Today, I am very pleased to publish a brief article from Dr Gwen Jones-Edwards explaining The Glasgow Effect.  

First, let me set a scene:

Unfortunately, the referendum has come too late for some.  However, if we do not take our destiny into our own hands, many others are condemned to the same fate.

Ecclesiastes 9:3 – ‘Where There’s Life, There’s Hope’

This expression has endured for 2000 years and held out a beacon of hope for everyone in adversity.  To my dismay, I now discover that this is no longer true.  Based on medical evidence we must now amend this expression to say, ‘Where there is no hope, there is no life’.  This describes a condition known as ‘The Glasgow Effect’.

I came to Glasgow with my family in 1951 and grew up on the Clydeside.  Like many around me I saw hardship, desperate living conditions, poor diet, families not able to keep themselves warm in the winter or clothes themselves properly.  Times were hard, very hard.  WW2 had come to an end and 6 years on there was no sign of a better world, or even a return to the old one.

People all around began to rebuild their lives.  People had lost their jobs, some had lost their homes and possession.  Most people had lost someone dear to them. Nevertheless, they worked to improve themselves.  They re-formed communities, educated themselves, they turned to friendly societies and trade unions to give them a voice.  They never gave up and slowly but surely many began to improve their lot.  Many left to seek a better life in other parts.  I remember the £10 one way ticket to Australia.  Like many others I found the only way to better myself was to head to London; which I eventually did in 1990.  Over the years I began to share my time between London and Glasgow.  I now spend much of my time back in Glasgow.

But now I see a different Glasgow; an unfamiliar Glasgow.  This is a Glasgow where many are stuck in the past.  There is a soullessness that feels different from my Glasgow of the 50’s.  You don’t have to look far below the surface to spot the evidence; the discarded needles, the tinfoil and the distinctive smell of drugs.  This explained, to me, the difference I was seeing.  We must do something about this, this cannot go on.

I was wrong.  I was wrong to identify street drugs as the cause of this new sense of hopelessness in a once proud city.  This was not the cause; this was the symptom.  The cause was far more sinister.

Out canvassing for YesHelensburgh&Lomond we met a family, passionate about a YES vote; the family of Dr Gwen Jones-Edwards.  We were invited in for a chat and a cup of tea.  We exchanged stories of how we had arrived at YES.  Hearing that I had grown up in 50’s Glasgow, Dr Gwen explained a medical condition known as ‘the Glasgow Effect’.

I HAD WITNESSED THE SYMPTOM …. THIS WAS THE CAUSE.

Dr Gwen’s explanation of ‘the Glasgow Effect’ had such a profound affect on me I asked her to write a short article for my blog.  I want to share this knowledge.  I want others to consider this when deciding how to vote in Scotland’s referendum.

For some, the referendum comes too late.  It may even be too late for their children or their children’s children. But it is never too late to act.  We must never accept the inevitability of this.  

IT IS ONLY INEVITABLE IF WE ALLOW IT TO BE SO.

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The ‘Glasgow Effect’ – chronic under-investment, biological damage and early death.

Author: Dr Gwen Jones-Edwards

It is an unacceptable fact that poorer people in Scotland have improved their life expectancy more slowly than in any other Western country except for Poland. Health status in Glasgow is exceptionally poor: only 50% of men living in the Shettleston ward can expect to reach their 65^th birthday, but the effect is pervasive, so that any person living in Glasgow can expect a shorter lifespan than a person living elsewhere. No such effect is to be found in similar post-industrial cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, so what is it that causes such a health inequality in Glasgow? Why is there such a gap?

The most obvious potential cause, smoking, can be ruled out of the list of direct causes, as indeed can other causes, such as poor diet. The prevalence of smoking in Scotland is not greater than in other countries; however, if you are from a poorer class in Scotland, not only will you have a fourfold greater risk from dying of lung cancer (if you contract it) but you will also be at a higher risk of dying from lung cancer even if you do not smoke! What, then, is the factor which is causing such high morbidity and early death rates in central belt Scotland?

Two societal factors have a clear impact on your risk of early death, and these two factors are poor housing and unemployment. Poor housing and unemployment tend to march together with a general sense of hopelessness, and it is this hopelessness, and also lack of control over one’s destiny that is the most probable cause of what we know as the ‘Glasgow effect’.

Having a sense of control over your life makes for good health: it is the worker on the shop floor who is most stressed, and not the managing director. In animal experiments it is possible to demonstrate that rats who are able to control their access to food (by means of a lever), are far less stressed than rats who have no control, even if the total amount of food delivered to the two sets of rats is exactly the same. Chronic unemployment will increase your stress quite massively, but your solutions to the predicament that you find yourself in will be fewer by nature of your dependent situation.

Stress causes a release of hormones, including cortisol.  This hormone is useful in acute situations, such as infections, but when it is constantly poured out into the bloodstream it will be very damaging.  A chronically high level of cortisol will cause split arteries, will cause you to develop diabetes as a result of changing the fat types within your body, and will cause you to be less able to fight malignant cells, thus leading to more and nastier tumours. Perhaps it won’t be a surprise that stress causes a change in the way that brains work, but it might be more surprising to learn that it changes the structure of brains.  Stress causes a brain structure called the hippocampus to shrink, and another, called the amygdala, to expand. This will cause a person to be less able to regulate their emotions, and also to become more anxious and aggressive, a state which will have a significant knock-on effect on the way a person will view the world. It will also have a knock-on effect on how that person is able to parent a child, and thus a vicious circle is perpetuated of persons who are stressed, have no control over their environment, and who cannot teach effective coping strategies to their children.

A further highly damaging effect of chronic stress and raised cortisol is to be found on the chromosomes. As we age, we slowly lose the telomeres, the end parts of our chromosomes, and this is what causes the biological effects associated with ageing. When stress is chronic, the telomeres shorten much more quickly, causing premature ageing.  In large part this explains the high incident of unpleasant disease that we see as a result of the ‘Glasgow effect’; people suffering from this chromosomal damage are biologically older, and sadly there is a long-term genetic loading for their children and grandchildren, which bodes badly for the future.  An improved health service will do little to help, because it is doing all it can; the only solution is a full-scale investment in infrastructure and employment in central Scotland

The government in Westminster has a reprehensible part to play in all of this. The population of Glasgow and central belt Scotland had come here to work, but closures in the heavy steel and coal industries were instigated in the 1960s by the Labour government of the time, demonstrating even then that Scotland was expendable.  The closure policies continued under Margaret Thatcher’s infamous Government, and by 1983 the number of unemployed in Scotland had risen to 1.5 million. However, worse was to come with the closure of the mines, the car industry, shipyards and steelworks, with the result that generations of Scotland’s workers have been unemployed.

The Conservative vote in Scotland did not survive Thatcher’s policies, but it did not matter – there were sufficient voters elsewhere to keep the party not only as a viable force, but also as a party which has deeply coloured Labour party principles.  In today’s UK, we see large amounts of investment directed towards the London city-state, with 80% of last year’s new UK jobs being created within it. No real employment has ever come to Scotland, and meanwhile the awful biological effects of unemployment continue unabated.

And for this disempowered, stressed, and chronically sick society, what hope? Not a great deal: a vote for Labour will bring a cut to youth benefits, unless those affected attain qualifications. Young people from deprived areas suffering from biological changes will be cast into an abyss of dwindling hope:  it will be very difficult for them to learn, and stopping their benefits will serve only to increase their sense of hopelessness and their level of stress. Ultimately it can only lead them to further exclusion, to an even further diminished ability to learn, and it will end in their shorter lives.

But Westminster does not care, it has never cared, and it is not about to start caring now.

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Footnote:  Dr. Gwen is not a politician. Her role in mental health gives her a specialists understanding of the impact on people from their environment.  She does not control or influence that environment; the Westminster Government has ultimate responsibility.  The Glasgow Effect did not happen overnight.  This was and is the result of Government Policy and a long and sustained failure to support Scotland’s industries and infrastructure; people’s jobs, their livelihood and their future.

The referendum is a straight choice between Westminster and Holyrood.  It is not between Conservatives and the SNP.  The SNP did not close or allow to close our shipping industry, our steel industry, our engineering base, our car industry or our locomotive works.  The SNP did not give away Scotland’s oil and gas revenue gift.  Successive Westminster Governments, both Labour and Conservative have plundered Scotland’s wealth, discarded our pleas for support and dismantled our infrastructures; and with it our ability to recover.

Scotland has NEVER had the ability, through the ballot box, to hold the Westminster Government to account.  We came close at the referendum in 1979, but that was snatched from us.

On 18 September 2014 Scots have the ONE and the ONLY opportunity, through the ballot box, to begin a nation’s recovery.

We will not get a second chance, so we must take it and we begin by voting:

YES