The Jungle isn’t as wild as it used to be. The fleetols now rarely square off with police, and the heroin trade is less public. But knife crime is prevalent, and people are dropping from “street valium” — black market narcotics pressed into pills, and sometimes taken in combination with heroin or methadone. Glasgow’s fatal overdose rate has spiked to rival Allegheny County’s in 2017, when fentanyl drove record deaths.
“A lot of the young people, all they aspire to be is drug dealers,” said Frank Law, who manages YPF’s family support service. “We cannae save everybody. [The drug problem has] been here since day dawn. It’ll be here in day dash.”
Cleaning Day: Dalmarnock Primary School, Glasgow, Scotland
by Stacy Innerst
“If we say ‘why bother,’ then why should communities bother?”
Glasgow is a city of around 600,000 in a region of 1.2 million — the largest in Scotland, a nation of 5.4 million. In April, Glasgow’s government reported that 34% of its kids lived in poverty. That’s not far different from Pittsburgh’s reported figure. In two Glasgow wards (Canal and Calton) more than 40% of kids were in poverty, comparable to much of the Mon Valley, parts of Fayette County and some river towns of Westmoreland and Armstrong counties.
The Child Poverty [Scotland] Act of 2017 demands that the national government, its municipalities and the National Health Service collaborate to virtually wipe out child poverty by 2030.
In its bid to meet that deadline, Scotland boosted funding for schools in poor areas, filled in gaps in the United Kingdom’s benefits system and soon plans to start paying low-income families 10 British pounds ($13) per week per child. The government also pays all college tuition.
“There is an understanding that if those who can pay more (do) pay a bit more, everybody benefits.”
Glasgow City Council Leader Susan Aitken
The National Health Service, meanwhile, has launched or expanded programs like the Money Advice Service at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children, and Cafe Stork for new mothers.
Glasgow City Council is backing free nursery care and preschool for low- and moderate-income families, activities plus meals for kids when school isn’t in session, and a school uniform subsidy for needy families.
It’s all paid for with taxes on upper-middle and upper incomes that are a few percentage points higher than those in the rest of the United Kingdom, said Glasgow City Council Leader Susan Aitken.
“There is an understanding that if those who can pay more [do] pay a bit more, everybody benefits,” said Ms. Aitken, a member of the Scottish National Party. “This is building a society where we bring as many people with us as possible.”
Scotland’s effort comes as the London-based central government, under Conservative Party leadership, reworks the overall benefit structure in what Ms. Aitken calls a “constant bombardment of the poor by the U.K. government.” By some estimates, the U.K.’s benefit cuts are expected to push more children into poverty, despite Scottish efforts to the contrary.
“It’s absolutely right that we set ourselves those targets and we set ourselves those ambitions and aspirations as a nation and as a city. We need to try and do it,” Ms. Aitken said. “I don’t think we can say that they’re an impossibility, because if we concede that, then we end up going, ‘Why bother?’ If we say ‘why bother,’ then why should communities bother?”
Leanne Quigley, who is raising her children in the high-poverty neighborhood of Possilpark in Glasgow, has found support for her children because of Scotland’s focus on child poverty.
Ned (n) Scottish slang for non-educated delinquent
Jason Smith used to show up at events with the intention of getting kicked out — especially when the youth group Y Sort It was involved.
“They used to try to engage me and I’d come to their groups and I’d smash them up. I would fling stuff at their cars,” said Mr. Smith, as a rare bit of late October sunshine pierced a window in West Dunbartonshire, just west of Glasgow. “I’d swear at them, be cheeky at them, fling apples.”
He did that, and more, just for what he calls “the butterflies” — that feeling in the gut that accompanies an adrenaline rush and relieves boredom. His crew would meet on the “motorway” and fight with rival gangs, he said, with a grin. “People might get hit by cars, running away from getting stabbed.”
A giant blue crane known as “The Titan” hangs over the edge of town, in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
He came of age in a place that was to shipbuilding what Homestead was to steel. Like the smokestacks at The Waterfront, West Dunbartonshire has its signature relic: a blue crane called Titan that evokes nostalgia for some, but reminds others that they were born too late for the good times.
In his mid-teens, Mr. Smith built his reputation as “quite a dodgy boy” and drifted into dealing and using cocaine, becoming a “ned” in a spiral of drug debt. But Y Sort It coordinator Gillian Kirkwood “kept giving me a chance,” he said, and she finally shocked him by offering him a job running the events he used to disrupt.
Gillian Kirkwood, Y Sort It coordinator, left, and Jason Smith, a youth worker with Y Sort It, sit in the organization’s lounge in Clydebank.
Seven years later, at age 23, he gets the butterflies counseling troubled kids. “I’ll be full of laughs even if I’ve had a rubbish day.”
Y Sort It — the latter words U.K. slang for putting things in order — is directed by people 25 and under. It mentors kids, refurbishes bicycles, paints murals, organizes youth sports and advocates for things like a new 216,000 pound ($287,000) soccer field.
It’s funded in part by the West Dunbartonshire Council, which oversees towns totaling around 92,000 people that stretch from the postindustrial banks of the Clyde River to the edge of scenic Loch Lomond.
West Dunbartonshire can back groups like Y Sort It because — unlike the Mon Valley’s cities and boroughs — it doesn’t have to limp along on local property taxes.
Scotland is a nation within the United Kingdom, with limited powers over its own taxation and spending, much like a state in the U.S. In Scotland, the national government funds 80-85% of local government and school costs. Compare that to Pennsylvania, in which the state pays for an average of 22% of municipal government and 40% of public education.
