Glasgow Rent Strikes 1915

Red Clydeside was the era of political radicalism in Glasgow, Scotland, and areas around the city, on the banks of the River Clyde, such as Clydebank, Greenock, Dumbarton and Paisley, from the 1910s until the early 1930s. Red Clydeside is a significant part of the history of the labour movement in Britain as a whole, and Scotland in particular.

Some newspapers of the time used the term "Red Clydeside" to refer, largely derisively, to the groundswell of popular and political radicalism that had erupted in Scotland. A confluence of charismatic individuals, organised movements and socio-political forces led to Red Clydeside, which had its roots in working-class opposition to Britain's participation in the First World War, although the area had a long history of political radicalism going back to the Society of the Friends of the People and the " Radical War" of 1820.

1911 strike at Singer

The 11,000 workers at the largest Singer sewing machines factory, in Clydebank, went on strike in March–April 1911, ceasing to work in solidarity with 12 female colleagues protesting against work process reorganisation. This reorganisation involved an increase in workload and a decrease in wages. Following the end of the strike, Singer fired 400 workers, including Jane Rae one of the women activists, and all strike leaders and purported members of the Industrial Workers of Great Britain, among them Arthur McManus, who later went on to become the first chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain between 1920 and 1922.The Singer strike 1911
''Glasgow Digital Library''

Labour unrest, in particular by women and unskilled labourers, greatly increased between 1910–1914 in Clydeside, with four times more days on strike than between 1900 and 1910. During these four years preceding World War I, membership of those affiliated to the Scottish Trades Union Congress rose from 129,000 in 1909 to 230,000 in 1914.

Anti-war activism

To mobilise the workers of Clydeside against the First World War, 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 coalition governments of H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George and the Munitions of War Act 1915, which forbade engineers 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.

Helen Crawford was opposed to conscription and, although there were anti-war and anti-conscription campaigns in organisations such as the WIL being organised and run by middle class women, few working class women were involved in Scotland. Frustration on her part on their lack of representation, Helen Crawfurd organised a grassroots meeting called 'The Great Womens Peace Conference' involving socialist-minded women in June 1916. From this meeting, and alongside her fellow Rent Striker Agnes Dollan, The Women's Peace Crusade (WPC) arose in November 1916 in Govan, Glasgow. As intended, the organisation initially attracted working class women in Govan to activism, and with open air meetings throughout Glasgow, Edinburgh and within Lowland Scotland they began to extend their reach. By 1917, street meetings were regularly being held all around the districts of Glasgow and beyond, including Partick, Maryhill, Bridgeton, Parkhead, Govan, Govanhill, Whiteinch, Shettleston, Springburn, Possilpark, Bellahouston, Rutherglen, Paisley, Overnewton Barrhead, Cambuslang, Blantyre, Alloa, Cowdenbeath, Drongan, Drumpark, Douglas Water and Lanark. As a further indicator of their success, a mass demonstration was organised by the WPC on Sunday 8 July 1917, in which processions marched to the sound of music and the flying of banners from two sides of the city to the famous Glasgow Green in the centre of the city. As the two streams of Crusaders approached the green they merged into a huge colourful and noisy demonstration of around 14,000 participants.

By the time that the Peace Crusade disbanded it had become a UK-wide organisation.

Rent strikes

At the turn of the twentieth century the Clydeside area in Glasgow experienced rapid industrial and population growth during which time Glasgow became Scotland’s largest city, Its population grew from almost 200,000 in 1851 to over 1,000,000 in 1921. Despite this exponential growth, housing remained a huge problem for its inhabitants as few houses were added to Glasgow's housing stock to accommodate the influx of immigrants from all over Scotland, other areas of Britain and Europe. Eleven percent of Glasgow's housing stock was vacant due to speculation and few new houses were built as landlords benefited from renting out overcrowded and increasingly dilapidated flats. As Highlanders and Irish migrants came to Glasgow, the city's population increased by 65,000 people between 1912 and 1915 while only 1,500 new housing units were built. Glaswegian activists had demanded legislation and the building of municipal housing as early as 1885, when the Royal Commission on Housing and the Working Class noted the housing crisis. The Scottish Housing Council organised in 1900 and under pressure from trade unions the Housing Letting and Rating Act 1911 was passed. The act introduced letting by month, previously workers with unstable jobs had been forced to put up a year's rent payment. But as landlords increased rents protests by tenants became more frequent.

John Maclean of the British Socialist Party organised the Scottish Federation of Tenants' Associations in 1913 to fight against rent increases and championed public housing. In 1914 the Independent Labour Party Housing Committee and the Women's Labour League formed the Glasgow Women's Housing Association. Under the leadership of Mary Barbour, Mary Laird, Helen Crawfurd, Mary Jeff, Jessie Stephen and Jessie Fergusson the Glasgow Women's Housing Association became the driving force behind the rent strike that started in May 1915 in the industrialised area of Govan. Tenants refused to pay the latest increase in rents and staged mass demonstrations against evictions, resulting in violent confrontations. With the start of the First World War local young men left Glasgow to serve in the army overseas, and the first violent protest in the Govan district took place in April to resist the eviction of a soldier's family. As evictions were repeatedly attempted with support from the police, women attacked the factors and the sheriffs' men.

In early summer 1915, the rent strikers were supported by mass demonstrations and by August, the rent strikers had found widespread support in Glasgow. Rent strikes spread from heavily industrialised areas of the city to artisanal areas and slum areas. Strikes ignited in Partick, Parkhead, Pollokshaws, Pollok, Cowcaddens, Kelvingrove, Ibrox, Govanhill, St Rollox, Townhead, Springburn, Maryhill, Fairfield, Blackfriars, and Woodside. In October 1915, 15,000 tenants were on rent strike and a demonstration led by women converged on St Enoch Square. By November, 20,000 tenants were on rent strike as violent resistance against evictions continued. Trade unions threatened factory strikes if evictions supported by the police continued and following demonstrations on 17 November, legal action against rent strikers was halted. State Secretary of Scotland Thomas McKinnon Wood asked the Cabinet to freeze all rents at pre-war levels and in December, the Rents and Mortgage Interest Restriction Act 1915 received royal assent.

In March 2018, to mark International Women’s Day, a bronze sculpture of Barbour was unveiled in Govan, Glasgow portraying Barbour leading a line of strikers.

The 40 Hour Strike

The left-wing activities continued after the end of the war. The campaign for a 40-hour week, with improved conditions for the workers, occupied the exertions of organised labour. On 31 January 1919, a massive rally, organised by the trade unions, took place on George Square in the city centre of Glasgow. It has been estimated that as many as 90,000 people were present, and the Red Flag was raised in the centre of the crowd. The gathering descended into what is generally considered to have been a police riot, with the Riot Act being read, and attacks made on the strike leaders as they exited the City Chambers.

The Coalition government panicked, fearing a possible threat to order or even a Bolshevik-style insurrection. It was only fourteen months since the Russian Revolution, and the German Revolution was still in progress in January 1919. Troops based in the city's Maryhill barracks were locked inside their post, with troops and tanks from elsewhere being sent into the city to control unrest and extinguish any revolution that should break out. No Glaswegian troops were deployed, and few veterans, with the government fearing that fellow Glaswegians might sympathise with the strikers if a revolutionary situation developed in Glasgow. Young, mostly untried, troops were transported from camps and barracks around the country and stationed on the streets of Glasgow, specifically to combat this possibility.

A revolutionary moment?

There remains a 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, except 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 men to fight in the war 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-–apart from 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 organised the meeting, were arrested. Most were acquitted, although both Gallacher and Manny Shinwell were put in jail for their activities that day, Shinwell also being charged with an inflammatory speech the week before in James Watt Street in the city's docks, in an episode that later erupted into a race riot.

"Reds" in Parliament

The aura of ''Red Clydeside'' grew as delegations of organised labour replaced the Liberal Party as the political formation most popular among 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 Labour Party members). They included Maxton, Wheatley, Shinwell, Kirkwood, Neil Maclean and George Buchanan.

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

The ''Red Clydeside'' era still impacts upon the politics of the area today. Ever since, Glasgow has been known for political and industrial militancy. The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work In of 1971 offers a pertinent example. Until 2015, the Labour Party held the most influence as the dominant political force in the area.

This period in Glasgow’s colourful past remains a significant landmark for those on the political left in Scotland. The story of the ''Red Clydesiders'' can still be politically motivating. At the 1989 Glasgow Central by-election, the Scottish National Party candidate Alex Neil called himself and the SNP member of Parliament for Govan at the time, Jim Sillars; the "new Clydesiders".

Popular culture

The album ''Red Clydeside'' by Alistair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick contains nine songs about the movement, particularly the anti-war protests and the rent strike. The Red Clydeside movement was also featured in John McGrath's play ''Little Red Hen'', performed by 7:84.

References

Further reading

* Dawson, Alan. "Red Clydeside: a digital history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932". ''Dunaskin News'' 5 (2004
online

* Dowse, Robert E. ''Left in the Centre: The Independent Labour Party 1893–1940.'' London: Longman's, 1966.
* Duncan, Robert and McIvor, Arthur, eds. ''Militant Workers: Labour and class conflict on the Clyde 1900–1950'' (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992) ssays* Gallacher, William. (1978) 936 ''Revolt on the Clyde: An Autobiography'' (4th ed. London: Lawrence and Wishart).
* Griffin, Paul. "Diverse political identities within a working class presence: Revisiting Red Clydeside." ''Political Geography'' 65 (2018): 123-133.
* Kenefick, William. ''Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872 to 1932'' (Edinburgh University Press, 2007). Pp. 230.
* Jenkinson, Jacqueline. "Black Sailors on Red Clydeside: rioting, reactionary trade unionism and conflicting notions of ‘Britishness’ following the First World War," ''Twentieth Century British History'' (2008) 19#1 pp 29-60.
* MacLean, Ian. ''The legend of Red Clydeside'' (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1983)
* Melling, Joseph. "Whatever Happened to Red Clydeside?'" ''International Review of Social History'' (1990) 35#1 pp 3–32.
* Middlemas, Robert Keith. ''The Clydesiders: A Left Wing Struggle for Parliamentary Power.'' London: Hutchinson & Co., 1965.
* Walker, Graham. "Maxton, James (1885–1946)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,'' Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 201
online

External links

(extended version of book by John Couzin)

Libcom.org/history – Red Clydeside page



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