WERE we able to listen to the sound of the early 1950s, we would hear the steady hum of Scotland's engines. Post war, the country was still one of the world's great industrial powerhouses.

The Clyde was seeing its last glory days. In the early 1950s, here was 12-per cent of the global share of shipbuilding. The railway engineering industry employed more than 10,000 men, 5000 of them at the North British Locomotive Company in Springburn, Glasgow. In 1958 the Ravenscraig strip steel works were built; Scottish mines fuelled the nation's fires. The 1951 census showed more than 50-per cent of Glaswegians had no fixed baths and 37-per cent shared a WC. More than 44-per cent of dwellings were categorised as overcrowded. Enter Scotland's New Towns, at East Kilbride and Glenrothes, symbolic of the new era of society.

Distractions such as cars, television and music were eroding the inf luence that Kirk and chapel had once had. In 1957 police fought to control fans after Bill Haley and The Comets appeared at the Odeon Cinema, Renfield Street.

Politically, change was in the air. The idea of Home Rule bubbled. On Christmas Day 1950, four Scottish Nationalist students liberated the Stone of Scone, the symbol of Scottish sovereignty, from Westminster Abbey.

In 1953 came the Coronation; the nationalists Ian Hamilton and John MacCormick went to the Court of Session to contest the legality of the royal style Elizabeth II. They failed but the point was made.

In 1951 the Conservatives won 49-per cent of the popular vote and 35 seats in Scotland, one percentage point more than Labour and the same number of seats.

The post of Minister of State for Scotland was created by the Conservatives, the start of an administrative devolution that was the driving factor in the building of the Forth Road Bridge (the first major estuary crossing in Britain), on which work began in '58 and the Clyde Tunnel, begun 1957.

In 1958 the Glasgow Herald made its own bit of history when, for the first time in 107 years, it appeared with news on the front page.

The great scandal of the decade was the trial of Peter Manuel, the mass murderer who was hanged in 1958.

In the wider world, Stalin died, Everest was conquered, the Russians put the first satellite into space and Britain was humbled by the Suez crisis of '56.

In 1959 the first large scale oil and gas reserves were discovered in the North Sea. Huge change was afoot.

HEADLINES

The politician Ernest Bevin dies (1950)

George VI dies of cancer, aged 56 (1952)

Charts for pop singles are published for the first time in the New Musical Express (1952)

Sweet rationing ends (1952)

Everest is conquered (1953)

Churchill receives his Nobel Prize in Stockholm (1953)

The Commons votes to retain the death penalty (1954)

The first British hydrogen bomb is detonated over Christmas Island (1956)

Parking meters first appear (1958)

Liberace wins GBP8000 in damages from the Daily Mirror after the Cassandra column implies he is homosexual (1958)

QUOTE OF THE DECADE

The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth (African) national consciousness is a political fact.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, February 3, 1960

LOCAL NEWS

A number of chickens used in cancer-research experiments were stolen from the grounds of Cleddans House, Bishopbriggs, the home of Dr P R Peacock, director of research at the Royal Beatson Memorial Hospital, Glasgow. Dr Peacock said some birds were the result of 16 years of specialised breeding.

From the edition of September 8, 1956