Glasgow (25 page)

‘I'm sorry to trouble you,' he began, ‘but I'm going to Glencoe and want to find a certain hotel there. Kingshouse Inn, it's called. I . . . I wonder if you could tell me where it is?'

Choocter looked at the car. At a pinch it would carry them all. He smiled his most charming smile.

‘It's a kinda difficult road to describe,' he began, ‘but it wouldn't be takin' me and ma pals far oot o' oor way to show ye. We weren't really thinkin' o' goin' to Glencoe, ye ken, but . . .'

SWASTIKAS IN SAUCHIEHALL STREET, NOVEMBER 1939
The Jewish Echo

The Jewish Echo
was one of several Jewish newspapers in Glasgow. Started in 1928, it closed in 1992. The Mitchell Library holds a complete collection. This short item shows that anti-semitism had its followers everywhere
.

Malicious damage was done to a number of Jewish shops in Glasgow and extensive anti-Jewish propaganda appeared in Jewish-owned property during the black-out at the weekend. About twenty windows or glass panels were cracked and swastikas were scratched with a diamond or metal tool on nearly eighty others.

The discovery of the majority of these destructive acts was made on Monday morning and the police were engaged in pursuing enquiries throughout the day.

Most of the shops affected are situated in Sauchiehall Street, though shops in Argyle Street and Stockwell Street were also damaged. Women's dress shops, furriers and tailors suffered most.

A few of the windows had the words, ‘We don't want Jews', printed on the glass, but not all shops affected are Jewish-owned.

A MONGREL AMONG THE DUSTBINS, 1940
Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh (1903–66) is perhaps best known for his novel
Brideshead Revisited
(1945). Among his ancestors was Lord Cockburn, who was his great-great-grandfather. His masterpiece is the trilogy
, Sword of Honour
(1965), from which the following extract is taken, and which drew on his own wartime experiences
.

Glasgow in November 1940 was not literally a
ville lumière
. Fog and crowds gave the black-out a peculiar density. Trimmer, on the afternoon of his arrival, went straight from the train to the station hotel. Here too were fog and crowds. All its lofty halls and corridors were heaped with luggage and thronged by transitory soldiers and sailors. There was a thick, shifting mob at the reception office. To everybody the girl at the counter replied: ‘Reserved rooms only. If you come back after eight there might be some cancellations.'

Trimmer struggled to the front, leered and asked: ‘Have ye no a wee room for a Scottish laddie?'

‘Come back after eight. There may be a cancellation.'

Trimmer gave her a wink and she seemed just perceptibly responsive, but the thrust of other desperate and homeless men made further flirtation impossible.

With his bonnet on the side of his head, his shepherd's crook in his hand and a pair of major's crowns on his shoulders (he had changed them for his lieutenant's stars in the train's lavatory), Trimmer began to saunter through the ground floor. There were men everywhere. Of the few women each was the centre of a noisy little circle of festivity, or else huddled with her man in a gloom of leave-taking. Waiters were few. Everywhere he saw heads turned and faces of anxious entreaty. Here and there a more hopeful party banged the table and impolitely shouted: ‘We want service.'

But Trimmer was undismayed. He found it all very jolly after his billet on Mugg and experience had taught him that anyone who really wants a woman, finds one in the end.

He passed on with all the panache of a mongrel among the dustbins, tail waving, ears cocked, nose a-quiver. Here and there in his passage he
attempted to insinuate himself into one or other of the heartier groups but without success. At length he came to some steps and the notice: CHATEAU de MADRID.
Restaurant de grand luxe
.

Trimmer had been to this hotel once or twice before but he had never penetrated into what he knew was the expensive quarter. He took his fun where he found it, preferably in crowded places. Tonight would be different. He strolled down the rubber-lined carpet and was at once greeted at the foot of the stairs by a head waiter.

‘
Bon soir, monsieur
. Monsieur has engaged his table?'

‘I was looking for a friend.'

‘How large will monsieur's party be?'

‘Two, if there is a party, I'll just sit here and have a drink.'

‘
Pardon, monsieur
. It is not allowed to serve drinks here except to those who are dining upstairs.'

The two men looked at one another, fraud to fraud. They had both knocked about a little. Neither was taken in by the other. For a moment Trimmer was tempted to say: ‘Come off it. Where did you get that French accent? The Mile End Road or the Gorbals?'

The waiter was tempted to say: ‘This isn't your sort of place, chum. Hop it.'

In the event Trimmer said: ‘I shall certainly dine here if my friend turns up. You might give me a look at the menu while I have my cocktail.'

And the head waiter said: ‘
Tout de suite, monsieur
.'

MOB RULE, JUNE 1940
Joe Pieri

The Second World War was a defining event for Italo-Scots. The heightening of pre-existing tensions and prejudices following the declaration of war with Italy in 1940 led to anti-Italian riots across Scotland and in particular in Edinburgh and Glasgow, which had the largest Italian communities. The first Italians to reach Glasgow arrived at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, often from Barga in northern Tuscany and Picinisco in Lazio. Most of the immigrants sold fish and chips and ice-cream and were prominent in the restaurant trade, as many still are. It was Winston Churchill who commanded that all Italian males should be apprehended and interned, prior to being deported to Canada aboard the
Arandora Star,
which was torpedoed by a German U-boat shortly
after it set off. Of the 446 who were drowned, twenty-nine came from Glasgow
.

A muted roar made itself heard from the street below, rising to a crescendo of shouting voices directly under my window. I went over and peered out through the curtains. A crowd of about a hundred shouting and gesticulating people, pushing in front of them a handcart loaded with stones and bricks, were gathering in front of the shop. ‘There's a Tally place . . . do it in!', came the shout; then to the accompaniment of yells and cheers, a barrage of missiles came flying through the air, smashing the glass frontage of the shop. A dozen or so of the mob, armed with sticks and batons, cleared away the jagged edges of the broken windows and jumped through the shop beyond. Through a curiously detached and dreamlike mental haze I could hear the sound of smashing and curses from below, and peering fearfully through the lace curtains, I watched as the contents of the looted shop were distributed to the milling crowd. That night there were few, if any, Italian shops left untouched by the gangs of hooligans, and although no physical harm was done to anyone, years of hard work was destroyed by unrestrained bands of louts who roamed the streets of Glasgow wrecking and looting in the name of patriotism. As far as I know, not a finger was lifted by the police in an attempt to stop the looting of Italian shops in Glasgow that night.

THE CLYDEBANK BLITZ, 13 MARCH 1941
The Glasgow Herald

The shipbuilding town of Clydebank, near Glasgow, was devastated by two Luftwaffe raids. Hundreds of people died and thousands of houses were destroyed. Production of ships and munitions for the Allies made the town a target. Though one of the aims of the raids had been to reduce morale and prompt calls for an end to the war, it had quite the opposite effect and there were many reports of people reacting heroically, stoically and humourfully in the aftermath of what has been described as ‘the most cataclysmic event' in war-time Scotland
.

After being entombed in the wreckage of a bombed tenement in the Glasgow area since last Thursday night, two men, one of them a War Reserve Policeman, were rescued alive yesterday.

The policeman, weakened by his severe ordeal, died in the early
evening, some five hours after he had been released from the mass of debris. The other man, discovered in the course of the evening – almost eight hours after the raid – now lies in the Glasgow Western Infirmary in a serious condition.

Hopes were raised last night that a girl might be found alive, and rescuers were working with all speed to trace her. At a late hour, however, their efforts had been unrewarded.

The two men concerned in the remarkable rescues, whose endurance aroused the admiration of the rescue workers, were Frederick Clark (32), War Reserve Policeman, and John Cormack (22).

Cormack was found lying in a bed, where he was resting when the tenement was bombed. A big beam lay across him, and only his face and arms were visible. His arms were folded across his breast.

The rescue workers who discovered him were astonished when he feebly waved his hand to them through the debris. Quickly they cleared the way to him.

‘Could you go a cup of tea?' Dr Mackay, who had been summoned to the scene, asked Cormack while he was still a prisoner in the wreckage. ‘Aye, Ah fine could,' was the reply.

‘I gave him a cup of tea and some brandy, and put a cigarette in his mouth,' said the doctor. Cormack was quite warm. Apparently, he had been in bed when the tenement collapsed, and this saved him from dying of cold.

‘He was able to help us get him out, and explained how a beam was protecting him. He also told us there was a young girl, somewhere near, and that she had spoken to him about a day before.'

Describing the discovery of Cormack, Jack Couglin, a Dublin-born man, who was one of the rescue squad, said – ‘I had a hunch that there was somebody else still alive in the wreckage in the same corner where we had found the other man earlier in the day. I went on working at that spot, and there, when I lifted up some boards, I saw a man lying below. He looked like a statue, lying on the bed with his arms folded. But in a moment I found he was alive. We called other rescue workers to the spot, and very soon managed to release the man.'