MORE than a decade after leaving the postal service, I still find myself waking up at 5am.

I was in a few months before we went on strike on wages, terms and conditions in a company that had made £400 million, promptly grabbed by chancellor Ken Clarke to help fund the usual pre-election bribe.

It was a different time, as they say.

Getting out to work at that time had its benefits.

The walk every morning from central Govan to the sorting office was always done in virtual silence, apart from the odd bread van.

A fox used to greet me at the end of the street, same time, same place, every day for years. What started as a glare of “what are you doing up?” evolved into daily nod at each other.

In later years, a blackbird joined the team, perched on a fenced-off sapling, puffs of vapour rising from its beak as it coaxed the sun back over the horizon.

Leaving central Govan, I’d cut through what had been “wine alley.” Where blocks of 1920s tenements had once stood, and now only the street lamps and roads remained.

The spaces in between, occupied by hundreds of families for decades, was now a dumping ground, where vans would come from far and wide to empty whatever rubbish they had and dodge the charges at the tip.

After a long hiatus, the rubbish was cleared and much of the area was rebuilt by the housing association. Life has returned.

But for years children’s toys, kitchens, bathrooms, tarmac, you name it, were all left lying about smashed for the remaining residents to look out onto who needed toys for the kids, new kitchens, new bathrooms, and the potholes filled — a daily reminder of where some in the world would have them in the order of things while down the road, BAe Systems and Thales made billions on Scotland’s biggest manufacturing site.

Approaching the sorting office at the corner of Copland Rd, there was a hallowed spot.

As if it has not quite yet come to terms with the fishing and farming village disappearing a century and a half ago, fog regularly rolls into Govan in the early morning bringing some of the old world with it.

The first time I saw a full-grown stag emerge from the sodium-yellow fog on that corner — antlers towering over me, hooves gently tapping on the tarmac — I’ll confess, I got a bit of a fright. When I got into work, I breathlessly told my colleagues “there’s a… did anyone see a…”, only to be told nonchalantly “he’s from Pollok Park, just lost in fog.”

Back to work.

On Wednesday, I was scraping the ice off the car at 6am for a drive to Edinburgh. Protesters had blockaded the Leonardo UK factory, bringing production of equipment essential to the Israeli military’s slaughter of Palestinian children to a standstill.

I watched the sun begin to rise from an M8 tailback somewhere on the outskirts of the city — not a blackbird in sight.

The trees soon returned as I cut through a patch of Edinburgh’s leafy suburbs and on to Pilton, where the factory appears as if it has landed from outer space.

Where to park?

The factory was surrounded by protesters, double-yellow lines and police. I rolled up the road, turned into a residential street and parked up. More focused on getting to the protest, I just concentrated on not getting in anyone’s way, jumped out of the car and began to walk down to the factory.

The street was very different from those facing the main road. Folk leaving their homes here to walk to work were wading through strewn rubbish, and clear efforts by locals to keep their closes and gardens tidy seemed to be being overwhelmed by dumping on the road.

Back on the main road not a crisp packet in sight. Wandering down the hill to the factory where 150-odd freezing-cold protesters had blocked the gates, I watched their breath take their songs and chants of defiance and peace into the cloudless sky.

While no workers entered the factory, across the road many walked in to work at the research and design wing, leafleted by campaigners as they did so. I saw no antagonism, but I did see workers give the protesters a good hearing and a great deal of sympathy.

It would be easy to have a pop at them, point to the heroics of the Rolls Royce workers who refused to work on engines used by the Chilean junta all those years ago, and demand similar, but that is not where we are in 2024, sadly.

The Rolls Royce workers had already taken a position in their branch about Chile, they had greater protections as workers — legally and otherwise — and they had a wealth of political education to guide them.

The workers today may not be starting from that place, nor are they helpless either, but they need clear support from the outside and from the wider movement if they are to — as they will understandably see it — put their livelihoods on the line.

The protester on Wednesday seemed to get that, one telling me “we’re here to stand by the workforce, to support them to get involved in their union and to know the power they have.”

The real villains of the piece are the owners of the spaceship, Leonardo UK, who form just one part of a vast enterprise specialising in hi-tech mutilation and maiming.

It’s a very profitable line to be in. The technology being used to kill workers is also being used to exploit them twice, first by underpaying them, and secondly by diverting their talents away from social good.

If evidence were needed, look no further than the balance sheets. Leonardo UK made profits of over £1.2 billion in the last couple of years and handed over £400m in dividends to its shareholders — any company doing this isn’t paying its workers properly.

A representative of a booming multibillion pound industry, with cutting-edge technology, much of which is beyond our wildest dreams — or worst nightmares — plonked in the middle of a working-class area which, like so many in our land, is being actively deprived of the most basic services.

I watched in horror last week as Professor Nizam Mamode gave his evidence to the international development select committee.

Speaking of his experience in Gaza, the surgeon told MPs: “What I found particularly disturbing was that a bomb would drop, maybe on a crowded, tented area and then the drones would come down.

“The drones would come down and pick off civilians — children.

“We were operating on children who would say; ‘I was lying on the ground after the bomb dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.’

“That’s clearly a deliberate act and it was a persistent act — persistent targeting of civilians day after day.”

In any sane, functioning democracy, that would have spelt the end of arms exports to Israel, the end of British support for the Israeli government, and the beginning of concerted action to shut down the slaughter.

But there have been countless such testimonies over the last year, ignored by drones in Parliament busy equivocating — at best — while their electronic counterparts do the dirty work.

Kids starved at home, kids killed abroad, and for what?

Not one worker is winning in Gaza or the wider march to war, and we must back them to say “no.”

Times change, but some tunes stay the same.

A drone is a weapon with a worker at both ends, and without them this killing can’t go on.

Matt Kerr is Morning Star Scotland reporter.