The last major ship was built and launched from a Clyde shipyard in the early 1970s. Unemployment in Glasgow was heading up: the winter of discontent was just over the horizon. Rampant inflation. The new towns surrounding Glasgow like cumbernauld were ramping up, but life was hard.

I was a kid in Edinburgh during these years and we had a good life. We went through to Glasgow from time to time, it was a wreck of a city much as Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham were. Manufacturers were moving to lower cost economies. People were joining the army out of a sense of desperation for jobs, and winding up in n.ireland being firebombed, or on cyprus dealing with the Greek/turkey thing.

It wasn't an entirely happy time economically speaking oil not with standing.