Research based on newly released 1970s policy documents suggests Glaswegians’ higher risk of premature death was caused by ‘skimming the cream’ – rehousing skilled workers in new towns, and leaving the poorest behind

The Glasgow effect: 'We die young here - but you just get on with it'

The Glasgow effect: 'We die young here - but you just get on with it'

Robert Preston takes the grainy photo – just a few square centimetres and yellowing with age – from his wallet and with a careful thumb and forefinger holds it up to the light.



In the picture he is just seven and his three brothers are aged three to 11, the youngest grave-faced and chubby cheeked. His 14-year-old sister, her dark hair perfectly coiffed, peeps over the tops their heads.

It’s the Glasgow Fair holiday circa 1947 and they are in Dunoon, a coastal town that sits on the Firth of Clyde and a popular “doon the watter” destination for Glaswegians escaping the urban sprawl.

“I’m the only one left now.” The 76-year-old Preston’s tone, who was born in Govan, icon of Glasgow’s shipbuilding heritage on the River Clyde, is matter of fact. Two brothers died of cancer, one of heart complications, and his sister dropped dead in the street after a brain aneurysm.



“I don’t think that’s unusual,” says Preston. “We die young here. But you just take the hand that life deals you and get on with it.”

I’m the only one left now. You just take the hand that life deals you and get on with it Robert Preston

What he calls fate, some researchers have labelled the “Glasgow effect” – excess mortality that cannot be accounted for by poverty and deprivation alone, and it impacts on everyone in the city.

Glaswegians have a 30% higher risk of dying before they are 65 (considered a premature death) than people in comparable de-industrialised cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. They die from the big killers: cancer, heart disease and strokes, as well as the “despair diseases” of drugs, alcohol and suicide.

And though they have a higher chance of dying prematurely if they are poor, deaths across all ages and social classes are 15% greater. Economic advancement alone will not save your life here.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Gorbals was known as an area for widespread deprivation in Glasgow. Photograph: David Newell Smith/The Observer

The mystery of Glasgow’s “sick man of Europe” status started to rear its head more than half a century ago. But now, for the first time, researchers from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) claim to have found hard evidence of a number of key factors that explain it.

In a new report, History, politics and vulnerability: explaining excess mortality, they claim a combination of the historic effects of overcrowding, poor city planning decisions throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s and a democratic deficit – or lack of ability to control decisions that affect their lives – are among reasons why Glaswegians are vulnerable to premature death.

The research has been endorsed by some heavy hitters including Sir Harry Burns, formerly the chief medical officer for Scotland, Tom Devine, professor of history at Edinburgh University, and Oxford University geography professor Danny Dorling. But the findings are not about eating fewer chips and stopping smoking; they are deeply political.

The effect was to steer economic investment away from Glasgow, and to ‘redeploy’ population out of the city Chik Collins

According to Chik Collins, co-author of the report and professor of applied social sciences at the University of the West of Scotland, new research about “skimming the cream” of the city’s population to rehouse its “best” citizens in new towns, is particularly striking.

The research based on Scottish Office documents released under the 30-year rule shows new towns such as Cumbernauld, East Kilbride and Irvine were populated by Glasgow’s skilled workforce and young families, while the city was left with “the old, the very poor and the almost unemployable”.

In one policy document from 1971, entitled The Glasgow Crisis, it was noted that the city was in a socially and economically dangerous position as a result of the policy that amounted to “a very powerful case for drastic action to reverse present trends within the city”. The policies were pursed regardless.

“The effect was to steer economic investment away from Glasgow, and to ‘redeploy’ population out of the city in a way that led to serious population imbalance; in particular the skilled and the young with families left, many to ‘overspill’ areas and new towns,” Collins explains.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Symbols of aspiration in the 1970s, the Plean Street high-rise flats (demolished in 2010) became known as the ‘Towers of Terror’ by the 70s. Photograph: Chris Leslie

“These areas became the priority for investment while the peripheral estates in Glasgow got cheap housing, isolated from the city, and no amenities – resulting in anger and alienation.”



Preston was eight when the overcrowded Govan tenement where his family lived – with its outdoor toilet and backcourt midden (rubbish tip) – was demolished. They swapped the bustling, if deprived, community of Govan for a housing estate in the south-side suburb of Pollok.

As one of the city’s big four peripheral estates, along with Easterhouse, Drumchapel and Castlemilk, it at first seemed a good way out of squalor. “Here you got a four [bed] apartment with a bathroom and a kitchenette,” explains Preston.

But it was not the paradise they’d hoped for. Children had to be bussed to outlying areas for their education and there were no shops, pubs, dancing halls or picture houses. Those left in Govan also felt the loss. Families were split up; shops left with little custom closed.

In an upstairs room at the Elder Park Workspace, members of the busy Govan Reminiscence Group claim “the heart was ripped out” of the area; a heart only now being healed in this active community. Jean Melvin, who at 92 is an exception to the Glasgow effect rule, explains: “There was industry everywhere in Govan. It wasn’t just the shipyards. It was in every side street, rope works, fire works, jam works, bakeries. And then it was gone.” For Colin Quigley, 47, and his friends, playing among the pulled-down tenements in the 70s was “like growing up in a war zone”.

For those loath to leave the city’s beating heart there was another option – high-rise living. Once seen as a utopian vision, for many the dream quickly faded.

Alex McKay, 54, was born in a Townhead single end, near Glasgow Cathedral and was seven when his family got a flat in one of the 10 20-storey brutalist concrete slabs at Sighthill, just north of the centre, which have since been pulled down.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sighthill, the last of the high-rise flats still standing in 2016. Photograph: Chris Leslie

“Sighthill was a sought-after area in 1969,” he remembers. “They had indoor bathrooms, there was underfloor heating. It was a great area growing up; we were all working families and there was a real community.”

But in the 80s drug dealers moved in, working families fled in fright and there was a lack of investment in the flats, which were damp, cold and stigmatised. “Eventually Sighthill became known as a sink estate; somewhere only the desperate would accept a house,” says McKay.

According to the GCPH report, this was a situation replicated around Glasgow. While many deprived cities suffered from the policies imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s government, the response of Glasgow’s local authorities – which prioritised regeneration of the city centre with style bars, shops and executive flats over repairs and building in the housing schemes – meant it received “a double dose of neoliberalism”, says Collins.

Eventually Sighthill became known as a sink estate; somewhere only the desperate would accept a house Alex McKay

With the help of a new slogan – Glasgow’s Miles Better badged with the Mr Happy character from the Mr Men – the city was rebranded. But the glossy image didn’t stop people dying young.

Professor Florian Urban, head of architectural history and urban studies at Glasgow School of Art, says home ownership was prioritised over social housing in the 80s.

“You would have expected this level of home ownership to have come up against resistance, which it does not,” he notes. “And I would have imagined a staunchly leftwing council would have opposed it, but this is not the case.”

Frank McAveety, the current leader of Glasgow City Council, who also served as leader in the late 90s, sees it differently. Many councillors grew up in social housing – himself included – and acted from a desire to create something better, he claims.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Development finally started on the slum-like Gorbals area in the late 50s. Photograph: Albert McCabe/Getty Images

“The truth of it is that most successful cities in the UK have a good mix; they are not mono housing estates,” he insists. “We’ve revolutionised housing and the level of investment dwarfs anything across the UK in the last 15 years.”

Under his party’s leadership, the council also saw the UK’s largest transfer of housing stock to Glasgow Housing Association, completed in 2003, which paid off the city’s £1bn housing debt.

In Drumchapel, Malcolm Balfour, born in the area and recently elected as a Scottish National Party (SNP) councillor, is not convinced that issues are solved. Here amenities are in short supply; Iceland is the only supermarket in the rundown shopping centre and an application by another chain to move into the area has been blocked.

“There are plenty of bookies though,” he says bitterly. “And a couple of loan places. Basically they put people into ghettos. That led to problems with gangs because there was nothing else for the young people to do.”

This area once housed 34,000 in the early 70s. Now with an estimated population of under 13,000 there are swathes of vacant and derelict land. The sense is one of isolation.

Almost a third of the city’s high-rises have been cleared in recent years and rebuilding has not kept pace. The schemes of modern Glasgow are often desolate and surrounded by vacant land: 91% of people in Springburn (pdf) – in the north of the city – live 500 metres from vacant or derelict land; Maryhill – in the west – it’s 85%; and in Shettleston – the east – 74%.

This could be having serious effects; earlier this year a statistical analysis of Glasgow (pdf) by Juliana Maantay and Andrew Maroko of City University of New York (CUNY), found a link between poor mental health and the proximity to vacant or derelict link. They also found the effect was lessened when communities had a role in the urban planning process.

In Parkhead and Dalmarnock, some of the city’s poorest areas, everyone lives less than 500 metres from vacant or derelict land according to the latest GCPH data. In this area some 40% are claiming out-of-work benefits, 61% are single parent households and almost a third have a disability. The life expectancy for an average man is just 68.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The high-rise flats in Sighthill. All but one of the blocks have now been demolished; many of the residents left behind are asylum seekers and refugees. Photograph: Chris Leslie

Next month marks the second anniversary of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games, seen by city planners as a way of justifying a massive investment in the East End.

Jim Clark, a senior manager of the Clyde Gateway partnership, tasked with a 20-year regeneration programme, was raised in Parkhead until he was nine and has family in Dalmarnock. He admits vacant land has been one the main challenges. “The sheer cost of decontamination and bringing it back into use was going to take a massive amount of money and the market was never going to take that on.”

And it’s not just about transforming the physical space, he says, but also social and economic regeneration.

Nine years in, the Emirates Arena and Chris Hoy Velodrome loom large on the landscape, as well as 700 homes in the former athletes village, 400 of which are social housing. There’s also the investment in dual carriageways that seem to slice the area in two – a £60m motorway link was approved in January.

But an unsettling sense of space – and of fragmented community – persists. Here too the population has been decimated.

Criticism of the legacy of the games and the way the community felt “sold out” is well documented. There were compulsory purchase orders made on flats and businesses. And while local resident Margaret Jaconelli was labelled greedy for demanding more than the £29,000 offered for her flat – a price which would not allow her to buy another – one property developer was paid £17m for land that had cost him £8m. The former Rangers Football Club owner David Murray, meanwhile, sold land for £5.1m, bought for £375,000 just a few years before.

When local shops, a community centre and the Accord day care centre were knocked down to create a coach park despite local opposition, the over-riding sense was not one of community empowerment. Used for 11 days, the coach park at the end of Baltic Street now lies empty.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Calton district in Glasgow is known as having one of the lowest life expectancies. Photograph: Chris Leslie

Dalmarnock resident Robert Kennedy says though there have been improvements, some in the community feel let down. “There is a sense for some that the ends didn’t justify the means,” he says. “There were articulated lorries and dust for years. We lost local shops. During the Games themselves you needed a pass just to get into your own street and it felt like you were caged in.”

The new road investment is a tricky sell for the two thirds of the community who do not own a car, and at £7 a session the Velodrome is considered too expensive for many families who live here. Some are still not convinced by the Legacy Hub, opened last October to replace the community centre, believing the location to be wrong and the name toxic.

The slogan says that People Make Glasgow, and the fact is that they do, but Glasgow has not been made for its people Chik Collins

And not everyone got a new house after the Games rolled out of town. Blocks that surround the playground have had little investment and though insulation is being installed, some are damp and mouldy.

“The community should have been given a lot more involvement. Not just invited to a slide show about road closures,” Kennedy says. However Clark insists they are listening and will act on behalf on the community.

Kennedy hopes that is true. As a play worker at Baltic Street Adventure Playground – a child-led outdoor space instigated by Turner Prize winners Assemble, which also benefited from some Clyde Gateway funding – he sees the benefits of giving children ownership over their own environment. The once disused land of the playground has been transformed in the last three years. The children show off the zip slide, created by popular demand, and the sandpit and climbing wall they helped build.

“The kids make all the decisions here,” says Kennedy. “They put forward ideas and it is our job to help them make it happen.”

Children have regular meetings, can come to board level ones and if anyone steps out of line they decide on sanctions. They make the rules and help shape the vision.

“Things will keep changing and growing day-to-day” is one of seven statements listed on a hand-painted sign outside, both bold and colourful.

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That’s true for Glasgow too. It’s a city that is changing rapidly, its population slowly growing again after many years in decline. In 2014 it adopted a new slogan – People Make Glasgow – and city fathers insist that they are investing in homes, schools and jobs as never before.

But there is a new political wind blowing too. This is the city in which the majority voted Yes during the independence referendum and the SNP took all of Labour’s Glasgow seats in the Holyrood elections last month. The party may also clean up at council elections next year.

“The slogan says that People Make Glasgow, and the fact is that they do, but Glasgow has not been made for its people,” says Chik Collins. “If it had been then we would not see the excess mortality that we do.

“This is not just about the UK governments of old and their damaging policies though. It’s a challenge to the Scottish Government in terms of the scale of the cuts we are seeing flowing from Edinburgh.”

And in a time of austerity, questions remain about who pays for mistakes made, about the ability to learn from them, and about how to stop the next generation dying before their time should be up.

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• This article was amended on 13 June 2016 to correct the spelling of Calton in a picture caption.

