SOMETIMES it can take a little while to unpick the tableau that our photographers create. Now the chap on the right is a dustman from the days when waste was not tidily wrapped in bags but was emptied into baskets from the bins in back gardens then carried out to the bin lorries.
So this is 1950, long before someone worked out it would save a lot of time if bins were put on wheels and the tenants could wheel them to the front of the house and save an enormous amount of time for the binmen.
So is this woman paying to have her bin emptied? Not at all. The binmen are at the polling station at Greenbank Church in Busby to vote in the 1950 General Election and presumably the photographer asked him to tote his basket in order to give the picture some vivid imagery.
The woman is probably a party volunteer handing out a last-minute leaflet.
The election was one by Labour but with their majority slashed to only five seats as voters were fed up with the continuing post-war austerity. Sounds a bit familiar.
Turnout was the highest ever at 84%, and Glasgow, which then had 15 seats, returned eight Labour and seven Tory MPs, including a Tory in Govan due to the Orange Lodge vote. The SNP only fielded three candidates in the whole of Scotland who reaped a combined total of under 10,000 votes.
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