Jim Strang: ‘Why tackling domestic abuse is at the centre of my CIH presidential year’

Mr Strang is certainly an open book. Practically every inch of wall space in his cosy office – lit by desktop lamps that wouldn’t look out of place in a show home – is covered by framed pictures and illustrations, all of which have a personal story behind them.

“That’s Coire Lagan [on the Isle of Skye],” he says, pointing at one photo of stunning Scottish scenery. “That is the finest place on Earth. My son has agreed he will scatter my ashes on that very rock.”

His determination to continue the campaign Ms Inman started during her presidency has seen him open up publicly about his family’s horrendous experience of violence at the hands of his father. He decided to make the issue the central focus of his presidency “there and then” when he was in the audience to hear a speech Ms Inman made in Edinburgh about domestic abuse.

“She started talking about it and, I swear to God, I was sitting there and I couldn’t hear anything round about me,” he says. “I could just hear Alison’s voice and the memories started coming back.”

Those memories took him straight back to the weekends of his childhood in Yoker, north-west Glasgow.

“I’ve got an aversion to tripe and onions because every Saturday night my mother had to make them when he was in the pub. The house used to be filled with the smell.

"My brother and wee sister and me would help my mother polish the lino. And we knew what was going to happen when he came back from the pub. It wasn’t a one-off thing.”

“I remember when my father gave me my first grown-up doing; I was nine at the time. And a grown-up doing from my father was on the deck, putting the boot in”

The violence “blighted my early life”, Mr Strang says. “But I had buried it. I’d hidden it. I’d put it all behind me because I didn’t want it distorting things as I grew up and getting in the way. But when Alison started speaking, oh my God, it came flooding back. The smell of tripe and onions. The smell of whisky. Cheap wine. I remember when my father gave me my first grown-up doing; I was nine at the time. And a grown-up doing from my father was on the deck, putting the boot in. That was my first; it wasn’t the last.”

Since Ms Inman’s speech, he has spoken about his own experiences on public platforms a number of times. Does he ever regret opening up about it? “No,” he says with obvious emotion. “Not at all. It has made me stronger.

"It has made me more self-confident, because I can see that it is much more on the agenda.” As an example he cites a meeting he and Dr Marsha Scott, chief executive of Scottish Women’s Aid, had planned with the Scottish housing minister later in the week “to find out what the Scottish government can do to help us with this”.

“Would we have got that if we hadn’t raised the profile? The answer to that would be no.”

Equally, he believes that speaking about his experience in public has prompted other people to open up, too. “I say to men who approach me, ‘Stand up and be counted’,” he continues. “We are the solution, because we are [predominantly] the cause.”

Apart from raising lots of money for Women’s Aid, Mr Strang says his goal for his presidential year is to get every social landlord in the country signed up to the CIH’s Make a Stand campaign.

It asks social landlords to put a policy in place to support residents affected by domestic abuse and to appoint a champion at a senior level to own the activity being done to support them. On top of getting signatures, he wants to make sure that those who have signed up are “walking the talk”. “It is not just about getting a certificate and putting it on your wall or website saying how wonderful we are,” he explains.

Mr Strang is certainly a big believer in the difference that individuals can make – and there are reminders of this throughout Parkhead’s offices.

A picture of Mary Barbour, who led protests by thousands of women against rent increases in the Glasgow tenements during World War I that resulted in new rent controls, hangs in the organisation’s boardroom along with a likeness of John Wheatley, the Labour politician whose 1924 Housing Act saw central government provide subsidies to build public housing.

“They were changemakers,” Mr Strang says. “With the right leadership and the right approach, we can again gain significant change, particularly in housing.”