Glasgow Housing

The 1960s may have been ‘swinging' for some, but others were still enduring shocking slum living conditions.

The 1960s may have been 'swinging' for some, but others were still enduring appalling slum housing. Sam Dowling lives with his pregnant wife and their seven children in a two room tenement in Nicholson Street, in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, and they're "fed up." In McCulloch Street, in Pollokshields, up to three families, or 18 people, are sharing a flat. The award-winning current affairs series, This Week, probes this dreadful state of affairs.

Reverend Richard Holloway, later Bishop of Edinburgh, is an eloquent contributor, speaking about the crushing effects of living in such conditions. He later wrote of his time working in the Gorbals in the mid-60s as being when his faith in God began to ebb away. Holloway became a vocal campaigner for social issues, and stepped down from his post as Bishop in 2000 after decades of acting "as if I believe there is a meaning to the universe", as he put it. See also Municipal Buildings (1922) which similarly looks at Glasgow's perennial housing problems.