B-block made history in the 70s when workers refused to repair engines which belonged to planes that were being used to take power by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in a violent military coup.
Today, all traces of this industrial heritage are gone; what’s left of Rolls-Royce’s operation is now located in Derby, and the site of their East Kilbride plant is an enormous housing estate.
East Kilbride is one of the original new towns built during the post-war rebuilding drive created by the New Town Act 1946.
Builders working on the construction of East Kilbride in 1950 (Photo by Daily Herald Archive/National Science & Media Museum/SSPL via Getty)
The loss of manufacturing in this Scottish town tells an important part of the story of Britain’s battle for growth.
In the town centre there is an enormous brutalist civic centre which houses council offices, a “marriage suite”, a police station and a fire station. Across the road there is an indoor shopping centre – apparently the largest in Scotland.
Like many people who live in East Kilbride, Tam is here because his family moved for work. Tam’s father was a miner who moved to work for Rolls-Royce when the pits closed, starting out as a labourer in 1967 before working as a warehouse operator before his retirement in the mid-80s.
Today, Tam describes this aspect of the town’s design as “ironic” because “manufacturing has all but disappeared here”.
The Centre West complex is among large swathes of the town centre which will be knocked down and turned into homes (Source: Google Street View)Proposals to demolish more than a third of East Kilbride’s town centre to make way for homes and open air public spaces have been revealed (Graphic: ThreeSixty Architecture)Tam points out that thousands of jobs could have been “saved” in East Kilbride if either factory had been prevented from closing, if either the Scottish or the British governments had incentivised companies to stay.
Glasgow is around 30 minutes away by train and people are increasingly commuting. But, as East Kilbride’s Labour MP Joani Reid points out “the line has only just been electrified!”
Caption: General view of the new Rolls Royce factory in East Kilbride in 1954. (Photo by Daily Record/Mirrorpix via Getty)
However, across town, residents repeat similar thoughts to those expressed by Tam – that something has been lost.
“The shopping centre used to be mobbed every weekend …now there’s not even a nightclub, instead we’ve just got a Popeyes chicken fast-food restaurant – there’s nothing for young people.”
“That legacy is very much still felt here,” Reid says.
The Centre West retail complex, which is among the sites set to be demolished, was not completed until 2001, but, today, many shops are boarded up following the closure of high street giants like Debenhams and Topshop. Marks and Spencer and Zara have also recently left East Kilbride.
“It’s probably during the general election campaign, the number one issue that came up on the doorstep.
Tam Mitchell stood on a housing estate on the site of the town’s former Rolls-Royce factory (Source: Vicky Spratt)
South Lanarkshire Council has a “bold” £62.2m 10-year masterplan to “radically transform the shopping and leisure destination into a vibrant, high-quality urban environment”.
The plans for Central West include a new “Civic Hub” which will have a building that could be used for arts and education and a square which will create a new meeting place and entry point for the town centre.
Thanks to fundraising by resident Lesley Davidson, 54, an asset transfer has taken place, and the Greenhills Community Centre is now the Loaves and Fishes foodbank. Lesley also runs Clothes and Dishes at the foodbank, which she describes as “a charity shop where no money changes hands” and people can find anything they need – from artwork for their walls to crockery.
“We’ve been in this building over a month, and we’re delighted to be here,” Lesley says, “but there’s a tragic irony [in the fact that this used to be a community centre].”
Lesley says it’s no longer just low-income people who are struggling. “It’s people like you and me,” she says. “Nurses and teachers… you might drive up here in a nice-looking car and still need help.”
Lesley Davidson has opened the Loaves and Fishes food bank at Greenhills Community Hall in East KilbrideSir Keir Starmer hopes to recreate places like East Kilbride with a “new generation new towns” as the Labour Government looks to meet its target of building 1.5 million homes.
She notes that there is a big windfarm in her constituency but points out that manufacturing of parts for turbines is done elsewhere – she’d like to see more things made in this area.
Does she think Labour has a plan to make that happen?
“The key to building good communities and having good jobs is that vision that the post-war planners had.”
“How we shop has changed because of on-line shopping, ‘click and collect’ and out-of- town centres. This has resulted in vacant shop units throughout the town centre.”
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