Transcript

Woman:

Nothing to beat Glasgow.

Woman:

Certainly very friendly, happy. Aye. Nice place to live really.

Man:

Great place, not as hard as everybody thinks it is.

Man:

Great place to live and work.

Woman:

Lot of violence in it. Lot of drugs in this area.

Man:

Glasgow? Ah, think it's alright, Glasgow.

Woman:

Great! Great place!!

COMMENTARY:

The identity of a city is complex.

To try to find the real identity of a city like Glasgow, we need to sift through the many images and historical layers that represent that place. So what do people mean when they say 'I belong to Glasgow'?

PAT JESS:

But in fact I don't belong to Glasgow. I'm from Belfast, a city which like Glasgow has part of its identity bound up with a river and with ship building.

COMMENTARY:

But there are other aspects to its image which Glasgow doesn't share. So to explore these ideas of image and identity, I'm going to talk to people around Glasgow and learn from their experience.

Pat Jess and Gordon Borthwick:

Morning Gordon. (Morning Pat, our only passenger today). Yes indeed. (Come aboard.)

COMMENTARY:

Maybe the Clyde is the best place to start. Many of the ships that sailed the international trade routes were built on this stretch of water. Gordon Borthwick has a keen interest in Glasgow's maritime history. His father worked on Clydeside.

Pat Jess:

Gordon, can you tell me what is the significance of the Clyde to Glasgow?

Gordon Borthwick:

Well there's an old saying that's been much quoted and even misquoted that Glasgow made the Clyde and the Clyde made Glasgow, and it's very true because here we have a river that was only fourteen inches deep and very sluggish and this was the river into which we were eventually to launch some of the largest liners and ships ever built. And over a period of about two or three hundred years, men dragging chains, barges; dredgers, they eventually deepened the river. So in a sense the city made the river and in return of course the river eventually made the city's fortunes.

The image of Glasgow is a strange thing, I mean only two or three centuries ago when Glasgow was a university city; small, quiet, described by Daniel Defoe who was well travelled, as "The beautifulest little city in all Europe", and suddenly all hell was let loose, the industrial revolution hit it and it became big, dirty brash Glasgow, the Chicago of Europe perhaps, and completely unfairly I think. I personally have been around in many cities throughout the world and I have never seen violence in Glasgow as I've seen it in other cities abroad, I've never seen a gang fight, I've never seen any razor attacks, but you give a dog a bad name and it sticks.

COMMENTARY:

Gerry Mooney grew up in Pollock, a working class estate on the south side of Glasgow.

Gerry Mooney:

Yes, I would say certainly over the last hundred years it was very much the shock city of Britain. Now nothing sort of illustrates that better than a book that was produced in the inter-war period called 'No Mean City'. Which tried to highlight the Glasgow wars, the sort of violent city portrayed by gangs, conflict, struggle, agitation etc. Another image is one coming out of the period of what's now known as the Red Clydeside, which is a period characterised by conflict, class struggle, the potential revolutionary situation that developed in 1919.

Now in the seventies there was a number of television programmes, dramas and documentaries, that were shown nationally which depicted Glasgow yet again as a city full of seething hoodlums and gangsters. If you take the films of the likes of Peter McDougall, for example 'Just Another Saturday', then that was film that actually portrayed Glasgow and Glaswegians in a very negative light.

MAN:

I'm no joking son. I'm gonna damage you.

MAN:

These people are animals.

MAN:

Oh is that right? Well you'd better save up your Embassy coupons for a Daktari gun, 'cos that's the only way you're gonna get near 'em!

Gerry Mooney:

Now I wouldn't say that was a wrong image, it was certainly only a partial image of what Glasgow represented at that time. But certainly that was the image that was, you know, exported outwith the city, and it was the image that many people would associate with the city at that time.