Urban Scottish identity

Five-sixths of Scotland's population live in urban areas 20, the vast majority of which are in the rift valley between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The urbanisation of Scotland is not merely a product of the Industrial Revolution, as is often the case elsewhere in Europe. Large-scale immigration from both the Scottish Highlands and Ireland, due to the Highland Clearances and the Potato Famine respectively, resulted in very fast urban growth, particularly in Glasgow. This rapid expansion, along with the notoriously poor tenement housing, soon caused a variety of social problems in urban Scotland. Glasgow quickly developed the ‘myth of the wee Glasgow hard man' 21, helping to define urban identity in particularly masculine terms. The infamous Glasgow estates of Bridgeton, Govan and the Gorbals, with all the related social problems, fed a violent gang culture throughout the middle of this century 22. Much of this gang culture was caused by religious differences and divisions in football loyalty,

Glasgow was a city with a large Irish population and many Gaelic-speaking Highlanders; half the city shared a tribal culture with their Celtic counterparts in Erin. It was a sectarian city. A city of violence, religious fanatics, football loyalty, hard drinking; a city where self-preservation seemed to necessitate membership of a gang or group. 23

The concept of Irish/Highland identity and religion providing a watershed around which other identities are founded is what I shall examine in the next two sections.