by Maggie Craig
This was another characteristic of Red Clydeside at its best. Everything was open to question. Everyone had the right to ask why – and who and what and where and how. That society was arranged as it was, ‘the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate’, with the great mass of the population working long hours for little money and trudging wearily home to overcrowded houses and an inadequate diet, was not only manifestly unfair, it could no longer be tolerated. That it might have ‘aye been’ like this was no justification for not trying with all your might to change it.
James Keir Hardie did more than most. After some time working with the pit ponies – his pocket watch apparently bore the teeth marks of his favourite cuddy – he spent a dozen years underground, becoming a skilled miner, a hewer of coal. At the same time he continued to educate himself, became a lay preacher, a temperance campaigner and an active trade unionist. Around the time of his marriage to Lillias Balfour Wilson he came up from the pit for the last time. Ironically, Lillie was the landlord’s daughter, her father the owner of a pub in Hamilton.
Hardie started a small shop, a not uncommon way of trying to make a living in mining communities, and began writing articles for the newspapers. His union activism had been too much for the local pit manager, who sacked him out of hand when he found out about it: ‘We’ll hae nae damned Hardies in this pit.’
Over the next ten years, he led the first strike of Lanarkshire miners, which saw bloody clashes with the police at Blantyre, founded a miners’ newspaper and became ever more involved in wider politics. He had been a staunch Liberal, speaking from the platform at political meetings, but began to move farther to the left. He also began to travel, meeting people with radical views like R.B. Cunninghame Graham, the romantic and dashing ‘Don Roberto’. Through him, while on a visit to London, he met Friedrich Engels. Although Keir Hardie never became a Marxist, he did become a socialist and, with Cunninghame Graham, father of the Labour Party.
It’s a quirk of history – and snobbery – that this Scotsman steeped in the history of his native country never sat in the House of Commons for a Scottish seat. The Liberals of Mid Lanark rejected him as a parliamentary candidate in favour of a wealthy London barrister who’d been parachuted into the constituency.
Keir Hardie first entered Parliament in 1892 as MP for West Ham in London. He stood on an Independent Labour ticket, and the following year helped form the ILP. A few years later again, in 1899, he was one of those who helped found what grew into the modern Labour Party, of which he became the first leader.
After he lost the West Ham seat he stood in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales where in 1900 he was elected as one of only two Labour MPs in Parliament. By 1906 there were twenty-six and by 1910 forty. Still the sitting MP for Merthyr in 1915, he came back to Scotland and to his home at New Cumnock to die. His younger brother David Hardie described how the end came:
That Keir was only 59 will come as a surprise to most people. He always looked more than his years, but the last 15 years of intense work and consequent strain gave him an aged appearance . . . The outbreak of war found him physically weak, and more rest was ordered. He made every effort to rest, but rest by effort is useless. The great crisis was ever present in his mind. It hung over him like a dark cloud . . . There is nothing more certain than that the great slaughter of his fellow-beings in the present European holocaust was the seat of his final trouble. The idea of a world-wide peace and good will was not to him a mere pious opinion, but a holy crusade, to which he had dedicated his life’s work.
Keir Hardie died peacefully, his wife and daughter at his bedside. Thousands mourned his passing, although it rated the merest nod of acknowledgement in most of Glasgow’s newspapers. Forward offered a lyrical description of his funeral and cremation at Maryhill in Glasgow. It’s unsigned but the words sound as though they flowed out of Tom Johnston’s typewriter:
A fitful sunshine on a late September day. A hearse and carriages behind, filled with wreaths. Then comes a long seemingly endless trail of cabs. Crowds line the Maryhill tramway route. Thousands doff their hats and caps as the black hearse passes: soldiers salute. The cortege turns off to the Western Necropolis, and behind the cabs fall in a long procession of Labour and Socialist representatives, four deep. It is the funeral of Keir Hardie.
Cunninghame Graham was one of the mourners. The service was led by Reverend Forson, a friend of Hardie. Once it was over, another friend stepped forward. He was Bruce Glasier, who had succeeded Hardie as chairman of the ILP. Tom Johnston noted how ill Glasier looked. He was himself suffering from the cancer which would kill him five years later.
Glasier put his hand on his friend’s coffin and made an emotional appeal to the mourners to dedicate themselves afresh to the cause to which Keir Hardie had devoted his life. ‘But he was pulled up suddenly as with a shock when the coffin began to be automatically lowered.’ Fighting his grief, Hardie’s brother George thanked everyone for coming. Outside, on the steps of the chapel of the Western Necropolis, a few more words were said to men and women reluctant to leave. ‘And then the cabs refilled, and the crowd trekked home, and the tramway cars clanged again. Hardie had gone.’
On Sunday, 3 October 1915, a memorial service was held at St Andrew’s Halls. Thousands gathered to listen to the three speakers. One was Mary Macarthur, trade unionist and dedicated member of the ILP. She’d married and become Mrs Anderson four years before but seems to have continued to use her maiden name in her political life. She told funny little stories about Keir Hardie, remembering that, when he found that a ‘capitalist newspaper’ had said something complimentary about him, he would go very quiet before asking what he had done wrong to be praised by the likes of them.
Another of the speakers was Bob Smillie, the leader of Scotland’s miners who later became MP for Morpeth in Northumberland. Smillie spoke with great passion, ‘in ringing tones’. He was scathing about the official ‘we’re all in this together’ line currently being peddled about the war. Forward reported both Smillie’s speech and the audience’s reaction to it:
They tell you, he cried, that you and they are one, that after the war the Sutherlands, the Breadalbanes and the Durhams will be one with the wounded and torn working class, back from the trenches. O, do not believe them. Do not believe them. When the war is over our real fight with our real enemies will begin. And every time he raised the slogan of Socialism and Peace the cheering, round after round of it, became more vociferous and more compelling.
Ramsay MacDonald also spoke. The audience in the packed hall gave him a standing ovation before he had even said a word. MacDonald threw away his notes and spoke from the heart:
Here lies one, he said, quoting Morton or John Knox, who never feared the face of man. And MacDonald went on to describe the boy Hardie running errands in the rain, wandering about in sorrow because he had no wages for his mother; as a youth scraping shorthand characters on the smoke of a pit wall . . .
In him the spirit of the Covenanter lived again – Airds Moss tempered with the lyrics of Burns. From Hardie’s mysticism: from the great invisible creative power in him came his persistency and his perseverance, his power of seeing above and beyond.
In his written tribute too, MacDonald said that, if Keir Hardie had ever written the story of the long struggle of the Labour movement, he would have begun with the Covenanters. He might have had their faults of obstinacy and dourness but he had also had ‘the simple mind of a child’ and an other-worldly mysticism.
With Hardie, wrote Ramsay MacDonald, you always got the feeling that he saw the world as ephemeral and ‘that at any moment the vain show would melt into mist, and the spiritual substance of being resolve itself’. He went on:
Such a man will offer his hand to every struggling and unpopular cause. But the personalities and powers cannot prevail against him. He will start great movements, he will reveal to men their own best qualities, he will be despised and rejected, but he will make more changes in the world than generations of
others. Such a man was Keir Hardie.
13
Mrs Barbour’s Army: The Rent Strike of 1915
We are not removing.
As the war progressed, British industry found itself working at full-tilt to produce the ships, other hardware and munitions required to fight it. Many factories were turned over for the duration to the making of munitions, the Singer plant at Clydebank just one of them.
With the economy roaring up onto a war footing when so many men on Clydeside had already marched off to the trenches, an influx of labour was required to man – and woman – the munitions factories, shipyards and workshops. Concentration on the war effort had put an abrupt stop to the building of new houses. Accommodation in Glasgow was soon at a premium.
Realizing demand now outstripped supply, many of Glasgow’s private landlords saw an opportunity to increase their profits by raising rents. If the sitting tenant couldn’t pay the increase, there were plenty of people queuing up to take over the tenancy. What the landlords hadn’t reckoned with was the fighting spirit of Glasgow’s housewives.
In 1914 they had already formed themselves into the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association, whose aim was to improve the tenement homes in which they all lived. Their opposition to the rent rises the landlords tried to impose in 1915 was both practical and a matter of principle. So many fathers and sons were away at the war and food prices had risen sharply. Household budgets were under strain and the improvements needed still hadn’t been carried out.
Although the rhetoric of the time was that everyone had to pull together for the sake of the war effort, landlords and the factors who acted for them were ruthless about evicting tenants unable to come up with the extra rent. In March 1915 one case hit the headlines. Mrs McHugh of William Street in Shettleston had fallen into arrears. She owed less than one pound. She also had a husband wounded in the war, two sons serving in France and five children at home.
When the factor arrived with the eviction order, he found himself dealing with not only one woman but also several hundred of her neighbours. Local councillor John Wheatley stood at the head of the crowd. The factor retreated, and Wheatley addressed the angry people gathered in William Street.
Fired up, they headed off in pursuit of the would-be persecutor of defenceless women and children. By the time they caught up with him, they had acquired an effigy which they burned in front of the windows of his office. Later, they pursued him to his house and smashed some of its windows. As the Forward reported, John Wheatley gave them a gentle telling-off for that, pointing out:
. . . that they were not there to organise the wrecking of homes, but to prevent homes from being wrecked, and while they had been marching away to the Factor’s residence, the Bailiffs might have ejected Mrs. McHugh. (Cries of ‘We had enough left here to prevent that!’) Anyway, he said, the burning of effigy business was wasted time and so were the demonstrations at the Factor’s house. He knew, for if they remembered they had done it once to him. (Laughter, and cries of: ‘Never mind! You’re aye here yet!’)
On the advice of the police, the eviction order on Mrs McHugh was not served. Her case became a cause célèbre. As the Forward told its readers, it even reached the ‘English Sunday Press’. Other Glasgow newspapers picked up on it too. Landlords and factors scored a spectacular own goal every time they tried to turn a soldier’s wife and children out into the street. Many of those threatened with eviction were also munitions workers, people whose labour was crucial to the war effort.
The ILP quickly offered support but it was the tenants themselves who led the fight. Willie Gallacher described the strategy adopted by women like Mary Barbour of Govan and Mrs Ferguson of Partick:
In Govan, Mrs. Barbour, a typical working-class housewife, became the leader of a movement such as had never been seen before, or since for that matter. Street meetings, back-court meetings, drums, bells, trumpets – every method was used to bring the women out and organize them for the struggle. Notices were printed by the thousand and put up in the windows: wherever you went you would see them. In street after street, scarcely a window without one: ‘WE ARE NOT PAYING INCREASED RENT.’
Actually, what the notices read was ‘WE ARE NOT REMOVING’. They cost one penny each and had a polite request printed on them: ‘Please tack this to top of lower sash of window.’ Thousands of people did. The rent strike was on.
People made up their own placards too. One was held aloft at a rent strike demonstration in Partick:
Partick Tenants’ Strike
Our Husbands, Sons and
Brothers are fighting the
Prussians of Germany.
We are fighting the Prussians of Partick.
Only alternative
MUNICIPAL HOUSING
Helen Crawfurd also wrote in some detail of the strategy women deployed in rent strike skirmishes to stop their neighbours from being evicted:
One woman with a bell would sit in the close, or passage, watching while the other women living in the tenement went on with their household duties. Whenever the Bailiff’s Officer appeared on the scene to evict a tenant, the woman in the passage immediately rang the bell, and the women came from all parts of the building. Some with flour, if baking, wet clothes, if washing, and other missiles. Usually the Bailiff made off for his life, chased by a mob of angry women.
The factors tried some strategies of their own. A favourite ploy was to convince individual housewives everyone else in the close had paid the increased rent until they had all been fooled into doing so. On one occasion when this was tried, Mary Barbour drafted in the men from Govan’s shipyards. She led them to the factor’s office and demanded the amount of the increase be returned.
‘On the factor being shown the thousands of black-faced workers crowding the street,’ wrote Helen Crawfurd, ‘he handed it over.’ Now a committed socialist, she addressed many meetings during the rent strike. She used her time on the platform to speak out against the war too, and argue the case for socialism.
It was by no means only socialists who supported the rent strikers. In September 1915 The Bulletin, sister paper to the Glasgow Herald, published an article very sympathetic in tone:
The revolt against the increase of house rents in Glasgow threatens to become a very big problem. In three different districts strikes have been resorted to by tenants – first in Shettleston, then in Govan, and now in Partick. These movements have widespread sympathy and, given the slightest provocation, will assuredly spread.
The Bulletin made a suggestion that sounds very like a recommendation: since so many of the families involved were munitions workers, maybe the government would intervene. It wrote approvingly of the tenants in Partick who were involved in the rent strike. There were around 100 of them and they lived in different closes in Hurlet Street, Thornwood Avenue, Clyde Street, Rosevale Street and Exeter Drive:
The large majority of the tenants are of the respectable artisan type – steady workers employed in the local shipyards and engineering shops. In one of the closes, in which there are 13 tenants, no fewer than nine of them are engaged in war munition work.
No long-haired and wild-eyed revolutionaries here then. The women who ran the rent strike were well aware of the value of presenting a respectable face to the world. Look at the photos of the protests and demonstrations and you’ll see neatly dressed women, men and children, all in their Sunday best. Big hats at dawn.
On 16 October 1915, the rent-striking tenants living in Thornwood Avenue and Clyde Street were due to be evicted. The ‘WE ARE NOT REMOVING’ placards were up in the windows, the tenants came out onto the street and ‘the ranks of the demonstrators were swelled by a contingent of women from Govan’. Mrs Barbour and her army were on manoeuvres. Probably they crossed the river on the Govan ferry, the wee boat which used to come right up the steps of the landing stage.
Mary Barbour’s counterpart on the north bank of the Clyde was Mrs Ferguson, secretary of the Partick Rent Strike Committee. She seems to be
the same Mrs Ferguson involved with Helen Crawfurd and Agnes Dollan in the Women’s Peace Crusade. She had gone right to the top, contacting Lloyd George. As minister for munitions, what was he going to do about these evictions of soldiers’ wives and munitions workers? She really thought he should send a message about this to the tenants of Partick. Lloyd George’s telegram in reply to Mrs Ferguson was read out to the assembled company. As The Bulletin informed its readers, it did not go down well. The Minister for Munitions advised that the Secretary of State for Scotland was setting up a committee to look into the matter.
Supporting the striking tenants, local councillor Mr Izett said angrily that he ‘wished the soldiers could see and know that while they were defending the trenches abroad, the women folk were defending the trenches at home’.
Patrick Dollan declared that ‘the law of humanity was higher than the law of the property owners’ and that there was no way they were going to allow the threatened evictions to take place.
Mrs Ferguson got the best response when she told everyone that ‘the men in the shipyards had asked that immediately there was any attempt to put the ejections into force word should be sent to the men, and they could come out on strike in a body’.
It was also decided that patrols be set up to guard the houses where the evictions had been threatened and that these should go on until confirmation was received that the eviction orders had been withdrawn.
What the landlords did then was go to law. They would circumvent people power by not confronting it. Once again, they had reckoned without the determination of Mrs Barbour, Mrs Ferguson and the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association. The men in the shipyards made good on their promise too, swelling the ranks of Mrs Barbour’s army. It was Willie Gallacher who gave that name to the people who marched on Glasgow Sheriff Court on 17 November 1915 in support of the Partick rent strikers:
