It’s hard to be negative about Glasgow’s new footbridge. I remember speaking to the engineers who built it and the locals who came to see it and the men from the council who hoped it would help the regeneration of Govan. Also – big news – it’s a major Scottish project that came in on budget and was the result of the UK and Scottish governments working together like grown-ups. As I say: hard to be negative.

But even as I was standing there on the bridge in the early days hearing how positive it was, there was a sign of something more troubling, darker. As part of the regeneration of the area, several new blocks of flats have been built beside the bridge and I was told they were affordable for people on relatively low incomes in an area where most folk are in social housing. But that’s when I noticed the fence at the Govan side of the bridge and the indication of something very different on the other side.

It turned out that on the other side was a family who very much disagree with the theory that the new bridge and the flats and the regeneration is 100% good for Govan. One of the people from the council said to me that gentrification wasn’t part of the picture with the bridge and the flats because the development was bringing in people with a bit of money in their pockets to support the services and wasn’t displacing a community. The Stringfellow family, the family living on the other side of the fence near the bridge, beg to differ.

The bottom line is that Glasgow City Council want to expand the development of the Govan side of the bridge and want the Stringfellow family off the site so they can build more flats and landscape the area. The Stringfellows – who are travellers and make their living, or used........

© Herald Scotland