ON May 1, 1961, less than two years before his death at the age of 56 in January 1963, Hugh Gaitskell, the widely-admired leader of the Labour Party, visited Glasgow. During his six hours in the city he spoke to 38 Labour candidates who were taking part in the following day’s municipal elections, and toured redevelopment areas, including Ballater Street (above).
Gaitskell expressed disappointment that Scotland’s joblessness numbers had changed so little since his visit in 1958, and expressed some sympathy for the schoolteachers who had been threatening to strike. Such a strike would be quite unprecedented, he said, but he understood their main concern was about their pay - “this is something that concerns most of us.”
He praised Glasgow Corporation for “building high” and making the most of the land available to it. But it was scraping the barrel for sites, and he said the only answer was another new town; he understood that it had been agreed at local and central government level that it should be in Renfrewshire.
When Gaitskell died in a London hospital in 1963, tributes were paid by, among others, the Queen, President Kennedy and Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, said Gaitskell “had achieved great political stature, and his premature death is a grievous loss to the whole nation.”
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