When the Clyde Ran Red

by Maggie Craig

  From early morning the women were marching to the centre of the city where the sheriff’s court is situated. Mrs. Barbour’s army was on the march. But even as they marched, mighty reinforcements were coming from the workshops and the yards. From far away Dalmuir in the West, from Parkhead in the East, from Cathcart in the South and Hydepark in the North, the dungareed army of the proletariat invaded the centre of the city.

  Like a latter-day Pied Piper, Mary Barbour led her troops up and across the Clyde and into the centre of Glasgow, calling first at Lorne Street School in Govan to pick up John Maclean. He had just been sacked by Govan School Board for his antiwar activities. The army was a noisy one, adding to the pounding of its feet with tin whistles, hooters and a dilapidated old drum. Following on behind, Willie Gallacher describes how, as they marched along Argyle Street near to Central Station they passed a group of soldiers heading for France:

  Some of the young chaps gave us a cheer as we passed, but many others looked pathetically towards us as our fellows shouted ‘Down tools, boys,’ and gave the impression that very little persuasion would have brought them over into our ranks.

  But the young soldiers kept on going, filing into the station to board the trains which would carry them to the mud and blood of Flanders.

  When they reached the city centre, the marchers assembled in front of the City Chambers in George Square before going the short distance along Ingram Street to the Sheriff Court. It was then in its old home at the City and County Buildings. Impressive even when its stone was still covered in a layer of dense black soot caused by industrial pollution, the large neoclassical building occupied a whole block bounded by Ingram Street, Hutcheson Street, Wilson Street and Brunswick Street. It still does.

  Their approach not having been exactly stealthy, and not meant to be, the police were waiting for the marchers and would not let them into the court. Mrs Barbour’s army marched round the building before stopping in Hutcheson Street. According to The Bulletin, they were noisy but good-humoured. There were speeches from John Maclean, Willie Gallacher and Helen Crawfurd. Makeshift platforms were raised so they could be seen and heard above the heads of the crowd.

  Reporting the next day on the ‘Glasgow Rent Agitation’, The Scotsman allowed that ‘though the crowd was large there was nothing in the nature of disorder calling for the drastic interference of the police, who allowed the impromptu meetings to proceed for a time’. This and other contemporary newspaper reports back up Willie Gallacher’s description of the scene. His account might contain a whiff of exaggeration and a little too much socialist bombast, but it’s still vivid and convincing:

  Into the streets around the Sheriff’s Court the workers marched from all sides. All the streets were packed. Traffic was completely stopped. Right in front of the court, John Maclean was on a platform addressing the crowd as far as his voice could reach. In other streets near the court others of us were at it. Our platforms were unique. Long poster-boards had been picked from the front of newspaper shops. These were placed on the shoulders of half-a-dozen husky, well-matched workers and the speaker was lifted on to them. It was a great experience, speaking from a yielding platform and keeping a measure of balance while flaying the factors and the war-makers.

  Dressed in that Sunday best, the tenants had posed for photographs outside the court. Their children held up placards. Smart in his Norfolk jacket and well-starched white shirt collar, a young boy carried one which read, ‘My father is fighting in France. We are fighting the Huns at home.’

  Inside the court, 18 tenants were about to begin the legal battle with their factor Mr Nicholson. All parties had agreed there would be one test case and that the Sheriff’s decision on it would apply to all eighteen.

  The Bulletin reported the next day on what it headlined as:

  THE RENT STRIKE

  EXTRAORDINARY SCENES

  MINISTERIAL INTERVENTION

  A PACIFIC SHERIFF

  Considerable excitement prevailed in Glasgow Small Debt Court yesterday when additional petitions for the ejectment of householders who refused to pay increases of rent were down for hearing. The court was crowded to overflowing by those chiefly interested and their sympathisers, and a number of policemen were called in to preserve order. The proceedings took an unusual course.

  That unusual course began with Sheriff Lee trying to persuade Mr Nicholson, the factor, and his lawyer, Mr Gardner, to drop the legal action on ‘patriotic grounds’. There was a war on, after all, and munitions workers were pivotal to winning it.

  The packed court started sitting at ten o’clock. By noon, with the Sheriff still in his chambers trying to knock heads together, people were becoming restive. The Bulletin noted that those in the gallery ‘evinced considerable impatience at the delay’. To loud cheers, Councillor Izett walked forward to the bar of the court and asked who was in charge. In the name of the workers present, he protested about the delay:

  The protest evoked a loud outburst of cheering, which brought the Sheriff from his chambers into court. He sternly rebuked the demonstrators, and threatened to have the court cleared if there was a renewal of the disturbance.

  One of the tenants came forward and asked His Lordship if he would receive a deputation which might help resolve the situation. Sheriff Lee was clearly a pragmatic man. Although he pointed out that ‘his position was purely a legal one, and he had no authority to mix himself up with any political questions’, these were exceptional times. He spoke privately with four of the tenants, after which the test case was heard. Mr Reid, whose first name was not given by The Bulletin, was secretary of the Tenants’ Defence Committee.

  Mr Reid stated that before the war had started his rent had been £1.18s per month. It had subsequently risen to £1.19s.2d. On 10 September, he had been given notice that it would rise still further to £2 per month, making a total increase since the outbreak of hostilities of two shillings per month.

  On 14 September a number of tenants including Mr Reid had stated they would not pay the increase. They were then given two weeks’ notice to quit, required to leave their houses by 28 September. It was now more than three weeks later and Mr Reid and the other tenants were still in their houses and refusing to budge. The Commission of Inquiry was due to offer its opinion in another two weeks again, issuing its findings at the end of November.

  Mr Gardner the solicitor chose that moment to inform the court that his client had received a direct request the day before from Mr Lloyd George asking him to either drop the legal action or at least suspend it till everyone heard what the Commission of Inquiry had to say. Sheriff Lee grew a little tetchy, understandably so if the solicitor had not told him during all that time in his chambers of this request from the Minister for Munitions. Besides which, the law was the law. Once set in motion, it could not be started and stopped on a whim.

  Seizing his opportunity, Mr Reid told the Sheriff he and his had decided they needed a decision today, whatever that decision was going to be. He weighed in with a pointed and patriotic observation:

  Munition workers were involved in 15 of the cases, and they did not wish to stay off work to come there and discuss the question of rent. They had a bigger battle to fight in the workshops, and they wanted to fight loyally there.

  Those few words seem to have swung it as far as Sheriff Lee was concerned. He knew very well that munitions workers who stayed away from their work could be fined or even put in prison. The national interest surely required that the other side should drop the legal action. As this challenge hung in the charged air, it’s easy to imagine every pair of eyes in the court swivelling round to Mr Gardner the solicitor.

  He agreed to drop the action, on one condition: the defendants had to agree to accept whatever the Commission of Inquiry said about rents. The Sheriff, who by this stage in the proceedings sounds as though he was completely on the side of the rent strikers, said that of course they would:

  The people affected by this rent dispute knew what was going on.
They had observed that in many directions since the war began there was special legislation to meet particular cases of hardship or of difficulty due to the war, and they thought, rightly or wrongly, that the case of rent was one of those difficulties, and that there ought to be special legislation to deal with it.

  They [the rent strikers] thought their case called for special legislation, but he did not understand for a moment that if special legislation was passed they would dream of opposing it. They had appealed to the justice of their country, and when the country declared through Parliament their decision they would abide by it at once.

  Mr Gardner and Mr Nicholson confirmed their agreement to drop the cases. As The Bulletin reported, ‘The intimation was received with loud cheering.’ The Sheriff told Mr Reid he hoped he would use his influence to see there would be no ‘denunciations antagonistic to the petitioner’. Presumably he meant no triumphalist taunting, variations on ‘Yah boo, sucks to you, we just won and you just lost.’

  The rent strikers were too dignified for that. Mr Reid assured the Sheriff there would be no such trouble, ‘and the proceedings ended by those in court giving a hearty cheer for the Sheriff’.

  Final victory went to the tenants. The Commission of Inquiry recommended that rents be restricted for the duration of the war. Although there were rent strikes in other parts of Britain, it was the Glasgow rent strike which brought about this decision which made a difference to the lives of ordinary people throughout the country. Even the Glasgow Herald was impressed by the action taken by Mary Barbour, Mrs Ferguson and their supporters:

  Thanks to the fine stand made by the Glasgow women and the determined attitude of the Clyde munition workers, the Government has introduced a Bill to legalize pre-war rent during the war and for six months thereafter.

  Mary Barbour continued to make a difference, becoming a town councillor and Glasgow’s first female bailie and helping to establish Glasgow’s first family planning clinic. In 1921 she stood for election in Govan’s Fairfield Ward as a member of the ILP. Her fellow candidates were Manny Shinwell and Thomas Kerr and they issued a joint manifesto which stated their policies on housing, local rates, the cost of living and unemployment:

  As a Socialist, and the nominee of the Independent Labour Party, I have been selected to contest the Fairfield Ward as one of the Candidates of the Local Labour Party. I have been resident in Govan for over 20 years and during that time I have taken a keen interest in the public business of the town. My time and energies have all been spent in the working-class movements for the Social betterment of the whole community.

  I do not wish to draw any distinction between men and women’s questions, because essentially they are the same, but I am convinced and have always advocated that women should take their full share of public work.

  Mrs. M. Barbour.

  Above the names of all three candidates, the manifesto ends with these words: ‘We have the honour to be your fellow citizens.’

  14

  Christmas Day Uproar: Red Clydeside Takes on the Government

  Mr Lloyd George came to the Clyde last weekend in search of adventure. He got it.

  The First World War was a voracious consumer of men and munitions alike. This led naturally to a shortage of skilled labour just when it was most needed and the introduction of unskilled labour to compensate. The process was known as dilution, short for dilution of skilled labour, and it gave rise to roars of protest on Clydeside. It was the engineers still working in the yards and workshops who were most vociferous in their opposition to dilution, loathing the very idea of unskilled workers coming in to do skilled jobs.

  One of their biggest fears was that many of these unskilled workers, known by the unattractive name of ‘dilutees’, would be women and that this would inevitably drive wages down across the board. They were right, of course. A woman might be doing exactly the same job as a man, but everyone knew you didn’t have to pay her the same wages. Margaret Irwin had pointed that out back in the 1890s.

  It’s a chilling statistic that twice as many British soldiers died in the First World War as in the Second. The demand for munitions so British troops could inflict the same slaughter on the Germans climbed with the terrible toll of death and horrendous wounds. For some reason, this obscene idiocy made sense to the people in charge at the time.

  David Lloyd George had been chancellor of the exchequer for seven years by 1915, serving first in the Liberal administration of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and then in the wartime coalition government. In May 1915 he became Minister for Munitions, giving him a newly created portfolio and the task of persuading the skilled workers of Britain to accept dilution of labour. The wartime economy was going to grind to a halt without it.

  Lloyd George was a wily operator but he came seriously unstuck in Glasgow, outwitted by the Clyde Workers’ Committee. Arthur McManus, he of the millions of sewing machine needles, was one of the members of the CWC, as were Willie Gallacher and Davie Kirkwood. The shop stewards of the CWC were elected by their workmates at regular factory floor meetings. People had grown impatient with long-serving union officials. They were too cautious, unwilling to fight the workers’ corner against the government.

  For the duration of the war it was now illegal to strike, to try to persuade anyone else to strike or to change jobs without the permission of your existing employer. Any workers who did any of these things had not only broken civil law but had also placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the military. They could therefore be tried by court martial, which had the power to sentence any man, soldier or civilian, to be shot by firing squad.

  None of this was ever going to sit well with the men of the Clyde. They were mentally and physically tough, intelligent, eloquent, full of cynical humour, angry and raring to go, so it’s not surprising Lloyd George wasn’t keen on having to confront too many of them in one room. This may be why he and his staff arranged the Local Trade Union Officials Munitions Conference at which he would speak at St Andrew’s Halls in Glasgow for the morning of Christmas Day. In 1915 that fell on a Saturday.

  The Minister for Munitions and his officials may or may not have known that Christmas Day was not much celebrated in Scotland at the time. After the Reformation, the Kirk had done its best to stamp out what had once been enthusiastic revelry at both Christmas and New Year, the time traditionally known as the Daft Days. Although some Scots in the early 1900s were beginning to reclaim the old traditions, other than children hanging up their stockings in the hope of some sweets or an orange, most people considered 25 December to be a normal working day like any other. Lloyd George and his staff would certainly have known that Saturday mornings were part of the working week and that taking one off meant forfeiting half a day’s pay.

  Lloyd George’s team had another trick up their sleeves which might stop the Minister from having to confront too many angry men. They would control the issue of tickets for delegates to the conference. Referring to the Byzantine manoeuvring which ensued, the Forward wrote, ‘Not even Mr. Sexton Blake, the eminent detective, could unravel that!’

  In Revolt on the Clyde, Willie Gallacher recounts the tale of how the CWC outfoxed Lloyd George. He tells the story of the run-up to the Christmas Day conference with a mixture of anger, humour and unholy glee. Two days before, on Thursday, 23 December 1915, the CWC called a meeting in Glasgow. An executive member of his union, which was also meeting that evening, Gallacher got there late. He found three of his fellow CWC members handing out tickets for the Christmas Day conference at St Andrew’s Halls.

  They explained to him how the tickets were to work: ‘The Minister had agreed to pay each shop steward 7s 6d for expenses, so that they would have to be careful in distributing tickets, as each one represented that amount.’ Hang on a wee minute, said Willie Gallacher, seeing at once that the business with the expenses and the careful handing out of the tickets was a way of reducing how many people would be at the conference. Besides which, the CWC hadn’t decided yet whet
her it was even going to attend.

  Harry Hill – no, not that one – came angrily back at him. ‘By Christ, I never met your equal for making trouble!’ A furious Hill, shop steward in the shipwrights’ union, then threw the tickets down on the table and stomped off. His method of departure was so outrageously dramatic everybody laughed at it. Gallacher spoke up again:

  Have we no sense of responsibility to the organizations we represent? Are we to be at the beck and call of this avowed enemy of the trade union movement? To what are we being reduced when this man can send along tickets and instruct us to organize a meeting for him?

  He managed to convince them the Christmas Day meeting should be boycotted but as soon as it was clear the vote was likely to go that way, one of the other CWC members ran out into the corridor and phoned the Central Station Hotel, where, as Willie Gallacher put it, ‘Lloyd George, with his tame trade union and Labour Party officials, had his headquarters.’

  On the other end of the phone, Arthur Henderson was asking them to stay where they were. He wanted to come over and speak to them. Henderson was a member of the wartime coalition government, the first Labour MP to hold cabinet office. Nicknamed ‘Uncle Arthur’, he had previously been a union leader. As far as Willie Gallacher was concerned, in both capacities Uncle Arthur definitely fell within the definition of a tame official.

  Nevertheless, he jokingly suggested they should agree to wait if they could all get taxis home paid for after the meeting was over. The message relayed over the phone from Henderson was, ‘He thanks you very much, and he has instructed his secretary to order a fleet of taxis.’