Showing posts with label Scottish history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scottish history. Show all posts

Friday, November 09, 2012

William Morris in Scotland (2)

The Sequel of the Scotch Letter

 Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 26, 10 July 1886, p.114

On Sunday 27th June I lectured on the ‘Political Outlook’ at the Waterloo Rooms, Glasgow, the same place where my Thursday’s lecture was given; this was under the auspices of the Branch, and our comrade Muirhead took the chair. There was a larger attendance than on the Thursday; howbeit several got up and went out almost as soon as I began: it seems there was some mistake as to my subject, as there was a religious meeting elsewhere on the premises, and some of the proper audience thereof had wandered into our hall. Moreover I suspect that some found themselves ‘caught’ by my title, and expected the lecture to refer to the present election instead of the wider subject which it dealt with. The audience was over 600, I should think, and was attentive and sympathetic. Instead of the cut-and-dried, meaningless vote of thanks, our comrades arranged to try the effect of a resolution, which was thus worded: ‘That all political action which does not aim at placing the entire means of production in the hands of the community, to be used by it for the equal benefit of all, is totally inadequate to raise the present labouring classes to the level which they have a right to claim as human beings.’ Comrade Glasier put this resolution in a very able speech, and it was seconded by Mr Cunninghame; and to my surprise no one proposed an amendment, or spoke against it: some half-dozen hands were held up against it; the rest, for. We afterwards appealed to the audience to make their resolution good by joining the League, and got some names at any rate. Mr Bennet, once editor of the Radical, who said he had come in late by misadventure, made a sympathetic speech at the end of the meeting. The literature sold well.

The last lecture was on Monday 28th, at Bridgeton, the east end of Glasgow, and to speak plainly a most woeful abode of man, crying out from each miserable court and squalid, crowded house for the abolition of the tyranny of exploitation. But here we did not score a success. There were election meetings going on all about us; and I fear that our audience was just not that which we wanted — to wit the poor folk of the district, who, if they only knew it, do so sorely need showing what it is that has doomed them to their special form of hell-upon-earth — one of the worst forms in existence, I should think. The audience was about 200, in a large hall, but entirely on our side. The monotony of acquiescence was only broken by an eager religionist, who turned his question-time into a kind of sermon addressed to us, which the audience listened to rather impatiently. A clergyman who elicited from me the answer that service as well as actual production of commodities conferred the title of good citizenship upon a man, seemed satisfied that this admission safe-guarded his craft in future society; but as he did not openly champion that position, it was not discussed. Comrades Glasier and Greer moved and seconded a resolution, the wording of which has escaped my memory, but which was rather more complete in its Socialism than the one of Sunday, and no hand was held up against it. Several names were taken for the Branch before we left the hall.

This was the end of my work; but I should mention that I had a long conference with the Branch on the Sunday, and must say that though circumstances prevent their propaganda from being showy, it is sound, and especially that there seems every chance of their developing the sale of Commonweal. I must add that the Branch of the Social Democratic Federation is on very friendly terms with them, and that they co-operated heartily in trying to make our meetings a success; and the members that I came across were very cordial to me.

Altogether the condition of opinion in the Scotch towns that I have visited is encouraging. It must be remembered that it was a bad time of the year for the kind of work I had in hand; to which must be added the much more important stumbling-block days of the most exciting election time of our days and yet the halls were mostly well filled, and the audiences more than attentive — almost enthusiastic — and as above said, two of them passed Socialist resolutions. In short, not to make too much of outward tokens, one could not help feeling that the ideas of socialism are taking hold, and that people are beginning to feel the hollowness of that kind of politics in which all reforms pass by those who need them most. Nor will the attachment to puritanic religion, which has been held up as such a bugbear to us, be a very serious barrier to Socialism; the one or two appeals to it which were made in my hearing were received decidedly coldly. The Scotch, it seems, no longer care to mix religion with their politics, whatever influence genuine feeling, or habit, or respectability may have on them in the matter. I was told that when Henry George appealed to their old puritanic feeling on the occasion of his last visit, it fell very flat indeed; and I was not surprised to hear it, after my own small experience herein. Here, then, is good hope of harvest, and once again the labourers are few. Let us hope that will mend before long, and that Scotland will not be the last in the Revolution.

William Morris in Scotland (1)

William Morris (1834-1896)




A Letter from Scotland


Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 25, 3 July 1886, p.105-106;

On Tuesday 22nd I found myself at Arbroath, a pleasant stone-built town of some 20,000 inhabitants on the German Ocean, the original of ‘Fairport’ in Scott’s ‘Antiquary’, the remains of a magnificent church and abbey dominating the homely houses. The industry practised there is sail-cloth making, and it is in a very dismal condition at present. There was much suffering there in the past winter. In a walk that I took with my host (a Free Kirk minister and a Socialist), we got into conversation with a field-labourer who was resting from his job of harrowing at a field’s end. I should premise, for the benefit of our English readers, that Scotch field-labourers are hired by the half-year, and receive their ‘meal-and-milk’, lodging in a ‘bothy’ — or a not too luxurious pig-sty — and a sum of money. This friend, who was a brisk and intelligent young man, told us that wages were low, and that he was now receiving £9 for the half-year, instead of £12, which he used to receive. He also told us, perhaps unnecessarily, that he could not save out of this splendid salary. I was told afterwards that wages had fallen back to what they were ten years ago, at which time they had risen suddenly. A foreman, a friend told us, was now getting £28 per annum, which used to be the wages of a full private labourer.

In the evening I lectured to an audience of upwards of 600 very attentive persons, mostly of the working-class. They cheered me heartily, and took up the points well. There was a goodly attendance on the platform of the committee who had organized the meeting, and who were chiefly co-operators. Questions being asked for, I only got one, from the irrepressible temperance champion, which was received with some laughter. In fact, the meeting was rather huddled up at the end, as there was no gas and the light began to fade into the mid-summer twilight, which is all the darkness of those northern regions at this time of year. A fair amount of literature was sold.

On the 23rd I lectured at Edinburgh, in the Oddfellows’ Hall, for the committee which is the fag-end of the Industrial Remuneration Conference of last year. We expected but a poor attendance, as there were several meetings of parliamentary candidates going on in the city; but after all it turned out well, the attendance being better than at any previous lecture. Again the audience seemed sympathetic — nay, enthusiastic. I asked for questions in writing, dreading the meandering speech which usually accompanies spoken questions. I got quite a pack of cards of them; and the answers were well received. A clergyman was in the chair, another (our friend Mr Glasse, who made a Socialistic speech) moved the vote of thanks, and a third seconded it. This last gentleman poked some heavy ecclesiastical fun at me, interlarded with buttery compliments. Once for all, I must ask our comrades to forgive me for receiving votes of thanks, on the ground that I could not help it. The sale of literature was good. I had a short but pleasant interview with the members of the Branch afterwards. They seemed rather depressed; lack speakers, and so find it difficult to make much way; but are getting a few new members, in spite of the slackness of their propaganda. They told me that a branch of the Social Democratic Federation started, apparently with good prospects, early this year or late last (I forget which), had quite disappeared after a few weeks’ existence. One comrade said that in talking to fellow-workmen they would agree with everything that he said in favour of Socialism, but could not be brought further than this passive adherence. On the other hand our comrades are making most commendable efforts to push the Commonweal, and with much success. The news-shops take it and sell it, too, and they are also getting newsboys to sell it; so that propaganda of some sort is going on, only our comrades feel the want of public and obvious propaganda. I should add, the University Society, who have a good deal retreated from their position, at all events in appearance, are starting a kind of progressive debating society, appealing to trades’ unionists and co-operatives to join it, which our comrades intend to use for their own and other people’s education.

The 24th I gave the same lecture at Glasgow. A wet evening, meetings of candidates throughout the town, and again apprehensions of a failure; but again a good audience, perhaps rather more in assent than at Edinburgh; a somewhat overwhelming amount of questions, the answers to which were very well received. A sprinkling of Ruskinians were there, somewhat inclined, I fancy, to take exception to the roughness of the opinions: indeed, the mover of that (terrible) vote of thanks said as much, and was somewhat cheered.

I may here remark that it seems to me that the Scotch are much given to ‘lion-hunting’, and that therefore it is necessary for a Socialist who wants to get at the facts to discount a certain amount of the enthusiasm with which he is received, if he happens to have any reputation outside Socialism. Still enough remains in these cases to show that there were many in the audience who really agreed. At Glasgow there was a good sprinkling also of Land Restorers; but these, I think, are beginning to see out of the narrow close in which Henry George has hedged them.

The 25th I lectured at Dundee and had much such an audience as at Glasgow, only that they lacked the instruction that our Branch has, with all drawbacks, given to the Glasgow folk, and therefore did not seem so ready to take up the points. Trade is very slack at Dundee; the jute business nearly gone, Indian competition having destroyed it. I was told that there are few places where the difference between the classes is more felt than it is at Dundee. I much regretted that I could not stop there and get to know some of the workers. Our comrades here (Glasgow) ought to make a push to get up a branch at Dundee.

I meet the Branch to-day, and in the evening lecture again. Tomorrow I lecture at Bridgeton, a suburb of Glasgow. But I send this off to be in time for the current number, and will give an account of whatever else happens next week.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Fife Anarchism

Socialist Courier continues its occasional account of Scotland's radical past. We do not lay claim to its working class history, or claim that it represented the views of the Socialist Party but feel that in many cases, our political history has been hidden away and needs to once again come into the open to spur debate and discussion.

Lawrence Storione
(1867–1922) was a Fife miner. He is best known for founding the Anarchist Communist League in Cowdenbeath.

Lawrence Storione was the son of the Italian stonemason, born in Italy in 1867. Storione later lived in Liege and participated in several miners' strikes in Belgium. It appears he was given pamphlets on anarchism in this period by the noted French anarchist Elisee Reclus, who was lecturing at the University of Brussels and Storione now began to identify as an anarchist. He ended up in Scotland in 1897 arriving in Muirhead, Ayrshire. He moved on to Hamilton in Lanarkshire where he was to marry Annie Cowan in 1900 and stayed until 1906 when he travelled to Canada. He returned to Scotland in 1908, where he lived in Lumphinnans, Fife.

His coming to the pit village of Lumphinnans and his employment at No1 pit there introduced revolutionary ideas among the miners in that area. He soon set up an Anarchist Communist League which, according to Stuart MacIntyre in his" Little Moscows" preached a" heady mixture of De Leonist Marxism and the anarchist teachings of Kropotkin and Stirner, a libertarian communism which was fiercely critical of the union”. Among those who appeared to have joined the League were the miners Abe and Jim Moffat and Robert (Bob) Selkirk. All three were to join the Communist Party in 1922, Abe Moffat having an important position within it and Selkirk serving as a CP town councillor in Cowdenbeath for 24 years. In his anarchist years, Selkirk had been a member of a Scottish branch of the IWW, and publicly polemicised against Guy Aldred’s rejection of work-shop organisation, as well as denouncing Kropotkin for his pro- First World War position.

Storione’s children were given good revolutionary names: Armonie, Anarchie, Autonomie, Germinal and Libertie! The sole exception to this was his daughter Annie and she was a leading light in a Proletarian Sunday School in Cowdenbeath, which used the Industrial Workers of the World's Little Red Songbook, far more radical than the Sunday School set up in the area by the Independent Labour Party.

 Bob Selkirk wrote that the League sold copies of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, Stirner’s The Ego and His Own, and De Leon’s Two Pages From Roman History. The main slogan of the League was, again according to Selkirk, “Trade Unions are bulwarks of capitalism and all Trade Union leaders are fakirs”.  On the League’s critique of the trade unions Selkirk remarks that: “We thus sowed defeatism and pessimism instead of strengthening the organisations of the workers. Actually most of the members of this Branch became successful businessmen, accountants, dance band leaders, insurance agents, etc. They had lost faith in the workers” (Bob Selkirk, The Life of a Worker, 1967).

Both Abe Moffat and Selkirk mention Storione as an inspiration. However as members of a Party that was virulently anti-anarchist they had to re-write history. So for Moffat, Storione, (remembered as Storian in his book) was no longer an anarchist but “an ardent Communist,” who had convinced he and his brother Jim to a militant anti-capitalist position (My Life With The Miners, 1967).

Stevenson in his biography of Davie Proudfoot, Communist and then Labour activist, says that he was influenced by the League, although carrying on the CP tradition conveniently drops the "Anarchist" from the League's title

The League set up a bookshop in nearby Cowdenbeath in 1916, as the result of the subscriptions of twelve workers subscribing £24 each. It sold Capital, Ancient Society and other Charles Kerr publications. “We sold anything considered progressive, even “The Strike of A sex”. We sold the anti-war literature of the time and became familiar with police warrants and police searching of our houses”

Lawrence Storione died in 1922 after a pit accident invalided him during 1917. At a compensation hearing that year the Sheriff gave a decision in Storione's favour. However, police were to challenge this, saying that he was fit to work. They said that, along with Jack Leckie and Willie Gallagher, he headed a demonstrations in Kelty when 5,000 workers struck during the Three Weeks Strike. He was eventually to lose his fight for compensation.

Mary Docherty - A Miner's Lass.

'They always talk about how red Clydeside was, but Fife was just as radical,' she says. 'It seemed revolution here was just round the corner. Middle-class people were terrified. You had to lie to your employer about attending marches and hope they did not see you. The London headquarters of the Communist Party even got in touch with Fife to say slow down. We were so far ahead.' Her father became a member of the Fife Communist Anarchist Group and later a founding member of the Communist Party in Britain. 'Before he became political, like many miners, he was searching for reasons for poverty. He became a member of the temperance movement, but soon realised drink was not the cause.'

Song of Sixpence:

'Sing a song of labour
Boys and girls do try
For the master's children
Have got all the pie . . .'

Friday, July 27, 2012

Past Reflections 3

 It’s a pity that there is so little written information about the history of Glasgow branch. However,  when I joined in 1963 there were still two founder members of the branch  and some other members who knew stories about the branch’s early days while the old minute books contained some really fascinating tales, but be warned, what I can tell is mostly hearsay. 

There may have been individual members in Glasgow before the branch was formed because in 1907 the SOCIALIST STANDARD carried details of seven newsagents in the city where the S/S could be obtained.

The founding of the branch was reported in the December 1924 issue of the S/S, but branch details in the S/S vanished in August 1927 so there was no Glasgow branch until the details re-appeared in October 1928. Included among the early members were John Higgins, Tommy Egan, Harry Watson, “Professor” Barclay, W. Falconer and Alex Shaw.

I’ve already written about the contribution made by Alex Shaw but it was probably John Higgins who did most to establish the party in Glasgow. Higgins was fearless in face of hostility: for example, in 1930 he spoke at a meeting which included a number of communists in the audience, and he read out part of a bill placed before the German Reichstag which included a proposal to expropriate the entire property of all Eastern Jews without compensation. The communists raged at the Nazis for this  until Higgins revealed that it was the German communists who were proposing this bill and this can be verified in Alan Bullock’s “Hitler, a study in tyranny” (pages 172/3).

Another outstanding speaker, this time indoors, was Tony Mulheron. He paced about the platform, speaking without notes, and was as good to watch as to listen to. Paul Foot of the SWP was a big fan of Tony and so was I. One evening during the war Tony was speaking at an outdoor meeting and Esme Percy, a well known actor of the day, joined the audience and saw fit to criticise Tony’s diction. Tony’s response was to point out that all over the world millions of people were being killed, maimed and enslaved yet here’s a man who is only concerned with trivia. After the meeting a chastened Percy was nevertheless invited to accompany Tony and some members to the home of a comrade who had a supply of hard–to-get whisky!

Tony had a fondness for using grandiose-sounding words. For example, he described a short spell when he was out of the party in the 1930s as “a brief hiatus”, and the water for his whisky was “aqua pura”. A bit pretentious? Maybe, but what a character and what a speaker.

Vic Vanni

Friday, June 29, 2012

Robert Owen and New Lanark

Paternalism is a common attitude among well-meaning social reformers. Stemming from the root pater, or father, paternalism implies a patriarchal, benevolent but superior sensibility. Paternalistic social reformers feel a social responsibility and believe that they should "uplift" those beneath them, but also see those they help as inferior, or childlike, in some way. Paternalistic industrialists assume that they have a responsibility to those in their employ.  Robert Owen built the mill town of New Lanark, where he created relatively high quality schools and housing for his workers. He was never a democrat because workers' democracy would mean he would lose his personal control.

Robert Owen, left his home in Wales when he was only ten, to make his own way in business. He walked to London, where he entered the retail drapery trade. When he was 14 he went to Manchester. With a partner and £100 capital he began making machines (mules) for spinning cotton. Later he became manager (and later partner in) a factory. By the time he was twenty nine he was manager and part owner of New Lanark Cotton Mills near Glasgow. The mills had been established a few years earlier by David Dale, Owen's future father-in-law.

Robert Owen has been called the "father of English Socialism" and although he did not start English socialism, it caught hold of him and carried him along. It was the followers of Robert Owen who introduced the word “socialism” for the first time in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine of November 1827.  For Owen and his followers, ‘social’ signified ‘co-operation’ and a socialist supported co-operation. Owen found that treating your workers better makes better workers which makes better profits. As early as 1810, he raised the demand for a ten-hour working day, which was instituted on his enterprise at New Lanark. By 1817 he was calling for an eight-hour day under the slogan ‘Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest.’

"...no experiment was ever so successful as the one I conducted at New Lanark, although it was commenced and continued in opposition to all the oldest and strongest prejudices of mankind. For twenty-nine years we did without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single legal punishment; without any known poors’ rate; without intemperance or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the adults, diminishing their daily labour, paid interest on capital, and cleared upwards of £300,000 of profit." (quoted in GJ Holyoake’s History of Cooperation). New Lanark gained international fame when Owen's experiments in enhancing his workers' environment resulted in increased productivity and profit. Before long, New Lanark became a tourist attraction where visitors came to gawk at Owen’s social experiment. Between 1805 and 1815, 15,000 visitors came to New Lanark. Owen reckoned that between 1814 and 1824 there were about 2,000 visitors every year. (To-day, New Lanark is a UNESCO World Heritage site and well worth a day-trip to see)

In 1800, Robert Owen took over the management of David Dale's cotton mills at New Lanark and put into practice the ideas that he had developed earlier in his life and his workers at New Lanark were made to adopt new living, working, sanitary, educational and other standards. When he first arrived, the population, he claimed "... possessed almost all the vices and very few of the virtues of a social community. Theft and the receipt of stolen goods were their trade, idleness and drunkenness their habit, falsehood and deception their garb...they united only in a zealous systematic opposition to their employers..." New Lanark had a population of 2,000 people, 500 of whom were young children from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children had been well treated by Dale but Owen found the condition of the people unsatisfactory. Owen refused to take any more pauper children and he began to improve the houses and machinery. Crime and vice bred by the demoralising conditions were common; there was little education and less sanitation; housing conditions were intolerable. Owen set out to test his ideas on education and the environment by attempting to set up a model factory and model village. Under him, conditions in the factory were clean and children and women worked relatively short hours: a 12 hour day including 1½ hours for meals. He employed no children under 10 years old. He provided decent houses, sanitation, shops and so on for the workers. He gave rewards for cleanliness and good behaviour and mainly by his own personal influence, encouraged the people in habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. The Gentleman's Magazine commented that "the children live with their parents in neat comfortable habitation, receiving wages for their labour...The regulations here to preserve health of body and mind, present a striking contrast to those of most large manufactories in this kingdom."

He won the confidence of his work-force by opening a shop in which goods of sound quality could be bought at little more than cost price and at which the sale of alcohol was placed under strict supervision. The profit made by the shop was put straight into the school where the children of the factory workers were given a "free" education.  Owen's educational venture at New Lanark helped to pioneer infant schools and was an early example of what we now recognize as community schooling. Robert Owen aimed at giving children a good basic education, fitting the village youth for the world of work in the mills, but at the same time posing no threat to the existing order of society. He succeeded in creating a system which was able to produce obedient, conforming and apparently happy children equipped with basic literacy and numeracy. He also became more popular duing the American embargo in 1806 when he closed the mills for four months but paid the workmen their full wages. The mills continued to thrive commercially. Owen received no criticism from below and he simply bought out critical partners. Frustrated by the restrictions imposed on him by his partners, who wished to conduct the business along more ordinary lines, he organised a new firm in 1813. Owen decided to find men who would sympathise with his aims and circulated a pamphlet called A New View of Society describing his principles. Owen proposed that five per cent should be paid on capital and the whole surplus devoted to general education and improvement of the labourer's condition. Owen was a paternalistic factory aristocrat. He kept a close watch on employees. He was especially proud of the arrangement for marking each man's conduct daily by a ‘silent monitor,’ a label coloured to indicate either goodness and badness and placed opposite each man's post.

The rest of Owen's life was an attempt to recreate the New Lanark experience on a large scale and he became more radical. Owen began to flood Parliament and the newspapers with tracts promoting a plan for social reorganization on a grand scale. In place of the existing system of private property and profit, he proposed the creation of Villages of Cooperation. Each village would be a self-sufficient unit of between 500 and 1,000 people that combined agricultural and industrial production. Every family would have a private apartment  In his earliest days, Owen appeared to be little more than a benevolent factory owner who made paternalistic improvements in the lives of his employees. Society was to be transformed by means of experimental communities. Education was the key to Owen's scheme and its purpose was to mould the individual into an ideal social character. Owen argued that human nature could be changed: since we are all products of our environment, one need only change the environment to change man. Yet this 18th century materialist determinist view of the mind as a blank sheet on which the environment can imprint anything is wrong as the nurture Versus nature debate is an over-simplification but it, nevertheless, became a cornerstone of the socialist theories and programs of the 19th century. Society punished men for being what society had made them become. Owen wanted to produce self-help and initiative in the working man so where other men advocated the reform of the country's political institutions, Owen became preoccupied with rendering the State itself redundant. Owen thought the multiplication of ""villages of co-operation" would lead to what Engels later called the "withering away of the state".

Plan of a village of co-operation

From 1824 Owen poured his own money into setting up a community, New Harmony, in Indiana, which failed within a few years. New Harmony was the first and most famous of some sixteen Owenite communities that appeared in the US between 1825 and 1829. None, however, lasted more than a few years as communities. One of the most interesting was Nashoba, founded in 1825 by Scottish-born social reformer Frances Wright on the Wolf River in Tennessee. Wright intended to prove that education and a change of environment could have the same transformative effect on slaves as they had on the proletariats of New Lanark. Wright planned to purchase slaves, educate them, and free them. The plan failed because the community could not produce enough income to pay back the debts incurred in buying the slaves.

When Owen returned to Britain in 1829 after the failure of his American experiment he began to associate himself with the various self-help schemes. By 1830, more than 300 cooperative societies were in operation. Owen had set up his own cooperative (Association for the Promotion of Cooperative Knowledge), union (Grand National Consolidated Trades Union) and labour exchange (National Equitable Labour Exchange) organisations. The latter functioned as an extension of the cooperative store, surplus coop produce forming the basis of its activities. Essentially goods brought in were valued by a committee and a note issued indicating the amount of labour required to produce the item. This could then be exchanged for other goods in the bazaar of the same labour time value, the same time to produce. The the economic problem was seen as one of "unequal exchange" - employers paid wages less than the value of the product and so were cheating workers. At one time products tended to exchange according to the time the independent producers had taken to make them. In this way they did get more or less the full equivalent of their labour. But individual artisan’s tools have now developed into the powerful factory machines of today owned by capitalist companies while the producers now sell their ability to work to one or other of these companies in return for a wage or a salary. They no longer own and control the products of their labour. These belong to the company, which sells them for more than they cost to produce, pocketing the difference as their profits. When producers first became separated from the means and instruments of production, as was increasingly the case throughout the 19th century, it was not difficult for them to realise what was happening. They could see that what they produced sold for what it did when they had made them themselves as independent producers, but instead of them getting the full equivalent of their labour they only got a part of it as wages, the rest going to the capitalist who employed them. The source of the capitalists’ profits was their unpaid labour. So the demand for the full “fruits of our labour” went up among the more radical of the newly proletarianised producers. All sorts of schemes were devised by critics of capitalism such as Robert Owen in Britain and Proudhon in France to try to recreate the same result as in the old situation. But it was too late. They all failed as they had become irrelevant due to production no longer being individual but a collective effort. In this new circumstance, if the demand for “the full fruits of labour” was to be met it could only be done collectively. The whole product of society would have to be commonly owned and used for the benefit of all. This of course is socialism and it is the only way that, today, people can get to keep the fruits of their (collective) labour.

Robert Owen attempted to rectify this "unequal exchange" so that workers could obtain the full “fruits of our labour” by establishing a number of producer and consumer co-operatives around the country, linked by labour exchanges. The guiding principle of these labour exchanges was that goods were exchanged according to their value as measured by labour time, with non-circulating labour notes used to facilitate the exchange of goods. In this way, it was believed, there would be equal exchange and no exploitation. However, these co-operatives were short-lived and had difficulty in providing even basic provisions for exchange against labour notes. The problem of valuing goods in terms of labour time meant that errors were made and, inevitably, there were goods undervalued in relation to their market equivalents that were quickly purchased, while there were others that were overvalued and just as rapidly accumulated in the exchanges. Only where the labour exchanges replicated the market valuation were there no such problems. In effect, therefore, market price rapidly exerted its hegemony over labour values.

These bazaars were failures, but the idea of labour-time vouchers, or ‘labour money’, appeared in substantially similar forms in France with Proudhon, in Germany with Rodbertus and in England with Hodgskin and Gray. The idea was also to appear in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). This proposition has been seized upon by left-wingers as proof that Marx presumed the use of money in the early phase of communism. But in this work, as elsewhere, Marx is clear that communism (in its early and mature phases) will be based on common ownership and have no use for money:
"Within the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products." Marx was quite adamant that his and Owen’s suggested labour-time vouchers would not function as money: "Owen’s 'labour-money' for instance, is no more “money” than a ticket for the theatre. Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption" (Capital, Vol. 1). "These producers may… receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate’"(Capital, Vol. 2). Marx only suggested labour-time vouchers as a possibility; given the low level of development of the productive forces, he believed that this was one way of regulating individual consumption. The objective was, for Marx and Owen: from each according to ability, to each according to need. And this is now realisable, as soon as a majority wants it. For Owen in the early nineteenth century the problem of the underdevelopment of the forces and relations of production was even more acute; and it is probably for this reason that he did not recognise the existence of the class struggle. This is why Marx and Engels called his ideas (along with those of Fourier and Saint-Simon) ‘Utopian Socialism’.

It was a fairly straightforward deduction that if labour is the source of all value, it is also the source of all power. The rich and apparently powerful "unproductive classes" are just a small minority sitting on the broad shoulders of the toiling masses. If the workers withdraw their labour, the unproductive classes topple over. A national strike, or "sacred month", would herald in a new co-operative order.

With the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union that he helped to found, Owen brought all the widespread but disparate industrial activity under One Big Union with the object of ending the "capitalist system". He wanted to use unionism to change the economic system while his members wanted to use the unions to wring higher wages from their employers. From the union leaders' viewpoint, the Grand National's primary goal was an eight-hour workday. From Owen's perspective, the goal was a total transformation of society based on Owen's Villages of Cooperation. The inclusion of all workers, including women, was ensured. Lodges had their own sick, funeral, superannuation and other benefits and there were no regular subscriptions to central funds. There was a general levy of members to acquire land and set up workshops, however. Membership was said to have reached somewhere between a half million and one million within a few weeks, although there was no accurate record of the membership and it is believed that there were only 16,000 paid-up subscribers so the figures have little real significance.  The aim was syndicalist government, founded on a pyramid system of representation. Owen opposed strikes because he believed that unions thus used were part of the class war, rather than being used as a means of social regulation. Owen himself always opposed the class struggle. When the true class war came to a head in the summer of 1834, Owen bailed out, disassociating himself from the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union which he himself had set up. Owen failed to understand the cruelties of life in the 1800s, where men and women rebelled against their masters. He may have sympathised with men to a certain extent , but he could not identify himself with them. The "Grand National" began to break up owing to its inability to provide adequate support for sections of its membership who were on strike and the skilled craftsmen fell back where they could on the local guilds and societies and we hear comparatively little of industrial unions until the 20th Century.

In 1835 Owen renewed the attempt to found a community. This time the attempt was made through a distinctly working class body. This was variously named the Association of All Classes of All Nations (1835-39), the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists (1839-42) and the Rational Society (1842-46). At its peak in 1841 there were 70 or so branches spread throughout Great Britain. In key centres, such as Manchester and London, meeting halls were built (the Halls of Science) and regular indoor and outdoor propaganda meetings held under the auspices of ‘Social Missionaries’. By late 1839 the efforts bore fruit with the opening of a community at Queenwood in Hampshire. This became known as Harmony. In the summer of 1845 Harmony was sold off. Yet another failed project.

Robert Owen is generally described as a philanthropist and utopian socialist but he was first and foremost a capitalist. He was never reconciled to the class conflict which the trade union struggle brought. New Lanark was not a socialist experiment. Owen and his partners owned it and he directed it personally with very little democratic input or participation from the workers. Private ownership and the profit motive remained in spite of the more humanistic measures that Owen certainly adopted. Thus the failure of the New Lanark model to spread was not really a failure of a socialist model as it was the failure of Owen’s own paternalistic humanitarianism. At Harmony the aspirations of working men and women were sacrificed to the demands of the profit system. Capitalism still held control, and the working people there remained its victims. It is also relevant to mentioned that the type of worker brought to New Lanark was of a rather homogenous type: Scottish workers of Calvinist backgrounds who were inclined to discipline, uncomplaining labor and personal self-improvement - complacent compliant wage-slaves. Whereas at New Harmony even the poorest families were accustomed to work only a few months each year and then to spend the rest of their time "in doing nothing, in drinking and in talking politics, which tend to nothing"  and they also questioned submitting to Owen’s authority, whether paternalistic or not.

Owen had rebelled against the “trinity of evils:” private property, religion, and marriage founded on property and religion. He developed a plan of progressive paternalism in his communes – curfews, house inspections, and fines for drunkenness and illegitimate children. He equated happiness with docility, and as a result was criticized for condescending to the working class. The importance of the Owenites is that for the first time a complete change in the nature of society was contemplated by a section of the working class. Owen contrasted the "brutal selfishness" of individualism with the rational self-interest of co-operation, which recognises the individual's own interest in the welfare of the community. Owen was therefore a revolutionary because he wanted to change attitudes. Owen recognised, unlike most Chartists, that political democracy is not the solution in itself to capitalist misery. When the Grand National collapsed from the combined offensive of government, courts and employers the workers began to think that to gain power they would first need to gain the vote. Owen did not share this "Chartist" dream. He believed that whilst there are rich and poor, the rich will rule - whoever has the vote. He, however did not fully appreciate that the vote sought by Chartists could in fact be a means to an end.

A distinctively socialist political economy did eventually emerge within sections of the Chartist movement. Ernest Jones, for example, dismissed the demand for "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work", which was to ask for: "a golden slavery instead of an iron one. But that golden chain would soon be turned to iron again, for if you still allow the system of wages slavery to exist, labour must be still subject to capital, and if so, capital being its master, will possess the power and never lack the will to reduce the slave from his fat diet down to fast-day fare!"

Owen had a vision of a multitude of independent co-ops linked to form a co-operative world. As people learnt the new morality, the need for government would fade away and prisons and punishments would also become unnecessary. The false, individualistic morals of competitive society are the "sole cause which renders law necessary in society" as Owen explained in 1833. In the new order there would be disagreements between people and between groups, but they would be fewer and could be resolved by arbitrators skilled in the practice of the new morality. Owen wrote that if everyone was "trained to be rational, the art of war would be rendered useless". In 1833 he told people that the co-operative system would not only be free of litigation, it would be free of war, and until that object was achieved one of the main aims of the co-operative movement was to be a peace movement: "One of their chief offices, until the ignorance which causes the evil shall be removed, will be to reconcile man to man, and nation to nation throughout the world, and to enable all to understand that they have but one interest, which is, to insure the permanent happiness of each and all".

The origins of the co-operative movement go back to Robert Owen in the early nineteenth century. The Rochdale Pioneers, founders of the modern cooperative movement, were Owenites and the modern secularist movement can also trace its ancestry back to the Owenite movement of the 1840s. The utopians' shared ideals of cooperative effort and their creation of small-scale communities contributed to anarchist political theory as well as the communal traditions of the kibbutz movement and the American counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Co-operatives cannot be used as a means for establishing socialism. As long as the capitalist class control political power, which they will be able to continue to do for as long as there is a majority of non-socialists, capitalist economic relations (commodity production, wage labour, production for profit, etc.) will be bound to prevail and these will control the destiny of co-operatives. Co-operatives usually only flourish to the extent that they can be successfully accommodated within capitalism. Instead of the “ethos" of the Co-operative Movement transforming capitalism, it was the other way round: the ethos of capitalism transformed the co-ops. This was because they had to compete with ordinary capitalist businesses on the same terms as them and so were subject to the same competitive pressures, to keep costs down and to to maximise the difference between sales revenue and costs (called “profits” in ordinary businesses, but “surplus” by the co-op). The co-operative movement was outcompeted and is now trying to survive on the margin as a niche for “ethical” consumers and savers, leaving the great bulk of production, distribution and banking in the hands of ordinary profit-seeking businesses.

See here for more on Robert Owen

Appendix:-
SPGB 1989 Conference:

"This Conference reaffirms that is: 'In the minds of many workers the Co-operative movement is regarded as being in some way linked up with socialism. When the co-operators take up this attitude they claim in justification that Robert Owen, the co-operative pioneer, was actively concerned for some part of his life with possible means of escape from the capitalist system ...Robert Owen's solution was that small groups of workers should try to establish self-supporting 'villages of industry', in which there would be no employer, no master. They would constitute, as it were, little oases in thedesert of capitalism, owning the 'land and means of production common'. He anticipated that the movement would grown until finally the workers would have achieved their emancipation ...The Co-operative Movement cannot solve the basic economic problems of the workers as a whole, or even of the co-operative societies' own members. Its success is merely the success of an essentially capitalist undertaking ...Co-operation cannot emancipate the working class. Only Socialism will do that. The workers cannot escape from the effects of capitalism by retiring into Owen's 'villages of industry'. They must obtain for society as a whole the ownership of the means of production and distribution, which are the property of the capitalist class. For this they must organise to control the machinery of government. Once possessed of power they can then reorganise society on a socialist basis of common ownership. Owen's original aims can only be achieved by socialist methods'." - carried

Friday, June 08, 2012

Red Clydeside's Racism

In previous blogs on the history of Scottish labour we have observed how religious bigotry often marred attempts to unite the working class. But racism has also existed and been exploited for sectional advantage by supposed internationalists.

In all the major sea-ports of Britain communities a non-white sea-farers arose, many marrying local women. In Glasgow they mostly settled around the harbour area, commonly known as Broomielaw.

Many Red Clydesiders have become Scottish national heroes, remembered for their fight for workers' rights. Seamen's leader, president of the Glasgow trades and labour council and chairman of the 40 hr workers’ strike committee, Emanuel – Manny – Shinwell gained fame for his part as a left-wing trades union official in 1919, finding himself thrown into jail on Bloody Friday. But Stirling University historian Dr Jacqueline Jenkinson, in her book "Black 1919", accuses Shinwell of encouraging Glasgow seamen to launch a series of attacks on black sailors. Jenkinson reveals how Shinwell's British Seafarers Union banned black members and how labour histories of the period  fail to mention this Glasgow race-riot .

Jenkinson said: "There has been a reluctance to accept that many of the Red Clydesiders promoted actions that were discriminatory and unfair to the black sailors. Manny Shinwell was one of those who campaigned to stop black sailors getting work. His radical seamen's union, the British Seafarers Union, openly banned black members. It was felt they were keeping Scots out of jobs when they returned from service in the First World War, and lowering wages. Shinwell gave what some consider inflammatory speeches in which he condemned the employment of black sailors in the merchant fleet."

Professor Elaine McFarland, a specialist in modern Scottish history at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: "Red Clydeside does have this dark, racist underbelly, and there has been a reluctance to expose it. It may be due to the political leanings of some historians, but there has been a sentimental view of those who took part in Red Clydeside."

Socialists are only too aware of the racism that can inveigle itself into the trade union movement. Our companion blog SOYMB  recently re-published an appeal from Jewish workers about the descrimination they were facing from elements within the British TUC in the 1890s

The SPGB had reason to distance itself from certain members of the Socialist Party of Canada for their anti-Chinese statements in the early 20th century.

Addressing a meeting of migrant workers in London in 1892, dockers leader Ben Tillett told them: “Yes, you are our brothers, and we will do our duty by you. But we wish you had not come.”

Keir Hardie argued: “It would be much better for Scotland if those [Scottish emigrants] were compelled to remain there [in Scotland] and let the foreigners be kept out. Dr. Johnson said God made Scotland for Scotchmen, and I would keep it so.” According to Hardie, the Lithuanians migrant workers in the mining industry had “filthy habits”, they lived off “garlic and oil”, and they were carriers of “the Black Death”. He described the typical Irish immigrant coal-miner as having "a big shovel, a strong back and a weak brain"

E.D. Morel of the Independent Labour Party and future Labour MP, could describe colonial French troops as "black savages" .

The Glasgow Evening Times were able to employ the words "sambo" and "nigger" in its articles.

The two main sailors’ union, the British Seafarers Union and the the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s’ Union, played the "race" card to attract and mobilise white members at the expense of their black co-workers. The operation of a "colour" bar by sailors’ unions heightened dockside tensions around Britain’s seaports. Prominent Glasgow labour leaders enforced and supported the "colour" bar on black and Chinese sailors. They opportunistically played on this manufactured division within the low-paid and low-skill seafaring workforce as part of the wider campaign for a 40-hour week to reduce unemployment pressures caused by demobilisation. Trade union leaders endeavoured to involve white British sailors in the general strike called in Clydeside, by tying on-going white sailors’ protests against the "unfair" competition posed by overseas labour to the 40-hours strike action. During waterfront speeches at sailors meetings, Shinwell linked the predudices among white British merchant sailors about the ‘unfair’ competition provided by overseas "Asiatic" labour, placing them into a wider industrial setting. He offered dissatisfied white British merchant seaman an opportunity to voice their concerns about workers from overseas undercutting their wages and threatening their job opportunities as part of the wider strike movement. The rioting at the harbour and the threat of more in the succeeding days drew public attention to the 40-hours campaign. The day before the general strike descended into violence on ‘Bloody Friday’ Shinwell presided over a third meeting of sailors in a week, where he ‘…urged them to take effective steps to prevent the employment of Chinese labour on British ships….’  A newspaper report reads: “...Councillor Shinwell, of the BSU, who addressed the meeting, directed attention to the large number of British seamen and firemen who were at present unemployed and the large number being demobilised who would find it difficult to secure employment aboard ship. This he attributed to the refusal of the government to exclude Chinese labour from British ships, and it was essential, he said, that action should be taken at once.”

Willie Gallacher joined with Shinwell on 28 January to address sea-going members of the BSU and other unionised sailors at the harbour to persuade them to take part in the strike action. The tenor of this meeting was no different from the ones addressed by Shinwell; again, the tactic was to import the old demand that black and Chinese crews should be expelled from British ships into the broad strike campaign. The strike committee viewed support from white sailors as useful in widening the 40-hours protest movement and were none too particular as to how such involvement was secured. Shinwell and Gallacher were simply parroting the mis-conception that it is the poor unfortunate immigrant who is responsible for wage cuts and unemployment.

Jenkinson uncovered newspaper accounts that reported Shinwell's role in a Glasgow race riot in 1919. She said:"He played a celebrated role in the protest in George Square on 31 January 1919. But just a week before, on 23 January, he also played a key role in a very violent attack on 30 African sailors. Newspaper reports tell how he spoke to 600 sailors and it was quite a rabble-rousing speech about black and what he called Asiatic, or Chinese, sailors. This led to around 30 black sailors being chased by a baying mob down James Watt Street. On 23rd January that year fighting broke out on the Glasgow waterfront between black and white sailors waiting to sign on to a ship. According to three newspaper reports, whites were being signed up in preference to blacks. A fourth report claimed that blacks were being signed up in preference to whites."

The riot on Thursday 23 January 1919 began at the signing-on hall in James Watt Street a few hours after a Shinwell speech. The black sailors, fled from the hiring yard, pursued by a much larger crowd of white sailors. Locals joined the crowd, swelling its numbers to several hundred. The mob, using guns, knives, sticks, bricks and other makeshift weapons, attacked the nearby sailors' retreat in Broomielaw in which the black seafarers had taken refuge but the mob smashed all the windows and they were turned out on to the street. The black sailors fled back to their own boarding house. When this, in turn, was attacked by the rioters, some of the black sailors fought back with guns, shooting one of the mob. One black sailor was singled out and attacked with knives, leaving him with a gaping wound in his back. The police eventually intervened, this time by taking thirty of the black sailors into 'protective custody'. All of them were charged with riot and weapons offences. Only one of the white rioters was arrested. Shinwell blamed the violence on the arrival in Glasgow of black West African sailors from Cardiff and the recent appearance of a group of Chinese sailors from Liverpool.

The 1919 Glasgow race riot proved the first of a number that spread to major ports throughout Britain such as South Shields, Salford, Hull, London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Newport and Barry. Five people were killed, dozens seriously injured, and over 250 people – usually blacks – arrested and soldiers deployed to stop the rioting. The origins of the riots in Glasgow and elsewhere lay in the policies pursued by shipowners in that national wage rates for sailors hired in Britain (who were almost certain to be white) had been  established after the 1911 seafarers’ strike but rates of pay for those hired overseas (who were almost certain to be black or Chinese) were lower by as much as 25-50%. The trade union response to shipowners using black sailors to cut their labour costs was not to campaign for an extension of the 1911 wage rates agreement to cover all sailors employed on British ships but to demand an end to the employment of foreign (black and Chinese) sailors. Instead of directing the union's wrath at the capitalist class which exploits and takes advantage of the lack of working class unity, Shinwell openly backed the idea of securing jobs for white British sailors at the expense of foreign black sailors.

Such was the perception, that when shipping companies employed foreign (black and Chinese) sailors rather than white (British) sailors, the latter saw themselves as being undercut in the jobs market by the former. This was exacerbated  by the increased unemployment of the  post-war demobilisation when white sailors who had quit the merchant navy to join the Royal Navy, or who had been conscripted to join it, demanded ‘their’ jobs back in the merchant navy. Yet  many of those jobs had already been filled by foreign seafarers. Thus, at the time of the Glasgow riot there were an estimated 400-500 unemployed white sailors in the city. The rioting was triggered by intense job competition among merchant seaman. However, a black sailor from any part of the Empire eg Sierra Leone (where the 30 sailors originated from) was just as British as a white sailor from Glasgow and would be paid the higher rate, and likewise any foreign sailors hired in Britain – because they had arrived here on another ship, or because they had settled here. While whites viewed blacks as foreign, different and inferior, blacks viewed themselves as citizens of the British Empire. The black workers attacked in Glasgow were regarded by the white crowd not as fellow Scots caught up in the same contracting post-war job market but as outsiders trying to snatch employment from white Scottish workers. Shinwell's speeches amounted to not much more than “British jobs for British workers”, scapegoating black and Chinese sailors for unemployment amongst ex-servicemen.

Colonial Britons were used as a convenient "industrial reserve army of labour" during wartime but after the war soon found their continued presence among the white British working class was resented. Black people were viewed as an "alien" element in the workforce by white rioters whose violent actions against their employment were ultimately appeased by the launch of an extended programme of repatriation for black colonial residents throughout Britain in summer 1919. By August 1921 repatriation forced two thousand black workers and their dependents out of Britain under protest. However, many others stayed put in Glasgow, continuing to live and work in the city. But the race-rioting at the docks had served its purposes, limiting the job opportunities for black sailors. Following the riot shipping employers’ were more reluctant than previously to hire black sailors in the port. The increased difficulty in finding employment provoked an organised  protest campaign as members of Glasgow’s black population worked together to publicise the growing destitution among black seafarers caused by the long-term unemployment. The African Telegraph in April 1919 reports "In Glasgow there are more than 130 British seamen walking on their uppers, down and out. They happen to be coloured men, but they are all true British-born subjects, who have served on British ships during the war."

Sylvia Pankhurst's, Workers' Dreadnought, of the Workers Socialist Federation described the sea-port race riots as by-products of capitalism and a divide and rule tactic of the employers. "Do not you know that if it pays to employ black men employers will get them and keep them even if the white workers kill a few of the blacks from time to time?"  It also wrote: "The fight for work is a product of capitalism; under socialism race rivalry disappears.” and asked "...those who have been Negro hunting: - ‘Do you wish to exclude all blacks from England?’ If so, ‘do you not think that blacks might justly ask that the British should at the same time keep out of their countries?’ "

The Socialist Labour Party's journal The Socialist commented: “It is useless to contend that coloured labour cannot be organised. If white men have approached coloured labourers in an arrogantly superior manner, it is small wonder that they have been unable to organise them. ... ‘Alien’ on the lips of one of the working class should have only one meaning – the Boss and all that is his." It bitingly explained  "The Trades Unions have prided themselves on having ousted coloured labourers from certain occupations... Black men and yellow men have been attacked for doing precisely what white men do. This, of course, is but the logical development of the Trades Unions’ policy which is prepared to strike rather than that any unskilled white worker should get a 'skilled job.' "

The temptation to blame your unemployment or wage level on foreign labour may be strong. But nevertheless such views are false. The blame lies elsewhere. You must not blame another worker for your poverty. The clash on the Broomielaw can be taken as an example of how one element of the working class can be made the scapegoat, by those supposedly protecting the interests of all workers, in order to secure a better deal for their members, at the expense of the minority.

Shinwell went on to become a Independent Labour Party then Labour Party MP, chair-person of the Labour Party, Minister of Fuel and Power in the post-war Labour government, Secretary of State for War, Minister of Defence, Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Baron Shinwell of Easington. It is ironic that he played a role in this campaign against black sailors when Shinwell himself was a victim of anti-semitism. After a Tory MP told Shinwell, who was Jewish, to "go back to Poland" during a debate in Parliament in 1938, Shinwell crossed the floor of the chamber and punched him.

Sources from here and here and here


Friday, June 01, 2012

Scotland and the Spanish Civil War

Steve Fullarton, Scotland's last surviving veteran of the International Brigade passed away at 87 in May 2008. The last Scottish veteran of Spanish Civil War, 99 yr old Thomas Watters, an ex-Glasgow bus driver who went to Spain with the Scottish Ambulance Unit died in February 2012. We, the working class, should always remember our history. But the heroism of individual members of the working class is not always enough. The Spanish civil war involved bravery and  imagination mixed with calculated cruelty, murder, mayhem and, not a few times, stupidity.

In the 30s fascism had already made huge advances in Europe with dictators established both in Germany and Italy. A demonstration in Hyde Park in London by the British Union of Fascists in November 1936  was attended by some 100,000 people. The BUF were controlled in Scotland by William Chalmers-Hunter of Tillery, which was a country house just outside the village of Udny.

On July 18 1936, right wing nationalist forces attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of Spain. This Popular Front government, which could rely on 260 of the 470 seats in the Spanish Parliament, had been pursuing reforms and widening political freedoms within what was still a very poor and feudal country. At the time many peasants earned less than a shilling a day for 14 hours labours, whilst half of Spain was owned by mere 50,000 feudal landowners. The changes introduced by the elected government to the political and economic make-up of the country fell foul of the landed aristocracy, big industrialists and army generals, who proceeded to organize a fascist-military adventure against the elected government. The rebellion can be described in the main as a landed-class revolt against the agrarian reforms. The fascist-military revolt began in Morocco, a Spanish colony to spread to the mainland. Led by Generals Sanjurjo, Franco and Mola and supported by the Catholic Church hierarchy, the fascist army junta launched members of the Spanish military, Spanish Civil Guard, Spanish Foreign Legion, various fascist, religious fundamentalist and monarchist groups and 30,000 imported Moorish (Arab and Berber) mercenaries against the government and her supporters. In all 75,000 Moorish troops were employed in the Civil War. The fascist-military uprising could call upon 5/6 Italian Legionary Divisions consisting of 8-10,000 men, and, 15,000 Italian and 10,000 German technical troops.

The Spanish Civil War was fought against a backcloth where the British establishment was basically sympathetic to the fascists, their non-intervention in reality ensuring that the forces of General Franco won the day. We now realise that the rise of fascism in Europe was a direct consequence of the First World War and the dire economic conditions which led to the depression era.

To support the Spanish people in their defence of their democracy volunteers came to Spain from many countries. In all nearly 45,000 men and women from all over the world – organised in the main by Comintern came to Spain to form the International Brigades within the armies of the Republic. Some 2,200-2400 volunteers arrived from Britain to eventually form the British Battalion, a part of the International Brigades. The average age of the British Battalion was 29. This brigade saw action in most of the major battles of the Spanish War. One quarter of the British Battalion died during the war, some 526 killed and most everyone else wounded at least once. 80% of British Battalion volunteers were  members of the British Communist Party. Prior to the British Battalion formation in early 1937 volunteers from Scotland and elsewhere fought initially with Spanish militia units and then created a 145-man militia called the Tom Mann Centuria. English speaking troops also saw action in the 86th Brigade at the Cordora front, the John Brown Artillery Brigade and within sections of the Thaelmann (German), Commune de Paris, La Marseillaise and Edgar Andre (French) Battalions. Others operated as part of the POUM (neo-Trotskyist but affiliated to the ILP - the reason George Orwell enlisted in its militia ranks) and also with the anarchist militias. As well as combatants, Scotland contributed medical staff and the Scottish Medical and Ambulance Units. The Scottish Ambulance Unit, acted as a mobile medical service on first the Toledo front and later during the Siege of Madrid. Volunteer medics, drivers and nurses travelled to Spain independently, and worked both under battlefield conditions and in hospitals with a paucity of facilities and resources. Their important contribution to the conflict was to selflessly attend to the wounded under the most brutal and harrowing of circumstances

Scotland’s contribution to the British Battalion was 476 volunteers. Scottish volunteers comprised 23% of the estimated 2,400 men and women who travelled from Great Britain to serve in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

The one hundred Scots in the British battalion were initially engaged defending the road south of Madrid and while the Nationalists were held in check, over a quarter of the Scots died. Later we learned that a force of 381 took part in the disastrous attack on Brunete, where 289 were killed, seriously wounded or captured. "We fight to free Madrid as the first step to freeing Spain. We fight to free Spain as the first step towards freeing the world of fascism." (Orders of the Day 15th Brigade, July 5th 1937, before the Battle of Brunete). With the survivors transferred to the Aragon front where they helped in the capture of Quinto and Belghite, by October they had suffered another serious reverse at the assault on Fuentes de Ebro. It was here that four Aberdonians were to fall.

Aberdeen had always a strong socialist tradition dating back to at least Chartist times, and in the 1920’s the city was said to be considered to be even redder than Glasgow. 19 of Aberdeen’s finest committed to this fight; 5 of them making the ultimate sacrifice to the cause, and dying on the battlefields of Spain at Gandesa and Ebro. International Bigade volunteers  from Aberdeen and its environs: D. Anderson,W. Bruce,,R. Cooney (Bob Cooney was the Political Commissar to the British Battalion), R. Cooper, C. Downie,W. Dunbar, G. Forbes, A. Gibb, J. Londragon, A. Reid, R. Simpson,  J. Watson, C. Watt, A. Christie. Those killed in action: T. Davidson, A. Dewar,  C .McLeod, K .Morrice, E. Sim

The Perthshire contribution was Edward Brown, John Gordon, Robert Malcolm, Hugh MacKay, [John] William Gilmour, James Moir, Ann Murray, George Murray, Tom Murray and George Steele, all connected to Perthshire were members of that small but significant band of men and women who went to Spain during the Civil War between 1936-39. In July 1937, the British Battalion under the command of Fred Copeman was involved in an offensive to relieve pressure on Madrid and the northern front – later known as the Battle of Brunete. James Moir was killed in action during this battle. He was aged 20 and a member of the Communist Party. Edward Brownwas a member of the Communist Party (initially a member of the Independent Labour Party, Edward joined the Communist Party whilst living in Perth) and saw service in Spain at the British Battalion base and as a member of the British Battalion Anti-Tank Battery. When in 1936 Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts organized a march in Perth, Edward Brown was a part of the large crowd that opposed the march. John Gordon in common with a number of other young men found the reality of war too difficult and he deserted soon after deployment. This resulted in arrest and imprisonment at Valencia before repatriation home. Hugh MacKay served in the French Foreign Legion from which he deserted in 1934. It was because he made his own way to Spain in 1936 that he was initially imprisoned as a spy and eventually released in 1937, served in No. 2 Company of the British Battalion, and fought at Ebro .

A meeting took place in Perth at the Lower City Halls on May 17th 1938 organised by the Pro-Franco Friends of Nationalist Spain. The platform speakers included Colonel R.G. Dawson of Orchill, Bracon, Captain H.W. Luttman-Jones of Luncarty (Luttman-Jones was an organiser for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in Perthshire), Sir Walter Maxwell-Scott, Arthur Loveday (Late President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Spain) and Sir Nairne Stewart Sandeman M.P. as chair. Both within and outside the meeting counter-demonstrations and heckling occurred so that a lot of the meeting was disrupted. Nevertheless, a resolution was passed: "This meeting records its heartfelt sympathy with fellow Christians who are suffering such prolonged martyrdom, declares its firm conviction that there will be no peace in Spain or the Western Mediterranean until the forces of anarchy, tyranny and Communism are crushed, and expresses its earnest hope and confidence that the great majority of Spaniards now supporting the Nationalist cause will gain an early triumph for unity, order, liberty and religious freedoms for which they are striving with such heroism."

Opponents to the Republic fell primarily into one of two categories: they either supported Franco and Fascist ideologies, or they opposed the Republicans on the grounds of anti-communism and the atrocities perpetuated by republican forces upon the Catholic Church in Spain. Papers such as the "Daily Mail" and the "Daily Express" often functioned as anti-Republican propaganda, as did (to a lesser extent) the "Glasgow Evening Express". Support for the Nationalists came predominantly from local BUF branches and from aristocracy such as the 8th Earl of Glasgow, who held long-standing military ties.Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay, the Conservative M.P. for Peebles, formed the United Christian Front, whose manifesto alleged that Franco’s forces were engaged in fighting the Anti-Christ in Spain, while Major-General Sir Walter Maxwell-Scott formed the Scottish Friends of National Spain, whose first meeting is notable for denying that the attack on Guernica was air-based, and resulting in a riot with pro-Republican protestors.

At the Glasgow May Day Rally of 1937, 15,000 people turned out to march under the banner of "Solidarity with Spain" while Dundonians in that same year raised enough money to buy and send an ambulance to the Republican front. A food ship carrying 100 tons of food for those under siege in Spain was chartered and sent by a collaborative venture from the Edinburgh and Glasgow Trades Councils, while in Dundee, the Basque Children’s Committee was created in order to provide a accommodation for children from the Basque region who had been evacuated to southern England in 1937, with 25 children eventually travelling to Scotland to reside at Mall Park in Montrose, and 200 refugee children taken in by the Co-operative Society in Rothesay.

Arthur Nicol a lieutenant in the International Brigade and one of sixty from Dundee to volunteer for Spain, describes the journey to Spain. "First, we had to slip out of England like criminals. We took a weekend ticket to Paris. Then we had to dodge the French police on our way down through France to the Spanish border. Then it was an all night hike over the Pyrenees into Spain. I must say that the French Communist Party did a marvellous job organizing our journey through France. Dodging from place to place sometimes taking two or three weeks to get through France."

17 Dundonians died in Spain

It is impossible in such blog as Socialist Courier to describe all the volunteers to Spain so a brief biography of James Maley must suffice. He was just 11 when he was in George Square on the infamous occasion in 1919 when troops and tanks were called in after a demonstration for a 40-hour working week became a riot. This was the era of Red Clydeside, when disillusioned men not long returned from the trenches to a thankless civvy street discussed politics at close mouths. The young Maley started attending meetings, and listened to the Independent Labour Party firebrand, Jimmy Maxton, at Glasgow Green. In 1932, at the age of twenty-four, James Maley joined the Communist Party. He was a public speaker at Glasgow Green and Govan and tutor for the Party. He was captured at Jarama, with his machine-gun company. One of his comrades was executed. He was sentenced to twenty years with the others, but eventually released as part of a prisoner swap. His recount his experience of  going to Spain. Three buses were drawn up in George Square with the men paying £5/8s/0d  each for the journey. "It was like a Celtic supporters' outing. I recognised some of them who'd gone to school with me," he said. The lack of organisation was equally apparent when the volunteers were taken to the front. As they were getting off the lorry, the Republicans were already in retreat in a battle which was raging less than quarter of a mile away. "There were four of us with two cannons as well as 12 men with rifles," Mr Maley told BBC Scotland's news website. "As soon as we jumped off the lorry we had to begin firing. It was pandemonium, but we didn't have enough ammunition. There was no organisation; we fired until we ran out of ammunition, until there was nothing left." Following his Spanish experiences, had little time for the Roman Catholic hierarchy and didn't bring up his children in the faith. However, he was a die-hard Celtic supporter,   and two 30ft-long banners were unfurled in his honour at Hampden Park on Saturday during the cup-tie against St Johnstone, upon his passing. Quoting the slogan used by the defenders of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, "They shall not pass," the banners said: "James Maley RIP. No Pasarán". His communism owed more to the Calton than to the Kremlin.

Of the ninety-two Scottish International Brigade volunteers killed in Spain, sixty-five were from Glasgow; another nine came from the Lanarkshire mining communities around Blantyre.

 Five Communist Party members from Renton made their way to Spain to join the International Brigades to combat Franco. Brothers Patrick-Joseph, Tommy and Daniel Gibbons, along with James Arnott and Patrick Curley. Tommy was killed in the battle for Brunete. Danny was wounded in the Battle of Jarama in February 1937, and was allowed to return home – but he made his way back to Spain again. He was captured at the battle of Calaceite in March 1938. Patrick Curley was killed at Jarama.

31 volunteers came from West Dunbartonshire, including the five from Renton, and another 11 from Alexandria. Others came from Clydebank, Dumbarton, Duntocher and Dalmuir.

40 men and women from Fife - 11 of them from Kirkcaldy alone - made their way to Spain to take up arms.

There were 40 men and women from across Edinburgh who volunteered for Spain, ten of whom fell on the battlefields. Among them was Jimmy Rutherford, from Newhaven, who was only 20 when he was executed for his involvement in the battle. He sneaked back into the country after previously being deported – committed to helping the republican cause – only to be recognised and executed. He told his father, "If all the young men had seen what I saw out there, they would be doing what I am doing". Edinburgh shoe repairer Harold Fry, also  died on the battlefields, never seeing his son who was born after he set off for Spain.

George Watters, his brother in-law, William Dickson, who was killed at Brunete, Jock Gilmour also killed in action at Jarama, and Jimmy Kempton were volunteers from Prestonpans, a highly politicised town in the 1930s.

After the Battle of Guadalajara, in March 1937, André Marty reported to Comintern that the Brigades were on the verge of collapse due to the loss of men through demoralisation, deaths, casualties and desertions. Men previously commended for their courage were now described as “cowards, amoral and alco­holics”. The erosion of Brigade morale began with Jarama. Partly this was due to the harsh real­ities of a war in which they were used as expendable shock troops. The next battle in which the British Battalion was involved occurred a few months later, in July 1937, at Brunete, the first major offensive of the war. It quickly turned into an unmitigated disaster, both tactically and in terms of personnel. Of the 331 Britons who answered roll call on July 6, 1937. the first day of the battle, by July 24, when Franco’s forces finally broke through the Republican lines, 289 of them were dead, wounded or captured. With such enormous losses — most battalions were now down to under 200 men —morale plummeted and there were increasing outbreaks of insubordination and desertion. Around 298 British volunteers deserted (16 per cent) compared with about 100 Americans. Only one Briton, a Glaswegian, by the name of Peter Kemp, is known to have been formally executed. Morale deteriorated further in the Spring of 1937 with the Stalinist onslaught against the CNT and the var­ious, smaller "Marxist" parties. The Battalion’s greatest success, however, was its key role in the capture of the Aragonese town of Teruel on 8 January 1938, but this proved short lived as by the end of the month the British were forced into a series of retreats in the face of a fierce Francoist onslaught.

Even though the International Brigadess were rela­tively few in numbers, they played an important role as shock troops, but cen­tral to their effectiveness was their political and moral commitment, particular in the early days. The  example of the International Brigades benefited the Republic, and as the civil war progressed the idealism and heroism of the rank and file had an even greater impact on the wider labour movement, with a marked increase in the membership and influ­ence of the Communist Party. In spite of their politics, the rank-and-file Brigaders’ genuine inter­nationalism and sense of working class solidarity and selfless heroism could not have been in starker contrast to the treachery of their Bolshevik leaders of the Soviet Union or the rank hypocrisy of the bourgeois politicians of the western democra­cies. They inspired later generations with their bravery and selfless courage.

However, in this struggle for freedom and democracy, by November 1937, there were 15,000 anti-fascist prisoners in the Republic’s jails, about 1,000 of them from the POUM. The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around Madrid, which were used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of the Stalin's enemies. Ethel MacDonald played an important role in exposing the Red death-squads. One of nine children, she was born in Bellshill on 24th February 1909. She left home at sixteen. MacDonald joined the Independent Labour Party eventually attaching herself to the Glasgow anarchists. She  travelled to Barcelona with Guy Aldred's partner, Jenny Patrick, here she began to broadcast on the CNT radio. MacDonald assisted the escape of anarchists wanted by the Communist Party secret police after the Barcelona May Days of 1937, acquiring the nick-name the "Scots Scarlet Pimpernel". Contrary to Communist mythology about it being an attempted POUM­/Anarchist coup d’état neither the POUM nor the Anarchists attempted to seize power but concentrated on negotiating a peaceful settlement. As a result the Barcelona workers were defeated and a Stalinist pogrom unleashed against the POUM and the Anarchists. Ethel would smuggle into prison letters and food for fellow anarchists. She too was then detained until she managed to escape from Spain. After leaving the country she made speeches on the way the Communist Party  had been acting in during the Spanish Civil War. She returned to Glasgow in November, 1937 and in a speech to 300 people at Central Station she said: "I went to Spain full of hopes and dreams. It promised to be utopia realised. I return full of sadness, dulled by the tragedy I have seen. I have lived through scenes and events that belong to the French revolution."

She accused the Communist Party of being complicit in the death of ILP volunteer Bob Smillie who died in jail in Valencia, officially of appendicitis/peronitis. Smillie's death has been surrounded in mystery and subject to speculation, with accusations that he was kicked to death by his Communist interrogators for refusing to co-operate. An official ILP investigation, conducted by David Murray of Motherwell ILP, found that the authorities were guilty of carelessness and neglect rather than direct malice. But it has been suggested by some that the ILP leadership deliberately prevented Smillie's death from becoming a matter of political debate and that the ILP joined forces with the Communist Party to cover-up the death of Bob Smillie. The argument being if it became widely known that the Communists were killing anarchists and the followers of Trotsky, this would only help Franco and the fascists.

ILP General Secretary Fenner Brockway argued that the Communists were on the wrong side of the barricades and were now "committed to the defence of property". Stuart Christie quotes the anarchist historian Jose Pierats that in Catalonia, between July and Octo­ber 1936, the Spanish Communist Party ranks was swelled by 8,000 landowners and around 16,000 "middle class professionals".

Expediency indeed arises during war and perhaps one of the most unusual at the time was when Communist Party members allied themselves with the Duchess of Atholl and supported her in the West Perthshire by-election of 1938 due to her commitment to the cause of Scottish aid to Spain. In fact, the Duchess belonged to the pro-imperial right wing of the Conservative Party and saw victory for Franco as a threat to British imperial interests in the Mediterranean, and the spread of fascism in Europe as a threat to the British Empire as a whole. As the historian Bill Knox puts it in his “Lives of Scottish Women”: “Her stance on the Spanish Civil War conferred on her the title of the ‘Red Duchess’, although never was a title more undeserved than in this case.”

Although having some initial successes, the government forces were no match for Franco and by January 1938 the British contingent eventually succumbed to the Nationalist forces at Tervel. The writing was now very firmly on the wall. By September news filtered through that all foreigners in the Spanish army had to be repatriated forthwith and by December they began to arrive home. With government forces in almost complete disarray, Franco took over most of Spain as dictator. By February 1939, the British government officially recognised Franco and by April his victory was complete.

The toll of the Spanish Civil War was 600,000 dead, 320,000 killed in action, 100,000 executed, 250,000 imprisoned for up to 30 years or more, 340,000 in exile, 250,000 houses destroyed, 150 towns severely damaged, One-third of total livestock lost, 700 bridges destroyed, 11 cathedrals destroyed. Those who weren't killed had been crammed into Franco's concentration camps, penal labour battalions, or settled down to a hungry future. The country swarmed with 57 varieties of police. It really was government by machine-gun and terror.

Whether the Spanish workers were wise in participating in a struggle so costly may be debatable, but as they had decided to take the plunge, and as they faced the most violent partisans of capitalism, the Socialist Party of Great Britain were, of course, on their side. The Socialist Party paid tribute to the conduct of the Spanish workers. Believing that a vital principle was at stake, they had rallied to the government against a powerful revolt backed by the greater part of the armed forces. Workers, with little or no military training, stood up to trained and experienced soldiers. Although sections of the military forces remained loyal to the Government, these were hampered by treason and sabotage among the officers. Only the untrained volunteer militias were thoroughly dependable.

Nevertheless, the SPGB questioned the wisdom of their action in rallying to a purely capitalist government in order to defend it against a military, aristocratic and clerical rebellion. It is difficult to blame socialists and anarchists who took up arms to defend themselves and their unions from murderous bosses; but we can perhaps look towards the rejection of political democracy that preceded the civil war that gave the fascists the pretext they needed to break cover and launch their assault. One thing that was demonstrated was the impossibility of achieving real unity by merging together in a Popular Front parties and individuals who differed so fundamentally in aim, outlook, and method. It was obvious in 1936 that it would be an enormous task to secure unity between long-standing opponents like the anarcho-syndicalists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, liberal-republicans, social democrats and Basque separatists. There was frequent inability to secure effective and loyal co-operation, which shows that, even the stress of war will not make men who think differently work to a common programme. The anarchists favoured a revolutionary popular peoples' militia. The Communists wanted a "political" army like that of the Russian "Red Army", controlled by party-line commissars and Liberal-Republicans sought a party-neutral non-political army, obedient to the government. These fundamental divergences of aim and method naturally have serious consequences.  For libertarian organisations such as our own there was a real problem. If there is no democracy, how could socialist ideas be spread? The truth is - unpopular as it is to some revolutionaries - that achieving socialism was not possible and they could seek only the poor second-best - a bourgeois democracy. Trying to go beyond this resulted in defeat and disillusionment. A war within capitalism could only be fought on capitalist terms. You can't have a democratic army. If, however, you have an overwhelming majority on your side, you don't need an army anyway. No amount of oppression can be made to work against the masses, as the Communist Parties  discovered when the Warsaw Pact countries went into melt-down or Mubarak in Egypt later also learned when his legitimacy as finally challenged. 

In summing up the Spanish Civil War, New York Times correspondent Herbert Lionel Matthews wrote : “Spain...taught us what internationalism means...There one learned that men could be brothers, that nations and frontiers, reli­gions and races were but outer trappings, and that nothing counted, nothing was worth fighting for but the idea of liberty”.




During the Spanish Civil War the call went out for an International Brigade, and workers from all over the world set out for Spain. They had developed an idea of working class solidarity against oppression, against Franco.

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILP_Contingent
http://www.alternative-perth.co.uk/spanishcivilwar.htm
http://edinburghanarchists.noflag.org.uk/2010/10/stuart-christie-on-scots-in-the-spanish-civil-war/
aberdeenhistory.org Fascism in Aberdeen
see also an earlier post here
http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2012/02/last-volunteer.html
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Angus/DundeeSpanishCivilWar.html

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Engels on Edinburgh and Glasgow

Edinburgh

Dr. Alison describes a similar state of things in Edinburgh, whose superb situation, which has won it the title of the modern Athens, and whose brilliant aristocratic quarter in the New Town, contrast strongly with the foul wretchedness of the poor in the Old Town. Alison asserts that this extensive quarter is as filthy and horrible as the worst districts of Dublin, while the Mendicity Association would have as great a proportion of needy persons to assist in Edinburgh as in the Irish capital. He asserts, indeed, that the poor in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh and Glasgow, are worse off than in any other region of the three kingdoms, and that the poorest are not Irish, but Scotch. The preacher of the Old Church of Edinburgh, Dr. Lee, testified in 1836, before the Commission of Religious Instruction, that:

"I have never seen such a concentration of misery as in this parish," where the people are without furniture, without everything. "I frequently see the same room occupied by two married couples. I have been in one day in seven houses where there was no bed, in some of them not even straw. I found people of eighty years of age lying on the boards. Many sleep in the same clothes which they wear during the day. I may mention the case of two Scotch families living in a cellar, who had come from the country within a few months.... Since they came they had had two children dead, and another apparently dying. There was a little bundle of dirty straw in one corner, for one family, and in another for the other. In the place they inhabit it is impossible at noonday to distinguish the features of the human face without artificial light. – It would almost make a heart of adamant bleed to see such an accumulation of misery in a country like this."


In the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Dr. Hennen reports a similar state of things. From a Parliamentary Report, it is evident that in the dwellings of the poor of Edinburgh a want of cleanliness reigns, such as must be expected under these conditions. On the bed-posts chickens roost at night, dogs and horses share the dwellings of human beings, and the natural consequence is a shocking stench, with filth and swarms of vermin. The prevailing construction of Edinburgh favours these atrocious conditions as far as possible. The Old Town is built upon both slopes of a hill, along the crest of which runs the High Street. Out of the High Street there open downwards multitudes of narrow, crooked alleys, called wynds from their many turnings, and these wynds form the proletarian district of the city. The houses of the Scotch cities, in general, are five or six-storied buildings, like those of Paris, and in contrast with England where, so far as possible, each family has a separate house. The crowding of human beings upon a limited area is thus intensified.

".....the house," says an English journal in an article upon the sanitary condition of the working-people in cities, "are often so close together, that persons may step from the window of one house to that of the house opposite – so high, piled story after story, that the light can scarcely penetrate to the court beneath. In this part of the town there are neither sewers nor any private conveniences whatever belonging to the dwellings; and hence the excrementitious and other refuse of at least 50,000 persons is, during the night, thrown into the gutters, causing (in spite of the scavengers' daily labours) an amount of solid filth and foetid exhalation disgusting to both sight and smell, as well as exceedingly prejudicial to health. Can it be wondered that, in such localities, health, morals, and common decency should be at once neglected? No; all who know the private condition of the inhabitants will bear testimony to the immense amount of their disease, misery, and demoralisation. Society in these quarters has sunk to a state indescribably vile and wretched.... The dwellings of the poorer classes are generally very filthy, apparently never subjected to any cleaning process whatever, consisting, in most cases, of a single room, ill-ventilated and yet cold, owing to broken, ill-fitting windows, sometimes damp and partially underground, and always scantily furnished and altogether comfortless, heaps of straw often serving for beds, in which a whole family – male and female, young and old, are huddled together in revolting confusion. The supplies of water are obtained only from the public pumps, and the trouble of procuring it of course favours the accumulation of all kinds of abominations."


Glasgow

Glasgow is in many respects similar to Edinburgh, possessing the same wynds, the same tall houses. Of this city the Artisan observes:

The working-class forms here some 78 per cent of the whole population (about 300,000), and lives in parts of the city "which, in abject wretchedness, exceed the lowest purlieus of St. Giles' or Whitechapel, the liberties of Dublin, or the wynds of Edinburgh. Such localities exist most abundantly in the heart of the city – south of the Irongate and west of the Saltmarket, as well as in the Calton, off the High Street, etc.– endless labyrinths of narrow lanes or wynds, into which almost at every step debouche courts or closes formed by old, ill-ventilated, towering houses crumbling to decay, destitute of water and crowded with inhabitants, comprising three or four families (perhaps twenty persons) on each flat, and sometimes each flat let out in lodgings that confine – we dare not say accommodate – from fifteen to twenty persons in a single room. These districts are occupied by the poorest, most depraved, and most worthless portion of the population, and they may be considered as the fruitful source of those pestilential fevers which thence spread their destructive ravages over the whole of Glasgow."

Let us hear how J. C. Symons, Government Commissioner for the investigation of the condition of the hand-weavers, describes these portions of the city:

"I have seen human degradation in some of its worst phases, both in England and abroad, but I did not believe until I visited the wynds of Glasgow, that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease existed in any civilised country. In the lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, and sometimes twenty persons of both sexes and all ages sleep promiscuously on the floor in different degrees of nakedness. These places are, generally, as regards dirt, damp and decay, such as no person would stable his horse in."

And in another place:

"The wynds of Glasgow house a fluctuating population of between 15,000 and 30,000 persons. This district is composed of many narrow streets and square courts and in the middle of each court there is a dung-hill. Although the outward appearance of these places was revolting, I was nevertheless quite unprepared for the filth and misery that were to be found inside. In some of these bedrooms we [i.e. Police Superintendent Captain Miller and Symons] visited at night we found a whole mass of humanity stretched out on the floor. There were often 15 to 20 men and women huddled together, some being clothed and others naked. Their bed was a heap of musty straw mixed with rags. There was hardly any furniture there and the only thing which gave these holes the appearance of a dwelling was fire burning on the hearth. Thieving and prostitution are the main sources of income of these people. No one seems to have taken the trouble to clean out these Augean stables, this pandemonium, this nucleus of crime, filth and pestilence in the second city of the empire. A detailed investigation of the most wretched slums of other towns has never revealed anything half so bad as this concentration of moral iniquity, physical degradation and gross overcrowding.... In this part of Glasgow most of the houses have been condemned by the Court of Guild as dilapidated and uninhabitable – but it is just these dwellings which are filled to overflowing, because, by law no rent can be charged on them."


Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845