A vote to leave the European Union could deprive Britain of a vital "safety net" against "further devastation" at the hands of the Tories, former prime minister Gordon Brown has warned.
The ex-Labour leader said the EU had provided the UK with funding in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher's government had tried to "create an industrial wasteland in Scotland".
Mrs Thatcher's policies led to "despair" and "desolation" in communities across the country, he said, but added that the EU had "stepped in where the Conservative government failed", by providing funding for projects.
Voters across the UK will decide if the UK remains in the EU or not in a referendum on June 23 with Mr Brown using a rally in Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall to speak out in favour of staying in.
He told the audience the hall they were in had been built in part with European cash, and the EU was providing funds to universities and was helping to pay for other projects, including improvements to the motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Mr Brown said: "I remember the 1980s when the Conservatives tried to create an industrial wasteland in Scotland, I remember the 1980s when there was 'no such thing as society'.
"I remember the communities where there was despair, which Conservative ministers refused to visit, I remember the desolation in the faces that they chose never to see.
"And do you know what stood between us and even further devastation was European money.
"We must not forget that the European Union stepped in where the Conservative government failed, and it would do so again, and it will have to do so again.
"That's why we need the safety net and the insurance policy of the European Union."
Those who support leaving the EU claim to be "defending the British people against Europe," Mr Brown added
But he said: "Sometimes Europe has had to defend the British people against the Tories."
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock also spoke at the rally, which was organised by the Labour Movement for Europe in Scotland.
He dismissed claims that leaving the EU would free up extra hundreds of millions of cash for funding services such as the NHS.
Lord Kinnock said: "All you have to do is to regard the people who are making the promises, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith, Farage.
"They have one absolute basic in common, they are all men who have never in their whole lives given priority to public spending on services, on investment or to community needs or to working conditions and workers' rights, and certainly not to funding the National Health Service.
"They wouldn't save the NHS, they would squeeze it, they would slice it into privatised pieces, they would strangle it and they would do terrible damage. That is their politics, it always has been, it always will be."
He stressed that the outcome of the June 23 vote is "far too important to be left to a Tory psycho-drama starring Mr David Cameron and Mr Boris Trump".
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