At the time, Clydeside's operating area was much larger, covering Inverclyde (including the towns of Gourock and Greenock), the Isle of Bute and much of the south side of Glasgow.
In 1970 he was elected to Parliament for the Clydeside seat of Dunbartonshire East, defeating Communist shipbuilders' trade union leader Jimmy Reid.
A year after arriving on Clydeside, he became general manager of R. Napier and Sons, where he designed innovative fast, transatlantic liners for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique.
Though the northern portion of the former Western SMT's operating area, covering Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and the Isle of Bute, was ceded to a new company, Clydeside Scottish, in June 1985 (in order to prepare the Scottish Bus Group for deregulation in 1986 and eventual privatisation), Clydeside Scottish was remerged with Western in May 1989.
The Coalition government greatly overreacted to the strike, thinking that a Bolshevik insurrection was about to begin on Clydeside, and sent British Army troops and tanks onto the streets of Glasgow to control the situation.