Apparently, when asked where he was from, Jimmy Reid wouldn't say Scotland, or Britain, or even Glasgow, he would reply spontaneously, without thinking: ‘I’m from Govan: I’m a Govan man’. This conscious affirmation of local identity begs the question: what was or is a Govan man? How are we to define the character of such a man? The simple answer is that a Govan man was born in adversity and was unmistakeably shaped by it. He had to face the seemingly never-ending problems of poverty, unemployment, squalor and ill health, and still manage to put food on the table for his family. If he was anything, he was a provider, a family man whose status in the community he lived and worked in was judged by his performance in the crucial area of provision. That provision could also extend to neighbours and friends: people stood by each other in times of hardship in a community largely built on scarcity. As Reid put it:

Reid had personal experience of the community in action when he managed at the age of four to get lost trying to find his way to the docks to ‘see if I could get some work to help … to try and get four hours, four hours’ work, to bring the money home to my mother. I was only tiny at the time. Lost for hours, the place was in uproar. Not just my mother, all the people, the neighbours, were hunting … Eventually the policeman brought me home’.

Community feeling also derived from less-materialistic factors. Govan men and women, many of whose origins lay in the Scottish Highlands, had a strong sense of distinctiveness and independence from greater Glasgow.