A TOWN IN CRISIS: By Scottish Political Editor Tom Gordon

LIKE the square bottle and the slanting label, the Striding Man logo has helped make Johnnie Walker one of the world's most iconic drinks. The image of the cane-toting dandy struts above the factory where the whisky is bottled, a building that dominates Kilmarnock physically, emotionally and economically.

Last Wednesday the Striding Man lost his confident swagger. Diageo, the world's biggest drinks manufacturer, announced it was closing the plant with the loss of 700 jobs.

After almost 200 years, Johnnie Walker is striding away from his Ayrshire roots.

Diageo's corporate statement could hardly have been more callous, bouncily describing a package of connected shut-downs as "restructuring opportunities".

The morning after finds the huge drinks plant on Hill Street baking in the heat. An electronic sign at the gate says the temperature on site is 30.8C. Rows of workers loll against railings at the loading bays and smoke in near silence.

The humid air feels thick as paste.

"There's no work being done," says one woman worker returning from lunch in town. "That's what happens when you lose hope. It's devastation in there."

Her friend says some of the packing lines have been slated for closure as soon as December - there are fears the two-year wind-down outlined by Diageo might be much shorter. Questions about redundancy terms go unanswered.

"You're talking a lot of couples in there with mortgages who are going to lose their homes. How's Diageo going to help them?"

Like other employees, the women have been warned not to talk to the media.

No-one wants to give their name, but a few agree to speak out of sight of the factory.

"We were told on Tuesday there would be a meeting on Wednesday morning," says a man who has worked at the bottling plant for 15 years.

"We just thought there would be some cutbacks because things had been falling off a bit recently. We didn't expect that. It's a disaster, and a disaster for the town."

The woman next to him is nervous. "It's terrible, awful," she ventures. "There's nothing else like this in Kilmarnock."

On a car park wall three female employees are sitting quietly in the fierce sun. "Everyone is just devastated," says the oldest of the group, shading her eyes with a hand.

"I think it will just kill Kilmarnock. It's not just the workforce here it's killing, it's the whole town."

The youngest pipes up. "There are a lot of couples in there." She indicates the woman next to her. "She's one of them."

The woman, in her late twenties, confirms her partner also faces the dole, and they have a young family to support.

"There's nothing you can say. We're all in the same boat," is all she can get out. It seems an effort for her not to cry.

The same day as the Kilmarnock announcement, leaked memos suggest looming job losses on the Clyde shipyards. Used to periodic doom-mongering, the Glasgow workforce seems resilient.

But in Kilmarnock, fatalism has taken hold. There is a sense that a way of life is passing; that there has been a death in the family.

That said, there is still anger that a company forecasting a rise in profits of up to 6% could abandon the town to make more money elsewhere.

Just along the road, outside the office of Scottish Enterprise, the quango tasked with increasing Scotland's job count, another Diageo employee is eating a Scottish last supper of chips and Coke.

"I've been there more than 30 years. People get less for murder," she jokes without pleasure.

"That's our working lives over. I'm 50. There's school leavers and young ones coming up. I can't compete. This will be my last job."

She says staff are angry at the management, not just for the finality of its decision - she can't imagine a compromise - but at their ingratitude.

"We've bent over back wards for them for years. But they're not just businesslike, they're ruthless. That's what I would call them.

"This town is dead in the water. We were the second biggest employer after the council."

At the Hillhead Tavern, where several newly "restructured" staff drifted in on Wednesday, landlord John Rees shares the pessimism.

"I think the area is finished once they've gone. Unemployment is bad enough without this adding to it. What's Kilmarnock going to be like in two or three years? A ghost town."

Outside, 67-year-old Sam Anderson, the head barman, and Andrew Davidson, his 74-year-old customer, go through the litany of the town's industrial dead. "Massey Fergusson, Saxone - gone," chants Sam.

"You used to be able to leave your job one day and walk into a new one the next. Now there's no jobs," says Andrew.

As they speak, a red Johnnie Walker lorry pulls into the goods yard adjacent to the tavern. "Keep walking," it says along one side.

If they want jobs, Diageo's staff may have to. Des Browne, the Labour MP for Kilmarnock and Loudon, is hoping they can avoid that.

The former Scottish Secretary met Paul Walsh, Diageo's chief executive, on Thursday.

The workforce will now get a chance to pitch for their survival, he says. It seems a vain hope, but workers and unions will be able to come up with alternative business plans which they can then present to the company in the hope that their model might keep the plant running.

While he doesn't share the workers' fatalism, Browne agrees with those who fear that the end of Diageo in Kilmarnock would gut the town.

"They're absolutely right. This is ripping the heart out the town. This decision is not being taken because of recession. It's about increasing profitability and increasing margins."

Some might see it as a bit rich for a New Labour MP to become indignant at the workings of the free market, but he speaks with the zeal of a convert.

"I think this is a devastating decision, it's an unnecessary decision, it's wrong," he says.

However, Browne accepts that Diageo, which includes the Labour peer Lord Watson among its external advisors, might not be for turning.

"If they don't accept the case, they have promised me that they will make a meaningful contribution to the future of Kilmarnock."

Such as?

That would be for them, he says vaguely.

In truth, no-one knows what would happen if Diageo left - other than misery.

With a working-age population of around 26,000, the loss of 700 jobs in one lot to Kilmarnock would, as one MSP put it, be a "hammer blow".

In May, the Holyrood constituency centred on the town was 12th highest out of 73 for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) claimants, at 5.5% against a Scottish average of 3.9%.

Although Diageo says staff can transfer to take up some of the 400 new jobs at its expanded packaging plant in Fife, moving when a partner is working elsewhere or children are at a critical point at school isn't easy.

Last August, the local Citizens Advice Bureau reported it had already "reached capacity" on the back of the credit crunch.

Margaret Burgess, its manager, says no-one has been in for help yet, but she expects a wave of cases from Diageo over the next few months as the impact of closure sinks in, then a second after the redundancies start and people go from wages to JSA, currently £64.30 a week for a single person or £100.95 for a couple.

"There's whole families, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews who are working for Johnnie Walker," she says. "I think the impact on the town is enormous. It's the last major employer, the last one left, apart from the local authority and the health board. It's just public sector now. There's nothing left."

She said people thrown out of work typically tried to struggle on and pay bills as before, then suddenly became overwhelmed. People should seek advice early, she stresses.

"When you walk around town in the hot sun, people's faces are miserable.

"A company that has helped put Kilmarnock on the map is now destroying it."

On Friday, Des Browne, finance secretary John Swinney, and the head of Scottish Enterprise Jack Perry met Diageo executives at Kilmarnock to see if there was an alternative to closure.

Government officials have now also been tasked with seeing if they can work out how to save the Port Dundas distillery which has been threatened too, and where another 140 jobs are set to be lost.

Willie Coffey, the Kilmarnock and Loudoun MSP, also launched a petition to save the Johnnie Walker plant in conjunction with Kilmarnock Football Club.

East Ayrshire Council yesterday took out press adverts castigating the company for failing to appreciate the impact of its decision.

The heads of the three main parties complained they hadn't been consulted and would have worked with the firm, if they had been asked.

However, Diageo shows no sign of blinking yet - their eyes fixed on the bottom line.

A spokesman said the firm would still have 4000 employees in Scotland after the proposed changes and would maintain its base in the country.

"We understand and recognise that it will have a huge impact on the community, the town of Kilmarnock, employees and their families. We are very sorry for that. But for the wider picture and sustainability of the business in Scotland we believe this is the right proposal.

"We have to look at the longer-term sustainability of our business, and this is unfortunately what's required."