Grangemouth and the Games … a Scottish tale of bread and circuses

Millions of us had the same experience in the 1980s. I wasn’t raised in Ravenscraig, or any of the other shattered Scottish towns, I was raised in a place called Antrim in Northern Ireland.

It was a pretty historic village until a textile giant called Enkalon, from Holland, arrived. Soon the population jumped ten-fold and everyone’s parents worked in the ‘big factory’. Until, of course, they didn’t work. More than 3000 people were employed. By 1981, it was over.

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Until then, Antrim escaped most of The Troubles. But unemployment tore our heart out. Paramilitaries and drug dealers found fertile ground. I found myself living in Thatcher’s Concrete Jungle.

Evidently, there wouldn’t have been any fancy Commonwealth Games held in Belfast back then - most of our cinemas were blown up so the notion of entertainment was somewhat constrained.

But I’m trying to imagine how my parents would have felt if the powers that be decreed a national party while they faced life on the dole. My mum and dad both lost their jobs - dad worked in the factory, mum as a wages clerk - but were among the lucky ones who found new employment.

Certainly, I remember the six months when they were looking for work as the most dispiriting of my life. No treats that year.

Like the destruction of towns like Ravenscraig or Antrim, what’s happening to Grangemouth is of the government’s doing. Thatcher decreed deindustrialisation, making Ravenscraig’s end inevitable.

The failed way the policy of moving towards net zero has been implemented made the death of Grangemouth inevitable also.

Don’t get me wrong, I care about climate change. But net zero is simply a policy of sadism towards workers unless government has created and supported alternative green industries so those facing the scrap-heap can find new jobs.

Glasgow 2014 put the city on the global sporting destination map (Image: free)You cannot tell the oil and gas industry its days are numbered and not expect some reaction. The SNP government - along with the old rotten Tory government - had years to grow new green industries. They didn’t.

So, what’s happening to Grangemouth is the result of years of failure by multiple SNP First Ministers and multiple Tory Prime Ministers. It’s too early to blame Labour yet for failures around net zero - but give them time.

And that failure - the lies, waste of breath, false promises, the pathetic policy choices - all add up to make me, I’m afraid, entirely cynical of this government’s embrace of the Commonwealth Games.

A working-class boy I may have been born, but I went on to be a bit of a Latin scholar at school and university. I wasn’t a great fan of Juvenal, the Roman satirist, he’s too Tory for my tastes, but he did coin a phrase which still skewers manipulative politicians: ‘panem et circenses’, bread and circuses.

If the mob was getting antsy, any slippery emperor worth the name would stage some games. Rioting near the forum by the hungry and poor? Kill a few hundred elephants and Gaulish slaves in the Colosseum. That should shut the plebs up.

I’m not saying John Swinney is a latter-day Domitian. He evidently didn’t ‘invent’ the idea of bringing games to Glasgow as a diversionary ruse. But it certainly takes the heat off a government that’s given us nothing but bad news for years.

It does, without question, provide a temporary advantage for the narrative the SNP wishes to spin.

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More than that, though, is the question of government attention span, and how much time the Commonwealth Games has both taken up and will take up.

This, I need not remind you, is a government which cannot build a boat. So, every moment of ministerial time should be spent on the hard grind of domestic policy: bread and butter, not bread and circuses.

I felt my eye twitch at the sight of our health minister Neil Gray running around securing this Commonwealth deal. Why is he also sports minister? Isn’t ruining the NHS enough to fill his diary? Though, wasn’t it Gray who said there’s no crisis in the NHS? He’s a nationalist Jim Callaghan.

And how much time will Glasgow council spend on this? I suppose the one positive is that litter might be lifted from filthy streets ahead of the games to please visiting dignitaries. Glaswegians can return to wading through crisp packets once the bandwagon rolls on.

The arts are collapsing, police can’t cope, prisons are in crisis, doctors and nurses are exhausted, nobody can see their GP or dentist, teachers are drowning, pupils are being failed, the old and infirm are ignored - but hang on, there’s a running race happening in Glasgow. All’s well in fantasy-land.

Given the myriad lies and failures of the SNP, I don’t even believe their promises that the games won’t hit the public purse. For pity’s sake, they’ve taken on games everyone else has rejected. What could possibly go wrong?

Glasgow 2014 (Image: free)

And the legacy? Even if there is one, it’s small change compared to the billions the SNP squandered.

I know this makes me sound like the worst doom-mongering grinch - since the last time I was a doom-mongering grinch - but what other way is there to see this?

I don’t really feel elated about a national celebration while there’s parents deciding whether to feed their kids or clothe them. Sorry if that’s just too negative, or if I’m raining on anyone’s parade.

I wish I could at least feel proud of Glasgow for staging the Games. I love this city that’s been my home for nearly three decades. But I can’t, because I just don’t trust the politicians behind it all.

Forgive me, but anything the SNP now says or does just leaves me suspecting there’s a wizard behind the curtain who’s only in it for Number One. For that, the Scottish government has simply itself to blame.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs and foreign and domestic politics.