WHEN Tony Blair launched his campaign for “respect” last week he helped to hose down graffiti from a vandalised wall and waxed lyrical about an era before antisocial behaviour.

Sadly, not all was as rosy as he made out. A group of Scottish former communists have revealed that Mary Blair, the prime minister’s “grandmother”, was guilty of helping to daub the sort of slogans on walls he was trying to wipe out.

She fostered his father Leo, whose real mother, a music hall singer, had given him up.

The prime minister spoke warmly about Leo’s childhood in the 1930s during a speech and interviews about his “respect” campaign last week. He said that his father’s generation would be shocked by the “loss of respect in local communities and on the street”.

“If you go back to my parents’ generation, my father growing up in Glasgow in a poor community . . . he didn’t have as much money as we have, he didn’t have the same opportunities, he didn’t have travel or communications, but people behaved more respectfully to one another and people are trying to get back to that and most people want it,” he said.

However, friends of Mary Blair, who died of throat cancer two weeks after her grandson’s graduation from Oxford in 1975, spoke of her wayward activities that could easily attract an anti-social behaviour order today.

Activists who belonged to the Communist party in 1930s Govan, the working-class area where Leo was raised, recalled Mary as a firebrand who helped paint Marxist slogans on walls and supported squatters.

Alex Morrison, 86, a former neighbour of Blair’s grandparents and fellow Communist party activist, claimed she helped mix the whitewash used to daub communist slogans on walls, an illegal act.

A photo opportunity for last week’s launch showed Blair using a power jet to remove graffiti from a wall in Swindon.

“I’m sure Mary would have seen the irony and she would be laughing her head off at her grandson’s description of Govan as an idyllic community where everyone respected each other and the law,” said Morrison.

“Tony Blair has not got a clue about how Govan really was in the 1930s. He talks about the old Govan like it was some sort of ideal place, but he is speaking absolute rubbish.

“The reality is that Govan was a terrible place to live. Poverty and misery were widespread and it was a violent place as well.

“There were sectarian fights between the Protestant and Catholic communities and you had lads hanging about street corners with no work and nothing to do. They got up to as much trouble then as the young people do now.”

Morrison said the government’s attempt to suggest that binge-drinking is a new phenomenon is also wide of the mark.

“Drink was also a problem back then and when the pubs used to close at 10pm, there would never be a policeman to be seen. It would also be wrong to say there was widespread respect for the law. As young lads we would instinctively take to our heels whenever we saw policeman.

“It is quite erroneous for Blair to talk about the old Govan as a shining example. If he came and spoke to me and people of my age, they would simply laugh in his face.”

George Greig, 78, a former shipyard worker and friend of the prime minister’s grandparents, said: “I was very angry when I heard Tony Blair saying that Govan in the old days was some sort of idyllic place to live. There was a slum area which became known as ‘Wine Alley’ because the people had no work and turned to alcohol.They couldn’t afford beer or whisky so they used to drink cheap wine and there was a whole load of problems that went along with that.

“Mary Blair was a wonderful woman who was utterly dedicated to the cause of peace and socialism. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would link those two words with her grandson.”

Later in her life Mary Blair was photographed on the back of a lorry decorated with a “peace and socialism” banner.

She and her husband James, a Glasgow shipyard worker, first met Leo’s mother and Tony’s “real” grandmother, Gussie Bridson, while she was on tour.

Bridson was the daughter of a wealthy Sussex landowner. While married to a photographer, she became pregnant with Leo during a relationship with another performer, Charles Parsons. He was a comedian and escapologist with the stage name Jimmy Lynton.

The baby was born in Yorkshire in 1923, while they were on tour. The shame of illegitimacy and the pressures of travelling — Bridson already had two daughters — led her to give up the baby.

As a teenager Leo Blair embraced the “Red Clydeside” beliefs of his foster mother. Settled in a flat in Golspie Street, in Govan, now long-since demolished, Leo became secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League before becoming a barrister.

After discovering the truth about his background, he remembered his real father by christening the future prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

Jenny Richardson, 79, who went to Govan High school with Blair’s father, said: “I remember Leo being a prefect who was always at the centre of things. He disappeared almost overnight from Govan. We got the impression that he felt he was a bit above Govan and didn’t want anything more to do with his roots.

“For Tony Blair to talk about the old Govan being a paradise in nonsense. There were a lot of good people there, but it was a very hard place.”

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