Campbeltown: ‘No jobs, nothing to do’

“We’re all giro technicians,” says 22-year-old Kai McLellan, sitting on one of the cosy sofas inside the Kintyre Youth Enquiry Service, a small charity in Campbeltown, Argyll and Bute, dedicated to helping the young people in one of Scotland’s most remote communities find work and stay out of trouble.

“There’s not much to do here, and there are no jobs,” continues McLellan, who returned to the town after college because of his mother’s health. “I’ll do anything. I just want a job.”

Welcome to Campbeltown, the town perched at the end of the long and winding road that snakes down the Kintyre peninsula.

It is the most vulnerable town in Scotland, according to an index of 90 communities compiled by the Scottish Agricultural College’s Rural Scotland in Focus 2012 report.

Public sector employment is high here, at 47.2 per cent, and there are concerns about impending job cuts. Many school-leavers find that with no shipbuilding industry left, jobs are hard to come by. This, coupled with an ageing population and the town’s inaccessibility (it is an arduous four-hour drive from Glasgow on poor roads), make it a prime target for the SAC’s “vulnerable” description.

There are plenty of community projects here, from a shiny new £500,000 bunkhouse – partly funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, that it is hoped will attract backpackers – to the Kintyre Youth Enquiry Service, which takes young people on Outward Bound trips, organises football matches and gives them advice about gaining employment (they’ve helped 13 young people into jobs in the past year alone).

“David Cameron goes on about his Big Society, but it’s been happening here for years,” says one resident. “That’s how communities like this survive.”

But if there is an economic future here, perhaps it lies in private investment. The Royal Hotel was reopened earlier this month by an American investor who owns the nearby golf course at Machrihanish, although as one resident points out, the work is “mainly seasonal”.

Along one of the winding old streets, Charlie’s Gents Hairdressers is doing a roaring trade. Charlie McFadyen, 79, has been cutting men’s hair ever since anyone can remember.

“It’s changed now,” he says as he trims the sideburns on a customer. “It used to be you’d have six or seven in a family and one would go into the shipyard, another to the fishing. Now it’s much more difficult for the young folk. But a lot of them still stay. It’s still a good place to live.” Emma Cowing in Campbeltown