To lose so much of an important industry seems economically suicidal

As a young industrial reporter in Glasgow I saw for myself what management thought of their workforces. Visiting a Govan shipyard I popped into the workers' lavatories. Each stall had a large spike like the top of a Prussian officer's helmet sticking out of the wall just in case anyone wanted to lean back and have a bit of shut-eye. But equally some of the workers were perhaps lax. There was the intoxicated worker who was stopped by a foreman and asked: "Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?" "It had better be," he replied, "Or the guy in the Govan Road off-licence is getting a doin'."

Of course the rise in Clyde shipbuilding didn't happen by accident. There were rivers all over the world where wooden-hulled ships were built. But in the West of Scotland in the 19th century the industrial jigsaw pieces fell into place. The exploitation of iron ore under the ground led to giant strides in iron-hulled ships being built, just as great thinkers building on the earlier ideas of James Watt were making immense leaps in engineering in the use of steam power, condensers, and engines.

Then came a ready-to-learn workforce recruited from the Highlands and Ireland, as hamlets such as Clydebank became towns in a matter of just a few years. There was also a group of shipyard owners who were willing to take risks with all this new technology of its day. The new steam-propelled iron, then steel, ships were demanded globally, and some estimates put at 30,000 the number built on the river. The centre of early shipbuilding was in fact down at Dumbarton at Denny's yard as the Clyde was too shallow in Glasgow. Govan was originally a drover's crossing as Highland cattlemen could ford their cattle from Patrick to Govan because of the river's shallowness.

That all changed when the river was dredged, bringing shipbuilding up to Clydebank and then to Scotstoun and Govan. Perhaps the most famous Govan yard was Fairfields where marine engineer William Elder developed engines that could take ships further on less fuel. Their sturdiness and reliability made "Clydebuilt" a badge of honour for all ships built here. Cargo ships, warships, even luxury liners such as the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were Clydebuilt and proud of it.

I read one figure which stated that at its peak the various Fairfields yards employed 70,000 workers. There was even a shipyard at Polmadie which was not even on the Clyde, but instead built ships in kit-form to be put together abroad. But it was not to last.

After World War Two, yards in countries including Japan and Korea brought in new ways of working, with little or no demarcation, and fabricating ships in sections, slashing production time, helped by large government subsidies. Myopic shipyard owners on the Clyde were too slow to react, partly because of a lack of talent, an unwillingness to invest, and fear of taking on the powerful unions. Yard closures came swiftly with well-known names disappearing altogether.

Workers fearing for their jobs became more belligerent, feeling they were being backed into a corner. The joke in my newspaper office was that my job title should have been changed from industrial correspondent to strike correspondent.

In fact shipbuilding could have been completely wiped out under the Heath Government in the early seventies if it were not for the UCS work-in where the forward-thinking union leaders Jimmy Airlie and Jimmy Reid opted, not for strike action, when the Government wanted to put the yards into receivership, but to continue working on the orders in the yard. It captured headlines around the world, with workers everwhere sending support.

It meant the Scotstoun and Govan yards survived even to this day, and the skills, knowledge and expertise of shipbuilding has continued, hopefully to be used in greater numbers.

"There will be no bevvying," Jimmy Reid once memorably said. But for once it might be time to toast the survival and expansion of shipbuilding on the Clyde.