Diary

Then I received an invitation from Tommy Sheridan, MSP, who was shunning the Edinburgh carnival and holding a party in his People's Republic of North Pollok in Glasgow. The venue was a community hall which had been saved from closure by the direct action of the local people. I am not a great one for politics, local or international. I went to Mr Sheridan's event because the hall, at 25 Ladymuir Crescent, is right next door to the Galbraith's grocers shop where I began my working career in 1963.

At weekends and all through the school holidays I was supplier of the spam, corned beef, cheddar cheese, the plain and pan bread, the margarine (and occasionally the butter) which went into the pieces of the working class of North Pollok. Those were the days when we had shipyards and engineering works and real jobs.

At this point I would like to recite a list of the people of Pollok who went on to become squillionaires, Nobel Prize-winners, or who were simply the salt of the earth. But I can't think of any. Ian Brady, the Moors murderer, apparently used to live in Braidcraft Road, but let us not dwell on that.

The sad truth is that over the years, that part of Pollok, like so many housing schemes, became blighted by a poverty that was not only financial but of the spirit. Add the ravages of drugs, mix in a spot of mindless gang violence, and you have the Glasgow sink estate condition in spades. I recall that when some Vietnamese boat people were put into houses in Pollok's Brockburn Road in the 1970s, they escaped after a week.

It was the kind of place where certain people regarded stabbing innocent passers-by as a recreation. It was the kind of place where a useful motto was: He who runs away, lives to run away another day. It was the kind of place where the aspiration was to get out as fast as you could.

Formerly decent streets became bleak canyons of decay.

So it was with some trepidation last Thursday that I approached the place I come from. Add a sense of alienation from the Edinburgh events to a dash of those old millennium blues and you have the full Nostradamus cocktail.

Then I went into the Ladymuir community hall and heard the immensely cheerful story of how it was saved. It is now called the Jack Jardine Memorial Hall after the man who led the community in their fight against Glasgow City Council's decision to close it.

Jack Jardine was a shipyard worker, a community activist, but mostly he was a troublemaker unafraid to stand against authority. When the bus company re-routed a service along a narrow street past a primary school and a nursery, he organised a human barrier, mostly women, to stop the buses. When he ended up on his way to the police station in a paddy wagon with 30 women, he assuaged their fears and concerns by asking: ''Excuse me, is this the bus to the bingo?''

When the council decided to save money by closing the community hall where the locals held their youth clubs, sewing groups, dance classes, music, and drama workshops, Jack organised an occupation. More than two years later, the hall is still open, maintained by volunteers, and is in better condition than when it was under the aegis of the council. Jack Jardine died in January but his spirit lives on.

That night in Pollok wasn't all grim and gritty socialism. I discovered that there are some famous people from Pollok. Billy Davies, the Motherwell FC manager, for one. He is from Brockburn Road, where he obviously developed his quick-thinking and sleightness of foot.

Peter Mullan, the actor and film-maker, was also there. He comes from posh Mosspark but is an honorary Pollokite. He spoke of drama workshops he used to organise with local kids. One of the most successful was the dramatic enactment of the forthcoming trial of one of the youths at the workshop. His peers found him not guilty - ''on account of the polis are all liars'' as the jury foreman put it.

Peter Mullan was particularly impressed by the girl who was given the role of clerk of court. ''You've got to swear in the witnesses,'' she was told. She improvised the wonderful line: ''Get in that ******* witness box.''

The charismatic Tommy Sheridan is himself a Pollok boy. But he didn't leave. He is the councillor for Pollok on Glasgow City Council, a lone voice against the dead hand of the Labour administration. He donates his #300 a week fee from his Daily Record column to the upkeep of the community hall.

Tommy Sheridan quotes a depressing statistic about life in Pollok. Only 4% of the young people go on to college or university. The average for all of Scotland is 30%. Last week the Open University held a meeting at the Jack Jardine Hall and 30 people signed up for degree courses.

The essential ingredient of the wee success story that is to be found in the Jack Jardine Hall is that the local people took control of a small section of their own lives. I hope I can find in the new Scots Parliament some of that Jack Jardine spirit.