Red Clydeside

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Red Clydeside is a term used to describe the era of political radicalism that characterised the city of Glasgow in Scotland, United Kingdom, and urban areas around the city on the banks of the River Clyde. The history of Red Clydeside is a significant part of the history of the labour movement in the United Kingdom as a whole, and in Scotland in particular.

This period in Glasgow's history lasted from the 1910s until roughly the early 1930s, although its legacy is still visible today in the area. It was a term that was brought into popular consciousness by the newspapers referring to the political militancy of the time. An amalgamation of charismatic individuals, organized movements and socio-political forces leads to the enduring notion of Red Clydeside. This period has its roots directly in working class opposition to the United Kingdom's participation in World War I, although the area had a long history of political radicalism going back to its involvement in the Friends of the People society and the "Radical War" of 1820.

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[edit] Anti-war activism

To mobilise the workers of Clydeside against the World War I, the Clyde Workers' Committee (CWC) was formed, with Willie Gallacher as its head and David Kirkwood its treasurer. The CWC led the campaign against the Liberal government of David Lloyd George and their Munitions Act, which forbade engineers from leaving the company they were employed in. The CWC met with government leaders, but no agreement could be reached and consequently both Gallacher and Kirkwood were arrested under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act and jailed for their activities.

Anti-war activity also took place outside the workplace and on the streets in general. The Marxist John Maclean and the Independent Labour Party (ILP) member James Maxton were both jailed for their anti-war propagandizing. Both men also lost their teaching jobs as a result of their activities.

[edit] Rent strikes

Of all the problems in early 20th-century Glasgow, housing was perhaps the most prominent. The housing problem had many guises: the condition of buildings was often poor, overcrowding was rampant, and sanitation was non-existent. And to make matters worse, the housing was frequently situated near rank-smelling, dirty and noisy industries. In this context, the drastic rent increases of 1915 proved massively unpopular.

With many men fighting at the front, the women left behind were seen as vulnerable by landlords, and massive rent increases became the norm. Existing tenants who could no longer afford the rent were evicted, causing widespread alarm among the (now) mainly female populace. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, the women organised an effective opposition to the rent increases, although figures such as John Wheatley also played a role. The main figure in the movement was Mary Barbour, and the protestors soon became known as "Mrs Barbour's Army". Barbour went on after to war to become the first female councillor in Glasgow, and a life-long campaigner for better living conditions.

The usual method of preventing eviction was to block the entrance to the tenement. Photographs of the time show hundreds of people participating. If the sheriff officers managed to get as far as the entrance, another tactic was to humiliate them--pulling down their trousers was a commonly used method.

The mood of the placards carried by the protesters was that the landlords were unpatriotic. A common message was that while the men were fighting on the front line the landlords were in league with the enemy--"While my father is a prisoner in Germany the landlord is attacking us at home".

The strikes soon spread and became such an overwhelming success, moving out from Glasgow and on to other cities throughout the UK, that the government, on 27th November 1915, introduced legislation to restrict rents to the pre-war level.

[edit] The 40 hour week rally

Main article: Black Friday (1919)

The activities of the left continued after the end of the war. The campaign for a 40-hour week and improved conditions for the workers took hold of organised labour. On January 31, 1919, a massive rally organised by the trade unions took place on George Square in the centre of Glasgow. It has been estimated that as many as 90,000 were present, and the Red Flag was raised in the centre of the crowd. Massive brawls between the police and demonstrators took place, with a police tram being overturned after the Riot Act was read.

The Liberal government panicked, fearing a possible threat to order or even a Bolshevik-style insurrection. It was only 14 months since the Russian Revolution, and the German Revolution was in progress in January 1919. Troops based in the city's Maryhill barracks were locked inside their post, with English troops and tanks sent into the city to control unrest and extinguish any revolution that should break out. No Scottish troops were deployed, with the government fearing that fellow Scots, soldiers or otherwise, would go over to the workers' side if a revolutionary situation developed in Glasgow. English troops were transported from England and stationed in Glasgow specifically to combat this possible scenario.

[edit] A Revolutionary Moment?

There remains a lively debate on the left, over whether the Red Clydeside movement constituted a revolutionary opportunity for the working class. Though on the face of it, it would appear that the revolutionary potential of the Clydeside working class has been exaggerated. Firstly, excepting Maclean, none of the labour leaders developed a class analysis of the war, nor did they seriously consider threatening the power and authority of the state. Furthermore, it was the behaviour of those conducting the war, not the war itself that provoked opposition within the labour movement. The Independent Labour Party's May Day Manifesto of 1918 makes this very clear in calling for A Living Wage for all and Justice for our Soldiers and their Dependants. Moreover, the massive demand for fighting men meant that few Glaswegian families escaped personal loss of some kind. To undermine the war effort was to risk alienating the working class, which many labour leaders were unwilling to do-–besides Maxton, Gallacher and Maclean.

William Gallacher, who would later become a Communist MP claimed that whilst the leaders of the rally were not seeking revolution, in hindsight they should have been. He claimed that they should have marched to the Maryhill barracks and tried to persuade the troops stationed there to come out on the protesters' side.

The trade union leaders who had organized the meeting were arrested. Most were acquitted, although both Gallacher and Manny Shinwell were put in jail for their activities that day. Bearing in mind that Shinwell had been responsible for racist agitation in the lead up to the rally: thirty African seamen had been placed in protective custody after defending themselves with firearms against a racist mob of seamen goaded by Shinwell's suggestion that Chinese and other "coloured" labour were responsible for unemployment amongst demobbed seamen, the revolutionary potential of the moment has probably been grossly over-rated.

[edit] "Reds" in Parliament

The aura of Red Clydeside grew as the organized left replaced the Liberal Party as the party of the working class. This manifested itself at the 1922 General Election, when several of the Red Clydesiders were elected to serve in the House of Commons (most of them Independent Labor Party members). They included Maxton, Wheatley, Shinwell, Kirkwood, Neil Maclean and George Buchanan.

According to the Labour Party, the Red Clydesiders were viewed as being left-wing. Many of them, most notably Maxton and Wheatley, were great critics of the first and second British Labour governments, elected in 1924 and 1929 respectively.

The Red Clydeside era still impacts upon the politics of the area today. Even since then, Glasgow has been known for political and industrial militancy. The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work In of 1971, led by the then communist Jimmy Reid is an example. Also, today the Labour Party holds every seat in the area in the House of Commons and has long been the dominant political force in the area (it holds 71 out of 79 seats on the City of Glasgow council, for example).

This period in Glasgow’s colourful past remains a significant landmark for those on the left in Scotland. The legend of the Red Clydesiders can still be politically motivating. At the 1989 Glasgow Central by-election, the Scottish National Party (SNP) candidate Alex Neil called himself and the then SNP MP for Govan, Jim Sillars, the "new Clydesiders".

[edit] External links

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