“Has anyone got a close up photograph of the Blantyre War Memorial?” That was the question being asked in November 1977 by Hamilton District Council who wanted to replace a plaque stolen from the memorial months ago.
Shamefully, the plaque commemorating the names of Blantyre’s fallen was stolen, pulled right off the war memorial and taken away in Autumn 1977. To this day, it remains one of the most despicable acts of disrespect we’ve ever seen in this town.
The problem was the plaque contained carefully compiled names of Blantyre servicemen killed during WW2, but now the task of replacing the plaque was challenging to say the least. Where do you even begin when there was no trace of who compiled the first list? Making matters worse, the plaque was missing at the 1977 remembrance service.
Something needed to be done.
Mr James Murdie, head of the Council’s Leisure and Recreation Department, the department in charge of cemeteries, made an appeal in late November 77. “We would like anyone with a photo of the memorial to come forward. The plaque must have been stolen for its scrap metal value and we want to replace it with all the original names. This is proving quite a problem. We have not yet found a list of the names on the old plaque.”
He explained that the Council had approached the War Graves commission and the Royal British Legion for help. In the following months, a new plaque was erected, the one which is there today.
I’ve not seen any follow up to this story and suspect those who stole the original plaque were never caught. In my photos from 2015, the Blantyre War Memorial is pictured, along with the replaced WW2 plaque, which remembers the Blantyre men (and a woman) who died in that terrible conflict.
