View from my Street: Don’t write off Scotland’s ‘dismal’ towns. There’s gold amongst the grey
Published
Finlay Whiteford
A few weeks ago, the town of Port Glasgow in Inverclyde hit the headlines with a pretty slick PR stunt: a local representative binning the Plook on a Plinth award for the ‘most dismal town in Scotland’, outright rejecting the (dis)honour on behalf of his town.
That hit home for me – not just because it was a great ‘guilty pleasure’ story – but because I grew up surrounded by winners of that very award. Fifteen years ago we even requested the accolade, but doubling down on the issue can’t be the only way out.
Our neighbours in Denny and Cumbernauld have three ‘most dismal’ titles between them, Camelon’s bus-making industry is clinging to life, and Falkirk now has the newfound honour of being considered Scotland’s hotspot for racial tension and anti-immigrant sentiment.
Like many of these post-industrial places in Scotland, the self-image of my hometown of Bonnybridge struggles in a sea of perceived grey. Our main claim-to-fame is as Scotland’s capital for UFO sightings. No wonder the business world considers us a tad alien.
We’re at a point where we must ask ourselves, how do we turn a new leaf on the reputational damage our area, and ones like it, have suffered? And who has the power to change our image?
After the steady erasure of our area’s industries – world-leading ironworks, pioneering electrical infrastructure and the locally-made bricks that built our homes – it’s a hard task to bring back a focal point to unite around and recover a sense of community pride.
The easy answer is to blame our local and national governments. Funding efforts do their best, like a recent growth deal for the Falkirk and Grangemouth area, but public money is only part of the solution.
Particularly for our council, the decline of Falkirk’s petrochemical industries has taken precedence over any attention to towns like mine who lost the hearts of major industries years ago.
To truly reverse this tide of ‘dismal’ rhetoric, we need business to get back on the side of Scotland’s grey towns.
And though we’ve been through tough times, that doesn’t mean Bonnybridge is to be pitied.
Towns like ours present a blank canvas for businesses to co-create and capitalise on a new vision, reputation and outlook.
In a modern business environment that incentivises difference, sustainability and community benefit, I firmly believe there is no better opportunity than to set up shop and champion a reversal in the fortunes of a place like mine.
There are obvious benefits to the bottom line – quite frankly, we’re cheaper for overheads and salary requirements compared to the big cities – but reputationally, there is a chance for companies to set themselves apart from the rest and use local character to boost brand (and town) recognition. The harder they lean into our unique stories, the more the community can champion firms too.
I’m not a recidivist by any means, and you won’t see me advocating us to become world-leaders in ironworks again.
But if the right business can see seize the opportunities that communities like ours possess – our commuter workforce, existing skills bases and potentially lower costs – it stands to benefit just as much as we would.
It’s so easy to get caught up in headlines of ‘dismal’-ness and for towns like mine to feel hopeless as a result.
But to change the narrative, boardrooms could look beyond their city-centre windows and follow the canals and disused railways of Scotland’s past industrial heartlands.
Maybe, just maybe, they’ll strike some gold amongst the grey.