Going local? Anti-poverty activity in contemporary Scotland

For more than fifty years, Scotland’s anti-poverty activity has had, at least in part, a local dimension.1 The Urban Programme of the late 1960s was the forerunner of schemes designed to tackle the inter-related problems of regeneration, deprivation and poverty. It was followed by a mix of largescale area transformations in the 1970s, such as the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) scheme and targeted interventions at smaller areas, such as Strathclyde Regional Council’s Areas of Priority Treatment programme. Local enterprise companies followed in the 1980s, social inclusion partnerships were introduced in the late 1990s, and the targeted thematic local interventions that were part of the Closing the Opportunity Gap strategy came after 2004. In addition to local anti-poverty work in Scotland initiated by government, there has been an array of grassroots activity led by such groups as the Dundee Anti-poverty Forum, Moray Against Poverty, Easthall Residents Association (Easterhouse, Glasgow) and others.