IN Grangemouth, there must be a cold sting to the sight of Scotland looking forward to hosting the Commonwealth Games. Their jobs are going, but the government says it’s time to party.
I’ve a fair idea how families in the brutalised town must feel. I grew up a similar place - a town based around a big industry that was one day simply gutted.
Millions of us had the same experience in the 1980s. I wasn’t raised in Ravenscraig, or any of the other shattered Scottish towns, I was raised in a place called Antrim in Northern Ireland.
It was a pretty historic village until a textile giant called Enkalon, from Holland, arrived. Soon the population jumped ten-fold and everyone’s parents worked in the ‘big factory’. Until, of course, they didn’t work. More than 3000 people were employed. By 1981, it was over.
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Until then, Antrim escaped most of The Troubles. But unemployment tore our heart out. Paramilitaries and drug dealers found fertile ground. I found myself living in Thatcher’s Concrete Jungle.
Evidently, there wouldn’t have been any fancy Commonwealth Games held in Belfast back then - most of our cinemas were blown up so the notion of entertainment was somewhat constrained.
But I’m trying to imagine how my parents would have felt if the powers that be decreed a national party while they faced life on the dole. My mum and dad both lost their jobs - dad worked in the factory, mum as a wages clerk - but were among the lucky ones who found new employment.
Certainly, I remember the six months when they were looking for work as the most dispiriting of my life. No treats that........