls that could be carried out at the Caley.
I believe that Springburn's best days are ahead of it, but the Scottish Government has ignored this community for too long.
Springburn has not received any significant capital investment since the new Stobhill Hospital and Glasgow Kelvin College buildings opened 16 years ago.
This is not good enough and fuels a dangerously defeatist attitude that Springburn is past its best.
Since the blow of losing the Public Halls, I have been supporting the effort to restore its Victorian counterpart, Springburn Winter Gardens, which has stood abandoned in Springburn Park for 42 years – a bittersweet reminder of its glory days as an engineering powerhouse – its dilapidated state is now another symbol of a community left behind.
Bringing the Winter Gardens back into use as a community space would spark Springburn's renaissance and transform it into a beacon of pride for Glasgow again.
That is why it was so disappointing that the Scottish Government failed to back the community's bid to stabilise and reactivate the A-listed structure in its recent round of regeneration capital grant funding.
But one thing I have learned over the years is that persistence pays off.
I will continue to fight for Springburn to finally get the investment that it so richly deserves.
