# Transcript

COMMENTARY:

So in selling the city, the image makers have bypassed the poorer aspects of Glasgow, highlighting instead those characteristics which attract inward investment, and with it, jobs.

Jean Forbes:

Well inevitably they haven't been as much in industry as you would like them to have been, because you can imagine the vast numbers who would be made unemployed by the closure of a shipyard or a major steelworks or even port facilities, and it's very difficult to replace those jobs for those particular people.

Gerry Mooney:

I would say that many of the jobs have been created in the retail and tourist sectors, a vast number of which I would say are low paid, primarily performed by women workers in the city centre. Now obviously there are a number of jobs that have been created by inward investment in the financial and banking sectors, but I would tend to say that that has been, you know, minimal. So you do have within the city centre, a large increase in the fast food outlets, the bistros, the wine bars, the conference centre type activities, all of which tends to be low paid temporary casualised type of employment.

Pat Jess:

So where is the real Glasgow? Is it here, in the city centre, or here by the Clyde and the old shipyards? Well it's a bit of both and many other aspects as well.

Gerry Mooney:

I think obviously there are people from Glasgow who would call themselves Glaswegians, but I don't think you can talk about one Glaswegian image at all. And there are within the city of Glasgow, very different ethnic backgrounds, gender divisions, class divisions, divisions of localities within the city. And people do have different images and representations of what Glasgow means.

COMMENTARY:

Walking around Glasgow, I've been wondering what images come to mind when Glaswegians think of their city.

Jean Forbes:

The city centre, the shopping centre which I think is now very attractive, it's a very pleasant place to shop. As a concert goer I'm very devoted to .the Concert Hall. Erm, I like the clean tenements, I think the tenements are splendid buildings, these great stone ranges of buildings, beautifully cleaned, either golden stone or pink sandstone.

COMMENTARY:

Edward Stephenson identifies with a rather different image.

Edward Stephenson:

lbrox. That's where Rangers play; It's the best in Britain. Parkhead is where Celtic play. If we can afford it, I try and get to as many as possible, but with five children it's not always possible. Now my youngest, his name's Graeme Souness; that's what I called him when he was born. At that time Graeme Souness was the manager of Rangers.

Gerry Mooney:

For argument's sake I would say that ordinary Glaswegians, if you can use that term, in the peripheral housing estates and elsewhere, probably identify more with each other and their experiences within the city in terms of a struggle to make ends meet, a struggle for survival, a struggle over bad housing, a struggle for employment, and maybe histories of previous employment passed down over the generations. I would say that probably middle class Glaswegians identify much more with sort of · physical things, with buildings. For example I think they would identify much more with Merchant City than many ordinary Glaswegians who had never heard of Merchant City until the image makers had created it.

Jean Forbes:

And then we're just passing on either side here ones which are nineteenth century buildings ... . . . I like what has been done to the Merchant City. This was an old really quite derelict part of the city centre, where it was the eighteenth century residential area for the merchants, the tobacco merchants. This is a very interesting building, this is the eighteenth century merchant's house which has now been ... The streets there are smaller scale than to the west which is a Georgian gridiron. The Merchant City gridiron is smaller and more intimate, and it really is a very attractive place to walk about and a very characterful place, very Glaswegian.

Edward Stephenson:

I was over in Belfast and I couldn't wait to get back to Glasgow, and I mean we've also been in England to visit my brother and my wife's sister, and we're always dying to get back to Glasgow.

COMMENTARY:

Glaswegians obviously have a great fondness for their city. But how do they see themselves?

Vox Pops:

Great people. Very friendly.

That's right, the people are friendly.

Well I'm a Glaswegian myself, so they're the tops.

Very friendly.

Very hospitable.

Jean Forbes:

If you're a stranger to the city and you open a map in the city centre and look vague, some Glaswegian will steam up beside you and offer to help you, and probably walk all the way with you, and I don't think that has changed at all.

COMMENTARY:

Like me, Jean Forbes is in fact from Northern Ireland. But she has adopted Glasgow as her home with considerable enthusiasm.

Jean Forbes:

I will hear no ill spoken of Glasgow, it is, I have been known to jump up in fury in distant cities when people speak poorly of this city. I think it's a splendid city, I've lived in it for many many years and enjoyed every minute of it.

Gerry Mooney:

Yes it is unique, but I think you can only grasp that uniqueness by looking at places or locales beyond Glasgow. So for example Glasgow isn't Birmingham, Glasgow isn't London. In a sense what I'm trying to get at is that Glasgow's uniqueness is not simply or only its geographical location, but it's the particular set of historical relationships that have been built up over time, relationships emerging out of the class base of the city, emerging out of the industrial and economic base of the city, and relationships emerging out of the stratified nature of the city today. So it is unique, but that uniqueness can only be understood by in a sense illustrating or discussing what Glasgow isn't as much as discussing what Glasgow is.

Pat Jess:

Well, I'm beginning to get a sense of what it means when people say 'I belong to Glasgow'. Though it's based on a very fleeting visit.

COMMENTARY:

The images that will remain in my mind include the Clyde, Merchant City, Drumchapel and the Garden Festival, and a sense that Glasgow is made up of much more than this.

Gerry Mooney:

I think again you have to talk about multiple identities and the fact that images and identities and representations are contested.

Gerry Mooney:

There's no agreement about the way Glasgow's been sold today or depicted today in the glossy magazines and in the media, just as there was no agreement about the way Glasgow was portrayed in the films of Peter McDougall in the 1970s. So there's a conflict there you know, about where Glasgow's going and what Glasgow's about.

Vox Pops:

We're born in Glasgow and we'll die in Glasgow.

Oh aye, very good in Glasgow, aye!