Media response

Scottish newspapers reflected general concern at the possible loss of so many jobs in the shipyards. Newspapers were largely sympathetic to the fears of the workers that their employers were about to make of them redundant. This newspaper extract is a typical example of how newspapers reported the events as they took place.

Scottish Daily Express 31/7/71

Our yard! This is now …

OCCUPIED CLYDEBANK.

Liquidator told: Get out.

By Jack McGill

Workers took over Upper Clyde Shipbuilders yesterday. In a quiet but unique revolution, they told Mr Robert Smith the liquidator:

"Get out of the yards. Go back to your accountant's office."

Mr Smith, who announced a redundancy plan for 1,400 men over the next two months, is still there. But the shop stewards are manning the gates of the three shipyards in the doomed groups.

A public enquiry into the U.C.S. affair will be held by the Scottish T.U.C. possibly within the next two weeks. The take over at the yard could continue for a long time. In the present highly charged emotional atmosphere, which swept though the West of Scotland yesterday after the Government's shattering decision on Thursday, everyone is trying to 'keep their cool'.

At a mass meeting of over 2,000 workers, staff and management at the former John Brown's shipyards at Clydebank, the spokesman for the shop steward's co-ordinating committee, James Reid, laid down the rules of the take over.

He said "We are not strikers, but responsible people. We will conduct ourselves with dignity and discipline."