Taylor's Travels: Lanarkshire

Do not infer from this that she is in any way panic stricken. On the contrary, she seems perfectly at ease with herself, as if this is her normal pitch when communicating with those she loves. Eventually, however, she gets the response she's been hoping for. "Ah've gorrit!" The respondent - her partner, probably her husband, Munro-sized too - emerges from the gents, bacon roll in one hand, the missing dummy held aloft in the other. "Gie's it here!" says the woman as she swipes it from him and plugs it into her son's mouth, whereupon silence sublimely reigns.

Where all these folk are going I cannot say. It could be anywhere or nowhere very far. The destinations on the timetable strike no chord: Little Earnock, High Earnock, Birkenshaw, Hairmyres, Coalburn, Silvertonhill, all of which seem more appealing than those - Lanark, Dumfries, Motherwell, Edinburgh, Glasgow - that I am familiar with. It is late summer and I can feel the welcome warmth of a watery sun on my back. On the few trees leaves are already turning to the colour of teabags. A few weeks hence and they will fall to earth and winter will lock us in its monochrome grip. By then, as nobody needs reminding, we will know whether Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom or in its infancy as an independent country. If it's the latter, then Hamilton's role in the annals of the nation must be further enhanced.

For it was in these parts of course that, in a by-election in 1967, the Scottish National Party gained the famous victory which many view as the spur towards the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament and, subsequently, the election of an SNP-led government and the referendum. The heroine of that gilded hour was Winnie Ewing, then a young Glasgow solicitor. In one of the safest Labour seats in the party's political heartland, Ewing took 46 per cent of the vote. As one veteran Nationalist famously noted, "a shiver ran along the Labour backbenches looking for a spine to run up".

In her autobiography, Ewing wrote: "Many people have asked me over the years if I thought during the Hamilton campaign that I was going to win. I felt I was going to win from the beginning, but it was the motorcade on the Saturday prior to polling day that finally convinced me that it was not a fantasy: that motorcade took an hour to pass."

Those, then, were the days when Lanarkshire aspired to be Scotland's Detroit. After she was elected, Ewing and her family were escorted to Glasgow Central, where they would catch the train to London, by a brace of Hillman Imps, which were provided free by the company that manufactured them at Linwood. Her "key" advisor during the campaign was Hugh McDonald, commercial editor of the Outram group which then owned the Glasgow Herald. "When he told his board he was coming to London on the trip," recalled Ewing, "he had been instructed to keep a low profile and in no circumstances to have his photograph taken."

Now Linwood is no more, as, indeed, Bathgate and Methil and Irvine are no more. Conspicuous by its absence from The Proclaimers' litany is Ravenscraig steel works, which closed in 1990, dealing the Lanarkshire hinterland yet another whopping punch in the guts.

It is a period vividly evoked by Motherwell-born Damian Barr in his memoir, Maggie And Me, "Maggie" being Margaret Thatcher. Barr's father was one of those rendered unemployed when British Steel decided to close the plant. But even prior to that, many people lived in sub-standard housing engulfed by the gamut of social deprivation. Barr's dysfunctional family was among them. All attempts to keep "the Craig" open were futile, as were all appeals to the Thatcher-led government. The portrait Barr paints is one of anarchy and hopelessness, of tar-black nights, domestic mayhem, casual crime and big government ignoring the plight of little people in favour of an industry behemoth. What else could those affected believe other than that they'd been abandoned to their fate?

Strolling into Hamilton's town centre, you sense this was once a place that must have hummed with activity. There are a few Victorian buildings, but mostly there is what in the 1960s stood for architecture. In the window of an empty shop is a poster that says "There is Heart in Hamilton" and perhaps there is, but where? There's a Salvation Army foot-soldier selling copies of The War Cry and a few market stalls where you can buy fluorescent jackets and takeaway paella. The main drag is no worse than you will see in towns across the country but neither is it somewhere you would want to linger long. One of the most attractive buildings is the Hamilton Town Hotel but it closed a few years ago and is now officially "at risk". Opposite it is a pop-up shop, which is occupied by Yes Hamilton, one of whose activists is Haseen Zaman.

Zaman, whose family originated in Bangladesh, is eager to recruit me. He has been resident in Hamilton for a couple of years. He has a flat in the town in which he lives with his wife and two children, both girls, one six, the other 12. When he describes where it is, I know immediately the one he means. It's situated above a loans company and has huge Yes posters in every window. Why is Zaman in favour of independence? "The first thing is why not," he says. "Who doesn't want to be independent?"

Born in Glasgow, Zaman has moved around a fair bit, including a spell in his parents' native country. When he was 16 he returned to Scotland for good and has worked for a variety of businesses, including the Bank of Scotland. His wife, whom he is confident will also vote Yes, is a GP. Recently, he visited Bangladesh to attend his father's funeral and when he arrived back in Hamilton a few months ago he noticed a marked change in support. Around 15 to 20 people a day, he says, have been signing the declaration in favour of a Yes vote. "If you look all over the world, independent countries always flourish. Personally I cannot understand why real Scots don't want to be independent."

Signs of the No campaign are less easy to find. Nor does anyone appear to know where the Conservative constituency party office is. "Is there one?" replies a tradesman to my enquiry. When I tell him there most certainly is, he shakes his head, as if I'd told him I'd just spotted a yeti. In fact, it's a bit out of the town centre, over the bridge underneath which flows the Clyde and past the handsome townhouse and library.

Margaret Mitchell has been an MSP for Central Scotland for more than a decade. Born in Coatbridge, she now lives in Bothwell, one of the most affluent small towns in the country. Over coffee and chocolate biscuits, Mitchell toes the party line without hesitation or deviation. "This is not a time to be disunited," she says. "If you're a separate country barriers just spring up."

She has spent many lonely years in local government, she recalls, as the sole Tory voice on a Labour-dominated South Lanarkshire Council. In 2011 she stood for the party leadership but came a distant fourth behind the winner, Ruth Davidson. Mitchell's mantra is a familiar one. Scotland is better off in the Union. If it ain't broke why fix it? It would be folly to give up Trident. Oil is finite. What currency are we going to use? There are too many risks, too much uncertainty, associated with going it alone. She does not mention the rise of Ukip, the possibility of a vote on the UK's membership of the European Union and the dearth of Tory MPs north of the Border. She has been campaigning flat out for a No vote. Recently, she says, she visited Cornton Vale prison where she addressed the female inmates on the subject of the referendum. "They were very interested in it," she says. But they don't have a vote, do they? "No, but one or two of them might be released by the 18th."

Mitchell is an enthusiast for her bailiwick and reels off its highlights. Have I been to Chatelherault, once the family home of the Hamiltons? To my shame, I have not. Once upon a time, it was regarded as the most regal home in Britain. When King Edward, as Prince of Wales, stayed there in 1878 he told his host: "Ma mither has mony a fine hoose, but nane sae fine as yon!" Presently, intimates Mitchell, Chatelherault is one of Lanarkshire's jewels, though it's more likely to be inhabited by wedding parties than itinerant royals.

While it's true that Lanarkshire has suffered its fair share of slings and arrows, it is resilient. A traveller to these parts 20 or so years ago would have witnessed a very different scene from that of today. I used to visit it regularly with my father who, as retail manager for the National Coal Board, was in charge of several depots, from which lumbered lorries laden with what he called "black gold". My memory is of tall chimneys, pitheads that could have been made of Meccano, thick, belching, noxious smoke and men, their faces black, their bodies bent, wending their way home after another day spent underground. That way of life has disappeared and few now mourn its passing. It was a hard way to earn a living. But replacing such labour-intensive industries cannot be done overnight. It takes decades and, inevitably, there is a loss of community and spirit and direction, not to mention people, who either stay and mark time or - pace Norman Tebbit - get on their bikes and seek work elsewhere. Out-of-town shopping malls do not engender the same sense of ownership that did the mines and plants. Instead of businesses that make things there are retail parks, higher education colleges, rowing in Strathclyde Country Park, ladies day at Hamilton races.

Is this bus going to Motherwell?" I ask the driver. "Unfortunately," he replies. There are only a few of us making the short trip. Most are of an age to travel free. There is a man dressed from head to foot in combat fatigues who could go unobserved in the bush. He is wearing a baseball cap on which is written, "It's a state of mind." He has four children in tow and, he tells the elderly woman sitting opposite him, another four more home. The children speak when they are spoken to and their father talks informedly to them about the Commonwealth Games. "How many gold medals did Scotland win?" he asks. "Nineteen," says his eldest boy. "Correct," says his father.

The centre of Motherwell is much as I remember it, no better or worse than it was a few years ago. Bunting is strung across a cheerless street but its effect is the opposite of what was intended; instead of adding gaiety it contributes to the melancholic atmosphere. There is a stall tended by Yes campaigners but few shoppers seem inclined to stop and engage in debate. The shop fronts are uninviting and there is the usual preponderance of charity outlets, nail salons and tanning studios. And, like so many other Scottish towns, it's not difficult to have your hair cut in Motherwell but you need to explore if you want to buy a cabbage or a carrot. It feels woebegone, surviving rather than thriving. Yet it was in its environs, in that never-sleeping city of hot metal, where the steel was forged that made the Tay Bridge and much of the Forth Bridge, the wonderful and tragic ocean liner the Lusitania, HMS Hood (then the greatest battleship the world had seen), countless locomotives, numberless miles of railway track. What would the modern world have been like without Motherwell?

"There's no doubt Lanarkshire has taken a great knock," says James Gibson, minister of Bothwell Parish Church. Though his immediate hinterland is wealthy, he is well-acquainted with the deep-rooted problems that his parish has inherited. There are generations with little experience of work. Children live in "appalling" poverty. "Sectarianism continues to be a worry. We've not cured the problem. We've got a control on it."

In contrast to Bothwell, Gibson mentions Whitehill and Burnbank, both of which figure prominently on any deprivation survey. There is no easy fix, no miraculous panacea, no possibility of divine intervention. "I look into people's eyes and I'm not seeing anything coming back," says Gibson. The churches have their part to play, as have politicians local and national. "For some years," he says, "we provided breakfasts for the homeless." That it is necessary at this stage of our evolution to offer such a service clearly pains him. There is division in society and it is not only between those in the Yes and No camps. Come what may later this month, the gulf between those who have and those who have precious little is unlikely to change overnight. n

Next week: Alan Taylor reflects on the state of the nation after six months on the road.