John Browns

Today's blip is of what is left of the launch slipway of John Brown's shipyard in Clydebank. Shipbuilding began on this site in 1871.

During the second world war the shipyards on the Clyde were prime targets for German bombers, but John Browns was not directly hit during the Clydebank blitz of 1941 when many people died during the devastation of the town.

On 20th September 1967 the QE2 was launched from here. In 1968 it became part of Upper Clyde Shipyards (UCS) and was involved in the famous UCS work in, when the workers took over the Clyde yards when they were threatened with closure by the then Tory Government.

The workers were led by the Joint Shop Stewards Committee that included people like Jimmy Reid, Jimmy Airlie, Sammy Barr, Sammy Gilmour and my uncle David Torrance. The slogan that was chosen to represent their struggle was: The Right to Work; Not a Yard will Close; Not a Man Down the Road.

In 1972 the yard moved to production of oil exploration rigs under Marathon (UK) and later UIE. It finally closed in 1998.

Today the site is gradually re-emerging from the closure as part of a regeneration project. There is the new building for West Scotland College and the Titan Crane, which is a leftover from the shipbuilding days, but is now a visitor attraction. The river is quiet and when I was there a heron was sitting on one of the old rusting metal poles sticking out of the river. Quite a change from the days when the place was a cacophony of noise from the shipbuilding and the river was far too polluted for fish or birds to live there.