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 HISTORY

This page describes incidents from Labour History -  the things they don't tell you  in school.  It will be international, but starts at home with: -

 RED CLYDESIDE -  1919 

Government Quells 'Bolshevist Rising'

Following WWI  governments were in dread of socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks had taken Russia in 1917 and revolutionary movements were active from China to Argentina. A wave of political strikes was sweeping Europe.  In Germany and Hungary soldiers and sailors had rebelled.  The Irish had risen against British rule in 1916. In the same year Lenin had appointed John Maclean Soviet Consul to Scotland.  Revolution was in the air.

In  1919 Scottish workers on Clydeside produced 2.6 million tons of ships. They were  working a 57 hour week,  but saw unemployment rising as thousands of demobilised soldiers returned to Scotland.  The situation was exploited by employers as a means of rebuilding the 'unemployed reserve' they had been able to use to drive down pre-war conditions.   The Clyde Workers' Committee (CWC) saw the treat and organised a strike to secure a 40 hour week  in order that soldiers could get jobs and to maintain the bargaining power of labour against capital.

By 30 January 1919 40,000 workers in the engineering and shipbuilding industries in Clydeside had joined the strike. Electricity supply workers in Glasgow joined them in sympathy, as did 36,000 miners in the Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire coalfields.  A protest march was organised for 29th January to George Square (the centre of Glasgow) where a deputation asked the Lord Provost and Council to compel employers to introduce a 40 hour week.  The Provost told them to come back for an answer on 31st January - a date to become know as Bloody Friday.

On the 31st January the strikers organised a a mass demonstration of around 100,000 people in George Square where a red flag was run up the municipal flag pole. While the strike leaders were inside City Chambers awaiting the Provost (who had no intention of meeting them) the police abruptly charged the rear of the crowd with drawn batons. The Glasgow Herald reported " a hurricane of blows which fell indiscriminately on strikers and curious bystanders alike. The strikers retaliated and a bloody battle ensued driving the Police from the Square. The Riot Act was read. In London the Scottish Secretary informed the Cabinet that the situation in Glasgow was not a strike, but 'a Bolshevist uprising' and Secretary of war, Winston Churchill, acted promptly  to contain the 'Red Menace'.  He issued orders that Scottish troops were to be confined to their Maryhill barracks for fear that they would join the strikers while 12,000 troops with tanks and artillery were immediately dispatched from England to Glasgow. Soldiers were stationed at key points. Machine guns were mounted on the post office and hotels. Glasgow became an occupied city encircled with barbed wire and army checkpoints.

Several of the Union leaders were rounded up and jailed; after another couple of  weeks of tension and intimidation the strike ended when a reduction to 47 hours was agreed. In April Shinwell, Gallacher, Kirkwood, Hopkins, Ebury, Brennan, and Alexander were tried in the High Court in Edinburgh for inciting a riot. Most were acquitted but Emmanuel Shinwell, Chairman of Glasgow Trades Council, and Willie Gallacher, leader of the CWC were sentenced to 5 and 3 months in prison. Shinwell later become a Minister in the Labour government and then elevated to the House of Lords.  Gallacher became the communist MP for West Fife from 1935 -1950.

Willie Gallacher later regretted it had not been a revolution.  He wrote,

"But for those of us who were leading the strike, we were strike leaders, nothing more; we had forgotten we were revolutionary leaders of the working class and while we cheered the the flying of our flag, it had not for us the significant meaning it had for our enemies.  They saw it as the symbol of an actual rising; we saw it as an incident in the prosecution of the strike."  

Willie Gallacher

Took some pride in the fact that during the battle he managed to land a hefty punch on the Chief Constable himself before being bludgeoned down and arrested.