The Gorbals was the ultimate slum of Glasgow, primarily settled by the famine Irish, Poles, and Russian Jews who worked in the shipyards, ironworks, weaving, and manufacturing factories during the Industrial Revolution.
Probably the roughest neighborhood in all of Scotland, portions of the Gorbals were razed for the notorious substandard council flats, concrete towers during the 1960s, featured in a 2011 BBC exposé, were laden with serious structural defects, and rampant mold, etc., then replaced by the tony/ugly urban box renewal housing in the late 1990s-early 2000s, thus displacing literally everyone (90,000+) who lived there.
I remember the plane circling Glasgow, 1972, the edifices grim, and streaked with coal dust. I never wanted that plane to land. That mean city. All that urban renewal merely traded one atrocity for another. Most of the blocks were leveled between 2000 to 2016. Then came the displacement. Now, the Gorbals houses about 9000 of the upwardly mobile in brutalist structures, but what happened to that writhing sea of humanity displaced by urban renewal? Where did they go, to East Kilbride?
I got to see a small section of what was left of the Gorbals in 2008. The Gorbals was famous for its ongoing flea markets. But, by then, most of the area was rubble rubble rubble everywhere. It looked like a bomb had been dropped. The novel, No Mean City (1935) is set in the Gorbals.
My friend’s father, Joe Hardstone, a talented musician, was born and raised in the Gorbals, it took a special ear to be able to understand what he said. He also spoke Russian and Yiddish with a Gorbals accent. I could understand him just fine because I was raised by my grandmother from southern Cork, Ireland. Joe/Isaac became one of the fastest sprinters in the Gorbals, outrunning the street gangs that lurked on every corner, with his violin under arm.
Most of the famous Gorbalites were boxers and futba’ players on account of all that running. Perhaps the Gorbals most famous exports were the landed Irish who were murderers and gangsters. Jimmy Boyle, who murdered a gang member, switched careers and became a famous novelist and playwright while in prison. UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy grew up in the Gorbals. As did Sir Thomas Lipton, the teabag man, Allan Pinkerton, as in the detective agency, and Mickey Rooney’s Da. All Irish, I might add.
