A new age of industrialisation is dawning in Scotland. For too long, the communities once supported by the industries of generations gone by have waited for something to take their place. Communities like the Ayrshire one I grew up in have been crying out for a new age of sustainable employment to replace industries like mining, which my grandfather worked in.

It seems appropriate to talk of mining given the recently announced public inquiry into the so-called “Battle of Orgreave” in the era-defining miners’ strike of the mid-1980s.

But rather than looking at the alleged injustices of one high-profile incident, as the Orgreave Inquiry will do, it is surely just as important to explore the wider social and economic injustices inflicted by the decline of mining and other traditional industries.

The most recent State of the Coalfields report from Sheffield University, which explores the condition of former mining communities across the UK, concludes that in Scotland these areas “still display acute social and economic disadvantage”. It is something which Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee has also touched on in its inquiry into industrial transition across Scotland.

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All of which underlines the necessity of sustainable reindustrialisation, the kind which rather than delivering........

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