My great-great-great grandfather, Thomas Niccol, ‘owned’ a chunk of Greenock: 6 properties around East Stewart St., 200 years ago.

At the time, Greenock was a boomtown: money was being made on the back of sugar, shipbuilding and slavery.  It wasn’t a salubrious place at the time.  The streets  were ‘receptacles for decaying animal and vegetable matter, manure lay alongside doors, under windows, below stairs and in confined closes. Pig houses abounded and in some instances pigs were in the very dwellings.’

Attracting desperate migrants from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, it was a shanty of tenements, back-lands and shebeens.  But its docks were thriving, the basins full.  It was a trans-shipment port of rum, sugar, cotton, coconuts, salt cod, wine and fruit.  It was a major centre in the timber trade, with vast stocks of oak, elm and yellow pine from Canada and deal from the Baltic stored in its timber pools to feed the rapidly expanding, timber-based shipbuilding industry. Sugar refining was an important element of the local economy.  By  1850,  Greenock was refining 33% of the Britain’s (massive) sugar consumption.  The figure rose to 60% of UK supply by 1872.

The population peaked about 1921 at 81,000.  By 1966, the population had dropped to 78,000.  Now it is 41,000.

In the 1960s, Greenockians were still building ships and marine engines for Scotts, John Brown’s, William Lithgow’s, Fergusons, Kincaid’s, and Rankin and Blackmore. Still boiling sugar for Tate & Lyle. Still making computers for IBM.

Now the docks are empty.  Call centres and insurance services provide what employment there is.  Greenock’s main shopping street disappeared in 1975, along with several other central streets, as the area was pedestrianised. In 1992, it was covered and enclosed as the 85-unit Oak Mall (in administration as of 21 November 2013).   A small retail estate is opposite the Waterfront swimming pool and leisure centre.  The core of the town is fractured by the pedestrian-unfriendly A78, transit back and forth to the riverside through pedestrian underpasses.

Apart from the railway embankment, the area Thomas Niccol owned (and exploited) is covered now with a scab of low-rise industrial units.  The once bustling quaysides now an apathetic strip mall of KFC, Taco Bell, Morrisons, Tesco, Aldis, MacDonalds and lifestyle initiatives – the Cruise Terminal, The Waterfront Leisure centre and of course the Beacon Theatre.

In some ways, it feels a  bit like Rome: past grandeur (pretentious and hubristic) still embedded in the low-rise modernity.  The Customs House retained, refurbished but not quite re-employed.  The Victoria Tower on the Municipal building looking like it had added 2 too many levels in its phallic ambition. 

No-one in my family history ever owned as much as Thomas Niccol – at least in terms of property.  The next generation (at least in my ‘line’) reverted to proletarian status – it’s a complicated story. And it’s not to say that prospering on  sugar and slavery was right.  But Greenock was a boomtown:  the shocks since 1970 have halved the population.  And now the sea-level is on the rise.

Here are some of the things I head about Climate Justice in Greenock.

I heard that the Beacon Theatre would be below the tideline even in a 1.5 degree scenario.[1]

I heard a man was sorry that he had to ask me for change to buy a can of beer.

I heard that the tanker Sea Empress ran aground near Milford Haven in 1996 after the Texaco refinery  insisted she berth against the tide because the refinery was running out of crude oil.  She spilled 72,000 barrels of crude in the incident.[3]

I heard that Ukraine has no influence on fuel prices: they do not produce oil.

I heard that the Greenock area has the highest levels of power, heat and cooling demand in Inverclyde but only one out of 21 of the proposed projects in the Clyde Mission Energy Master Plan are in the Greenock area. [2]

I heard someone say she had to run away 13.5 litres of water away before her water ran hot.

I heard that the Sea Empress has been renamed five times since 1996.[3]

I heard someone say she had never heard of Macondo. [4]

I heard that you can’t change human nature.

I heard that Texaco commissioned Chinese tugs to refloat the Sea Empress after local tugs had failed and the fee proposed by Dutch tugs were too high.  And that Texaco had to recruit the owner of a Milford Haven takeaway restaurant to liaise with the tugs.

I heard that the war in Ukraine is even raising the price of coal exported from Australia.

I heard that the Sea Empress spill killed over 6,000 scoter ducks, razorbills and guillimots.[3]

I heard that working for Union Carbide gave someone the grue.

I heard that Ramadan involves a lot of feasting.[5]

I heard “it’s not real for us yet.”

I heard “There was some hunger – it was shared’ is a great line.

I heard the customers and staff of the Black Cat sing 9-to-5, Magic Monday, Feel like a Woman, Mama Mia, Wanna Dance with Somebody and Waterloo.

[1] Climate Central | Comparison: long-term sea level outcomes

[2] Clyde-Mission-Energy-Masterplan-Main-Report-Final-Version.pdf

[3] MV Sea Empress – Wikipedia

[4] Deepwater Horizon oil spill – Wikipedia

[5] Ramadan: Month of Fasting or Month of Feasting? – IslamOnline