AS the Glasgow MP Campbell Stephen once said, the fires at Dixon’s Blazes ironworks could be seen “any evening for many miles.”The Crown Street plant had been in operation since 1839 but closure was announced in November 1958 with the loss of 200 jobs. Five months previously, 300 men had been dismissed when pig-iron production ceased, leaving only the coke over and by-products plants in operation. The owners, Colvilles, said the blast furnaces “are now too small to compete effectively with large and more efficient units ... it is most unlikely that production will be resumed, and the closure can be regarded as permanent.” Gorbals MP Alice Cullen raised the new job losses in the Commons, and this paper said closure would cause a daily loss to the Scottish Gas Board of three million cubic feet of coke oven gas that until now had been delivered to the Tradeston gasworks. The first blast furnace at Dixon’s had been opened in 1839 by ironmaster William Dixon and within a year five were in operation. In 1926 Alice Cullen’s predecessor as Gorbals MP, George Buchanan, spoke of the “constant complaints” about the air pollution “and the stench caused by the smoke” from Dixon’s. In 1933, MP Davie Kirkwood lamented that the Dixon’s men received just 36 shillings a week “for doing one of the hardest and most laborious jobs that a man can possibly do, that is, handling pig iron and loading it into trucks.”

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