Govan Stories and Voices
January 28th
Pearce Institute, Govan
Govan Stories and Voices
This was the first Scottish Wave meeting held in Govan, appropriately in the Pearce Institute - a hub of community activities and hopes over many decades, situated on the High Street. On a Thursday morning, fourteen Govan residents came together to explore thoughts about Govan, past, present and future, to tell stories and share thoughts. Here is a selection of some of them …
Alistair McIntosh
I'm Alastair McIntosh and I was born in a an English coalmining town called
Doncaster where my Scottish father met my English mother, and from the age
of four, raised on the Isle of Lewis where Dad was a doctor. On my father's
side are Highland Gaels and borders folk. On my mother side, one part were
Joneses from Wales, and the other was Hancox - an old gypsy name which, on
listening to Jimmy Stringfellow of Govan's show-people talking to our group,
all started to add up, as my grandfather started in business on the road
with a transport cafe, built up the Ronnie Hancox Dance Band for Dancers,
and once told my mother, "Nobody ever tells a Hancox how to ride a horse."
Chris Okane
From an early age I realise I am a very small part of a very big universe. What is my role in this grand play? Standing on the site where many have lived and passed through, where history has been forged and ancient kings have been crowned. But alas! the world has lost its vision. The town and its people struggle to find their way, lost souls need to be saved and we struggle to see the bigger picture.
The big vision must be restored and soon, or all will be lost. Once we were great, it is time to be great again and play our role in the grand play that is humanity in the universe.
The Cosmic Detective
Norie Mackie
I was born and bred in Govan, educated at Hills Trust Primary and Govan High Secondary schools. One of my ancestors used to push a fruit barrow around the streets of Govan with his wooden leg and we remember him in the rhyme – Harry Mackie, one, two, three. One half man and the other half tree.
Fatherhood in the 1980s opened my heart following the birth of my two daughters, Claire and Nicola, and becoming aware of the need for international aid I become active within Christian Aid raising money for sustainable development. Jim McGowan, a long standing Boys Brigade man, showed me the way he had raised funds from charitable trusts to repair the Linthouse Parish church roof and changed my life, as I found a career in helping to finance voluntary sector projects. Drawn into the GalGael Trust, Gehan Macleod first identified the idea that someone like me should be running the Pearce Institute. How right she was.
Liz Gardiner
My story begins with my Grandpas shop (called Gardiners but pronounced Gairdners) in Plantation.
A licensed grocers with red sandstone tenements above, it was where everyone in the extended family worked when they were laid off or otherwise down in their luck... Wee Charlie who was a dwarf because, when he was a toddler, (so the story goes) they shut him in the till drawer and let him play on the counter so there wasn't room for his legs to grow... Uncle Ian who tinkled the ivories in his Aker Bilk bowler hat and bow tie playing the working mens clubs with songs like "i'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter" and uncle George who, "let go" by Pifco when they discovered he was a "binge" alcoholic, was the only one who couldn't even be kept on at Gairdners because – “tired and emotional” one afternoon, he left my dad to do a double shift and caused him to miss a friends wedding...
Then there was the heroic tale of my grandpa, on the night of the Clydebank blitz when a stray bomb hit the shop and tenements above. In spite of shrapnel in his leg, Grandpa spent the whole night rescuing folks from the flats while Gran scoured the hospitals (and finally the morgue) trying to find him. It was the bone cancer from that shrapnel wound that did for him in the end.
There was the hilarious story of the first black American sailor coming in off the boats, addressed by my Gran in pidgin English because she assumed a black African wouldn't understand the language. Imagine her amazement when the sailor drawled his demand for " a battle a scatch..." These stories were told in my family, over and over and over.
About ten years ago, after all of it had been razed and Harry Ramsdens and Pacific quay had been born, there was a pub called the Gairdners Arms built on the site of "Gairdners Licensed Grocers". My dad went in to ask them if it was called Gairdners because of the link with grandpas shop. But it was only a young girl behind the bar who "thought it had something to do with the garden festival" but to "come back later and speak to the boss". Dad never went back. I think he was frightened the boss would confirm that there really was nothing left of any of it.
In recent years, I've had the privilege of being involved in an enquiry about the potential of cultural planning as an approach to planning and policy. I had never known what I was doing at Fablevision... I knew what it wasn't... But I never knew what to call the sort of stuff I recognised NVA, Galgael, Linthouse and many others were engaged in too. The cultural planning masters supported me in my attempt to tell the story. One of our study visits for the masters was to Canary Wharf in London with its fabulous buildings, walkways, glass and stainless steel, teeming with young men in suits during the day and deserted at night.
We were introduced to the director of the regeneration company - the contractors on its design and build... A very pleasant middle-aged chap in a suit and blue tie.
He told his story with great pride about how Canary Wharf had been an almost Dickensian teaming warren of flats, pubs, clubs and whorehouses catering for the sailors coming off the boats. He told us of the challenge of moving them off to demolish it all and start to rebuild...
A neighbourhood just behind the new build wasn't being regenerated and it was "problematic" because it was full of unemployed people, junkies and crime. So the solution was to build a very high fence to keep them out but make sure there was an access path from the nice housing development behind that so that the people in the nice neighbourhood could still get access to the river. Even that problem had been solved now because the bad neighbourhood was regenerated in phase two so it's all sorted.
He told us of his worst moment. The morning they had to evict Sally, the brothel madam and some of her ladies of the night.. They were the last building standing of the original canary wharf. A big, old, Victorian London property with rambling rooms and cracked cornicing...
Sally had taken it on herself to stage a sit in protest and, because there was a bit of a hoo ha with press involved, he had attended the eviction personally with a team of young men in suits... Sally was voluble in her protest and he sympathised with her, but it had to be done... Did he know what had become of Sally since?
No he didn't but she was such a feisty character, he was sure she would be fine. She has probably set herself up in business elsewhere and is plying her trade as profitably as ever.
He was a bit taken aback by the tears in our eyes at the end of his story.
This is the narrative that led me to working on projects like LUV and SPARR and now with the Pearce Institute, Galgael and Govan Old. Now I'm not suggesting for a second that there is a similarity between Sally, at Canary Wharf and Moyna McGlynn, minister of Govan Old Parish Church in terms of their chosen professions. Neither do I have anything against men in suits.. Indeed, I find a man in a sharp suit irresistible, but I couldn't help but imagine a scenario in Govan with Moyna and her congregation as the last bastion of resistance against the bulldozers when the pleasant young men in suits come to evict her...
We imagine that here in Govan, there is enough of a critical mass of wonderful projects that we are out of danger... But the spectre of my Grandpas shop and what's happened in Plantation isn't far away, and the only difference between us and the men who deliver places (or is it non-places?) like Canary Wharf and Pacific Quay, is the narrative. The man in the suit was telling a different story - an easier, less messy, less uncertain, chaotic, creative or "dangerous" story - which, in his terms, had a very happy and satisfactory ending. And if we don't necessarily agree that it is a happy ending, it's still the dominant narrative in the world.
And that brings me to my interest in the Scottish Wave of Change. And before I conclude a wee coda to my own story... Our family mystery... My Great Grandfather Gardiner who opened the shop had two sons Sam, then Robert my Grandpa. So the natural succession would have been for Gairdners to pass to the oldest son, Sam
Why then, did it bypass Sam and go to Robert - my Grandpa? OK it was the depression, but why did Sam board a ship bound for New Zealand in the same month as Robert married my Gran, a shop assistant from Helen street who worked in Gairdners with both the brothers. Robert and Bessie had a hurried wedding, the week between xmas and new year which, everyone in the licensed trade knew was the busiest time of the year and certainly not the time to be organising a wedding.
Why did my father (a supposedly premature baby) think his birthday was the 10th of August up until the day when he had to take his birth certificate into the school and they discovered the date on it was actually, the 5th? Next week, I'm going to New Zealand to share the story of Govan with local people there who are worried about plans for the regeneration of Auckland as a "super city". There's a lot of bulldozing and "regeneration" in those plans - with new build proposals that look a lot like pacific quay and canary wharf. They want to know how Govan is managing to do it so differently.
When I'm there, I'll be visiting Sam, the son of the Sam who went to New Zealand all those years ago. That's my fathers cousin Sam... Isn't it? Or, is he ... My father's brother...???
Jimmy Stringfellow
My grandma hobday ran a carousel with horses going up and down (hobday became hobby and that's where the hobby horse came from) and they were transporting it across in a storm, on the ferry from Campbeltown.
a couple o they horses went over the side and are sunk off the Mull of Kintyre to this day. the captain of that boat was very interested in grandmas kids - she had 12, with another on the way and he and his wife weren't able to have children you see
"these are beautiful kids you have mrs hobday" the captain said to grandma
"i'm sure you wouldn't miss one or two of them would you?"
"captain" grandma said "my children are my pride and joy - my jewels - my life
i wouldn't part with one of them for all the money and riches in the world".
the next day there was no sign of one of grandmas sons - young john they searched and searched but john was never seen again
there was always stories about the travelling people stealing kids you know
that never ever happened - not ever it was traffickers and the childless that used to steal our kids - never the other way round
you see, this transferring the blame stuff is what used to happen all the time.. we were easy targets and it fed the prejudice. we had criminals telling us quite openly that they used to bide their time until the travelers arrived in town as soon as we were here, they started a stealing spree
as soon as we left, they stopped - so we got the blame
we couldn't ever prove it of course - the police would never listen to us anyway the regarded us as even lower than the criminals... but it happened none the less and that's the truth
Liz Lauchlan
My story concentrated on looking at life from a different perspective and taking time to understand why people do what they do. The story was centered around my German grandmother who, in her teens and early twenties, had to become a member of the Hitler Youth in order to save the lives of her Jewish parents (as suggested by the family's long term friend and neighbour who was a serving Nazi soldier) and later worked in one of the large factories which fitted the warplanes with guns and bombs.
As it is so common to hear the 'winners story' it always fascinated me to hear my grandmother’s stories as a child as it helped dispel the myth of the 'evil Germans' and showed that many of those involved in the war effort had no real choice in the
matter, much like those on the British side.
Tam McGarvey
Researching my family history recently has confirmed to me that my forbears were strongly connected to the places where they worked. My Irish grandmother’s family lived on the same small farm for 200 years while my Scots granny’s family mined and quarried in Nitshill for 170 years.
When I entered Glasgow School of Art 1987 I was probably the first of either line to get into any kind of university education. I have been lucky enough to meet two of my heroes. I can’t remember meeting Paul Robeson when I was two but the other I was lucky enough to call “friend”. Through him I am now well ensconced within the ranks of the GalGael Trust where I can use my hard won education, tip my hat to the ancestors and hopefully do my bit for Govan and Scotland in their name.
Here’s to you Mr. MacLeod.
Moyna McGlynn
I grew up all over the world, the child of an Irish military family for generations. One of my grandfathers was in the Irish Guards and the other in the Lancashire Regiment. Both fought in the Boer War, the First World War, and one went with all his brothers to Spain for the Spanish Civil War. I think it is impossible to grow up in an atmosphere of duty and service without being strongly affected by it as a personality.
The other very important strand in my childhood memories centres on timber. When the male members of my family were not actively engaged in military service, they had saw-mills. And when we were very young, I can recall jam jars on every window sill, filled with small amounts of liquid and with pieces of wood in them. It was my father’s fungus research. He was always monitoring the conditions under which fungus attacks different woods. He worked on a process of kiln drying the wooden panelling for the London Guildhall when it was rebuilt after the Second World War.
The only saw-mill, I can actually remember was on the River Medway in Kent. When I think about going there, it is the smell I remember most clearly, dust and resin, and new wood, and secondly the noise of the saws. But if I try to visualise it, it is the river I remember, and the cranes of Chatham Docks.
My father was an obsessively hard worker, but not much of a businessman, and when his business went, he signed up again for the Air Force. We began travelling almost immediately, and I spent some of my childhood years in North Africa, overlooking the harbour in Tobruk.
For me Govan evokes all these tangible and intangible things - cranes on the skyline, a kind of human enterprise which is associated primarily with men, but involves doing, being, still shots in memory of people working, smells that belong to water and tarpaulin and wood, the sounds of machinery. I knew this was my space.