FOR a while, in August of 1975, this street in Shotts, Lanarkshire, was turned into a no-go area.
Residents angered by a new rates increase imposed by Strathclyde Region and Motherwell District Council took matters into their own hands by erecting a five-foot high barrier that blocked Belmont Drive. Council workers with a police escort moved in to remove it, as local children sang “We shall not be moved”. Shortly afterwards, however, another barricade went up. Women who had taken part in the protest watched this new one was torn down by a mechanical shovel.
At the other end of town, meanwhile, in Rosehall Road, Dykehead, another barricade held up traffic for more than three hours.
One woman in Belmont Drive said the rent and rates the residents were being asked to pay were ridiculous. “These houses were classed sub-standard 18 months ago and Lanarkshire County Council gave us a rent reduction then. I am being asked to pay an extra £2.70 a fortnight for a house that I can’t decorate because of the damp.”
Residents in Rosehall Road said they had already complained to the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, about the housing conditions, and had since written again in protest at the rates increase. “We are,” one woman there told the Glasgow Herald, “overrun with rats, and the bedrooms are damp.”
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