On Friday evening former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister Gordon Brown will mark the 30th anniversary of being elected as a Fife MP. Poignantly, the celebratory gathering of family, friends and colleagues will take place in the Kirkcaldy church where his father was minister. Ahead of the reception, he told The Courier how his early years in Kirkcaldy helped form the view of the world he carried all the way to Number 10 Downing Street.
Gordon Brown has described Adam Smith as his “hero of the Scottish Enlightenment” for providing a concept of the just economy.
He has also been quoted as identifying Smith as the most important figure in the development of social liberalism, from the intellectual life of 18th-Century Scotland to the governing strategies of New Labour.
However, apart from their common interest in economics, Mr Brown acknowledges he and Smith share another strong bond the influence of Kirkcaldy.
“Adam Smith was born and brought up in Kirkcaldy,” Mr Brown said. “He used to look out at the sea from where he stayed because he was the son of a customs officer and he saw in Kirkcaldy the fact that ships were coming in and out and that trade was, therefore, going to be the engine of growth for the future of the economy generally. If he’d been born and brought up in a landlocked place, he’d never have seen that.
“I certainly felt I was influenced by my surroundings when I was growing up and that there was a great deal of injustice. People were losing their jobs, not because they didn’t work hard but because the work was going somewhere else.
“I remember the day when the linoleum factory closed around 1963. I remember 550 people lost their jobs and that was a huge blow to Kirkcaldy.
“And then around Kirkcaldy we had the closure of the Michael, the Frances, all the different collieries.
“I was brought up at a time when although Britain appeared to be doing well, Kirkcaldy was suffering from high levels of unemployment.
“I found people were having to emigrate, go down south. I found there was a lot of poverty and my father made me very much aware of that. I think that’s what really influenced me. It’s what you see in Kirkcaldy.”
The Fife roots on Mr Brown’s father’s side can be traced back around 300 years and Mr Brown says it has always been a “great privilege” to represent an area he grew up in.
He continued: “My grandfather was born in Lochgelly. My grandmother was born in Dysart. When I was elected first in 1983 I was elected to the constituency where you’ve got Lochgelly, Cowdenbeath, Kelty…a range of towns all associated with my family’s background.
“It’s a great privilege to be the member of Parliament for an area where you’ve got local connections.
“And of course, that’s been extended in a way because the constituency then included Kirkcaldy, where I was brought up, where I was at school and where my grandmother came from.
“It’s a great privilege because you are being elected by people who know you and people you were at school with, people who you’ve been with as you grow up and you are in touch with local organisations that you yourself were members of, whether it was the BB or the Scouts or football clubs.”
For more of The Courier’s exclusive interview, see Friday’s paper or try our digital edition.