The Resistance

It is sad to report but employers are winning the class war. They’ve increased their production demands. They’ve extended employees’ work hours making us work longer or they have reduced the hours, making many of us part-time. They have cut or abolished benefits such as pensions, bonuses, sick leave and paid vacations. They have done away with employment contracts turning many into temporary free-lance staff.
Companies run roughshod over their employees with ultimatums. They tell us it is a “buyers market” so take our job rules or go. Or they use the other variant, the re-location threat, accept new working conditions or we go.

Without resistance, workers have no power. Resistance is everything. It is about pushing back. Demonstrating the willingness to fight. Standing our ground. Only with combined organisation can we do this effectively. Without the unions, without collective action, bully-boy management will continue to prevail in the class-war.

Bad News

A study in America found that over a three-year period, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN aired just 141 stories in which unions and the labor movement were either the primary or secondary topic. That's out of an estimated 16,000 news stories aired on the four networks, so less than 0.3 percent of all news stories. Not only were just the unions not getting much attention in the news their view was being ignored. CBS did not use even one union source in 24 percent of its stories on labor; NBC omitted union voices from 19 percent of the stories.
The pattern of portrayal of unions was negative, with workers critical of unions more likely to be heard. The report found that news about labor and unions related to the field of education and the automobile industry included more governmental sources than labor sources. “The news treatment thus presents the government as the organized party willing to provide solutions, but not the labor/union negotiators”.

These findings resemble those of past studies, such as the Glasgow Media Group which have found that media coverage is often slanted against collective economic action and toward business and elite interests. Unions are portrayed as hurting competitiveness, and thus costing jobs. The media serve their masters well. It has turned worker against worker, and particularly against the unions.

A re-newed class struggle

The capitalist logic says, “The economy is in a recession and the figures are all down this year. We’re all in it together and we all must tighten our belts” But the majority knows that this shared sacrifice is nonsense even if we don’t have the statistics. The company directors’ have been awarding themselves massive pay rises, the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and the tax evasion of the wealthy is becoming only too well-known. There is a general climate of anger and a feeling that we should take action.


Too often the left propose all sorts of ineffective options mostly on the basis that “the workers aren’t up for it” or “everyone is scared,” or even “we aren’t sure we can win.” But when people don’t seem up for it, it’s because they aren’t stupid and they aren’t up for ineffective action. Workers need to understand their union and their fight. Unions must present the truth. If it’ll take a six-month struggle to win, unions have to say so. Don’t patronizse; educate. Don’t become like the enemy. Solidarity is vital. This means other unions and other workers from different sectors and places supporting one another.

The working class face expanding global corporate power, massive inequality, a rapidly shifting and changing economy, less pay and more insecurity. We need a straight-forward trade unionism, which speaks to the experience of people which is based on the daily lives and culture of people to rebuild a union way of life. It is important to build industrial and international organisation, as opposed to sectional and national organisations. Even though many in the union movement are conservative with the small c , stuck in ideas and traditions of the past and stuck in the rut in in their structure, direction, culture and efficiency, some in the unions are, nevertheless, attempting change in their own way, independently of, and without reliance on political parties without adherence to any notions of a “party line” or generic “one-size-fits-all” class struggle. In recent years, ideas of the full democratic participation in all decision processes have become integrally part of the theory and practice of many workers’ movements.

Yet the basic social relationship of capitalism remains the same and the working class mission remains the same, to build a new form of society. It’s time for a radical, futuristic approach. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has come to understand that the people themselves can organise to provide for their needs and wants. Every revolution is impossible before it happens; afterwards it feels inevitable.

The real union struggle

Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a Us versus Them.  Lined up on one side are the men and women who do the actual work, who toil long, tedious hours for a defined wage, and lined up on the other are employers who, while grudgingly recognizing the necessity of workers, are committed to not paying them any more than is absolutely necessary. It’s an economic law. You charge for your product as much as that the market will bear, and you pay your employees as little as you can get away with. Adhering to the principle that there is “strength in numbers,” workers have joined together to form trade unions. And without those strong, militant labour unions acting as buffers, there is no other force capable of resisting the bosses muscle. Unless working people have some form of organisation to represent their interests, they will be subject to any draconian measures the capitalist wishes to enact. Without the capability to fight back—without the means to offer genuine resistance— workers are not only vulnerable, they’re virtually defenseless. Workers need to take care of themselves rather than rely on politicians to do it for them. And taking care of themselves means banding together collectively. Until they band together and have strength in unity, no one is going to take them seriously.

 It is only through such an organised fight-back and the use of the greatest working class weapon - the strike - can the employers attack on worker's pay and conditions be repulsed. It’s a fight that must be engaged; a fight that must be won. Workers’ only real bargaining power is their ability to stop production. And to do this, workers must fight as a class. These two unavoidable facts gave birth to solidarity pickets, secondary strikes and boycotts that involved whole communities, regions and ultimately the nation. Class solidarity means halting scabs crossing picket lines, and blacking struck goods. We can and must lay the foundation for renewed struggle in the here and now. Without unions maintaining decent wages and benefits, we’re all subject to the inevitable downward pull of market forces, which, given our surplus of labour in this time of high unemployment, means that many of us will slide inexorably toward the minimum wage.

Capitalism cannot function unless it subordinates workers, so the employers close ranks and build their own class solidarity backed by the power of the government. Almost every political pundit has written about the decline and forthcoming death of the labour movement. The populist mantra is to pander to the wallet. Cut the inflated pay and pensions of public workers is the best way to help those who are suffering in a depressed economy. Curtail the corrupt power of unions is the solution. Not only have the rich succeeded in convincing workers to cheer on their campaign against labour unions — the one and only institution dedicated to their welfare —  but they’ve convinced them to support the interests of the wealthy rather than the interests of their own class. Some working people actually refer to other workers as privileged — to people who, by virtue of a union contract, have managed to stay above water, who’ve managed to retain an element of decent wages and benefits, and haven’t fallen totally victim to the recession. Instead of a union contract serving as a model — something to raise all our standard of living — they see it as being above the rest of us! With the poor now jeering at union members, the rich have had their wettest dream come true. The traditional union principle that capital can create nothing without workers – that labour creates all wealth – has been turned on its head, so that capital is now revered as the source of jobs and prosperity.

In the class war, workers may be struggling but they are far from dead. In any war there are only two options: fight to win, or surrender. Both options produce casualties. There is no “safe” option for workers under attack, no place in the trenches to hide in the hope of protecting one’s individual job, dignity and life.

There can be no common interest between bosses and workers, only war. Workers will always lose if they play by the boss’s rules. The power of workers lies in their ability to stop production. If they don’t use this power, they have nothing with which to bargain. Workers can stop production only if they unite as a class, disregarding the boundaries of job description, workplace and industry. Now that production is international, class solidarity must also be international. In order to fight effectively, workers must break the laws laid down by the employers and their State when they are able. When workers challenge the employers’ right to dictate what happens in the workplace, they challenge the essence of capitalism itself. The question of political power over economic power must lie at the core of any union strategy.

The class struggle

Members the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland's largest teachers union, yesterday voted in favour of fighting austerity measures in a renewed campaign which could lead to industrial action in the autumn. The union backed motions calling for action to protect the profession from public sector cuts and oppose changes to their pensions being made by the UK government. While pension reform is reserved to Westminster, the Scottish Government has said it must implement the changes or face losing £100 million a year it receives from the UK government. Last November, Scots teachers took part in a UK-wide strike over pension changes – the first nationwide walkout by the profession in Scotland since 1986.

In a scathing attack the newly-elected EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said  “We understand that it is the UK government, the coalition, that has been the driving force behind the attempt to make teachers pay more, to work longer and to get less. We know who the guilty are in this great cash robbery. But we have a clear message also for the Scottish Government and for Mike Russell, the cabinet secretary for education, in particular. You cannot hide behind the coat-tails of some Eton toffs and say, ‘It wisnae me’. Scottish teachers expect the Scottish Government to stand up for Scotland on this issue and if they fail to do so, if they fail to deliver a fair settlement on pensions here in Scotland, we are prepared to fight them every bit as hard as we will fight the UK coalition government on this issue...There is a simple choice: fight the cuts or fight us, because we are not minded to pay the price for the greed of others.”

Mr Flanagan said Westminster’s austerity measures had been “firmly rejected” by voters. Local elections in May made it clear “not only in Scotland but across Britain, that the UK government’s austerity programme has been decisively rejected”. Mr Flanagan said: “It is clear that what the electorate wants is for elected politicians to fight back against austerity and not to simply administer a cuts programme." Teaching was a stressful profession, he said, adding: “The suggestion that teachers should stay in the classroom till they are 68 or even longer is not a credible notion and it is one we will resist: 68 is way too late.”

Charlotte Ahmed, a union member from Glasgow, said: “This is theft. It’s a smash-and-grab. They’re taking money out of our pockets and putting it where exactly? The autumn is the time to turn the screw and commit ourselves to action.”

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

The Red Union

"We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them" - Clyde Workers' Committee

The United Mineworkers of Scotland - The Red Union

The United Mineworkers of Scotland (UMS), functioned for some six years in the few areas in which the Communist Party had a credible industrial presence. None the less, the UMS never recruited more than 4000 members and this had  fallen to 2000 by 1932, of which 65% were in Fife. Once again, as so often in Scottish labour history, religion had an influence. The UMS was strong in the pits with a history of more militancy but also with a higher level of Irish workers. Protestant Harthill was weak in Communist Party membership, whereas Catholic Blantyre support for CPGB ran high. Abe Moffat, the UMS leader, recalled that during a strike in the Shotts coalfield in 1930 that Catholic miners didn't want to offend the local priest by marching in front of his house. The "Red Union" was dependant upon the strength of Communist Party support and flourished in Fife and Lanarkshire, rather than Ayrshire and the Lothians. Its office was initially in Glasgow but very soon moved to Dunfermline.

Wullie Adamson, the Fife miners' leader ruled with an iron rod, but his post-war trade union position became increasingly beleaguered. During the First World War, a critical left-wing current had developed within the Fife miners' union. These radicals were critical of Adamson's flexibility to coal owners' demands and the lack of democracy within the union. Following the miners' defeat in the 1921 lock-out, criticism focused on the democracy issue. The culmination was a split at the end of 1922 with the formation of a separate Reform Union among the Fife miners under Philip Hodge of the Independent Labour Party. When a general election was called late in 1923, the Reform Union decided to run Hodge as a parliamentary candidate against Adamson, also a Labour MP, in the West Fife constituency. Hodge ran as a Reform candidate and in a straight fight he polled 6459 votes (over 34 per cent), an indication of many miners' disillusion with Adamson. The enmities meant that reunification of the two unions was achieved only in 1927. Several influential members of the Fife Left-wing were now in the Communist Party and that body favoured reunion. The lengthy dispute of 1926 placed a premium on solidarity, but the reunited union had to deal with the consequences of a thorough defeat. Reunification meant new elections both for posts in Fife and for the coalfield's representatives on the Scottish executive. The Left made a significant advance and Adamson and his allies endeavoured by creative use of the rule-book to evade the consequences. The Mining unions in Fife, and Lanarkshire, descended into chaos. The Fife county board suspended Adamson as secretary on the ground that he had broken his mandate, whereupon he resigned and set up a new union, the Fife, Clackmannan, and Kinross Miners' Union. Significantly this new body became the official Fife union within the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers and therefore within the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. The lack of constitutional procedure involved in creating the new union counted for little against a broad agreement among miners' union officials that communist growth must be blocked at all costs. The Communists moved towards their "Class Against Class" policy, which was to produce yet another union, the United Mineworkers of Scotland. But to the radicals in Fife, the creation of a  separate ‘red’ miners' union was seen as the only credible response to Adamson's contempt for union decisions and his new union. The historian John Saville wrote; “The history of the Scottish miner's after the General Strike is a grim record of crooked dealing by the Right Wing officials who, voted out of office by their members, refused to give up their positions to the Left Wing which had triumphed. Whether the Left was correct in allowing itself to be provoked into the formation of an independent union is quite another question...” Perhaps, in retrospect, it was something of a mistake but participants at the time felt that legitimacy was on their side and it did not feel wrong. The creation of the United Mineworkers of Scotland in mid-1929 was not so much a result of the left-turn in the Comintern  but a natural development to local circumstances. In short, the UMS was as reaction to election fraud, exacerbated by the unhealed frictions over attitudes to taking strike action. It had grown out of an initially successful but, in the medium term failed attempt to reform corrupt union districts in the earlier Reform Union. Several villages were now Communist strongholds. A twelve-week dispute at the Valleyfield colliery saw members of Adamson's own union ignoring his pleas to return to work; instead his members co-operated with the ‘red’ United Mineworkers of Scotland.

What was happening in these years in many industrial localities all over Britain was a general challenge to the local hierarchy—not just the extraction of wage increases, the reduction of hours, nor even the emergence of Labour in local government and at Westminster. The wave of local and partial struggles that have broken out throughout the minefields was symptomatic of the revulsion of the working class against the policy of the Labour Government and the sabotage of the trade union bureaucracy. The success of the Communist Party in such areas could be explained by two intersecting causes. The first is the prior existence of a sense of solidarity serving to knit the inhabitants of these working class localities together. The second is the capacity of the local Communist leadership to maintain that solidarity and transform it by giving it a more precise political definition. Unlike most other sections of the working class, these "Little Moscows", as the historian Stuart McIntyre labels such communities, were able to fight for and win improvements in unemployment relief, housing and public health; they doggedly defended work-customs that were destroyed elsewhere and they maintained a fight against wage cuts. They were not always successful but they did sustain a sense of morale in defeat amongst the working class and a belief in its own capabilities when such qualities were in short supply.

In Scotland, under the leadership of the United Mineworkers of Scotland, these feelings  found expression in the number of struggles that have been conducted successfully by that union against the reactionary union officials. In Lumphinnans the miners' lodge was pivotal, and here again an initial coalition of young Communists and ILPers had assumed control. Such was their success in Lumphinnans that most of the miners were carried into the new Reform Union of the Fife miners set up as an alternative to the undemocratic old union. The militants roots had grown deep in Fife, largely as a result of the role of those Communist Party members in the mining industry. The Scottish miners' unions, which were county based, were largely in the hands of Labour's right wing and Adamson but such a leadership was severely challenged by the Left. The Labour-led executive of the Fife miners' union refused to support the popularly supported strikes between 1919 and 1921 and, a 'Reform Union' had been formed in 1923. This was not largely a consequence of action by Communists but arose from a personality conflict between senior officials of the union. In 1926, Fife miners held out longer than the rest of Britain. The split was overcome during the General Strike and the nine months lockout of miners. The two unions reunited briefly in 1927 but at the end of the 1920s a new union, the United Mineworkers of Scotland, was set up when Adamson and the right in other Scottish mining areas refused to accept the result of union ballots. The continued tensions arising from bureaucratic repression of Left forces and the manoeuvring of the right led to yet another split. Nor should sectarian excesses be thought of as all on one side. If the militants sometimes advocated policies that were too far ahead of popular opinion, their opponents on the right of the labour movement went much further in actually seeking to destroy any united front. It was Adamson's union in Fife that refused to accept majority decisions

Once again Lumphinnans took an active role and became a leading branch of the UMS. Abe Moffat was born in Lumphinnans on 24th September 1896. He and his brothers, notably Alex, and Dave, were leaders of the Scottish miners and life-long Communists. They came from a strong tradition of mining unionism; their grandfather had been a pioneer of mining trades unionism in the Lothians during the 1860s but had been forced to move to Fife due to victimisation. Abe Moffat worked in the pits from 1910 until he was victimised in 1926 and was active in all the miners' strike actions from the moment he joined the industry. By late 1922, or early 1923, he had joined the Communist Party. He was involved in the publication of the `Buzzer', a bulletin for militant miners at the Glencraig Colliery, Lochgelly. This was a Communist Party publication, produced on a typewriter and duplicator and costing a penny. Within two years of joining the Party he was elected as a Communist councillor on Ballingry Parish Council. Parish councils had up to then proved to be a useful form of entry by Communists into the elective arena where the main challenger was Labour, by virtue of their small sized and concentrated electorates. They were abolished as a form of local government in 1929. Whilst there were UMS members elsewhere in Scotland it was based mainly in Fife. Just before the formation of the UMS both Alex and Abe were elected checkweighmen (a position of some importance to miners since it encompassed a legal role in overseeing the amount of coal cut and hence the value of earnings). Abe and Alex Moffat in Fife, achieved their leading trade union positions through the support of the members in the traditional trade unions. The leading Communist miners justifiably felt uncomfortable about carrying out the Comintern instruction, which went against the grain of traditional trade unionism, and could not be realised as an effective force in the conditions at the time. Nor was Abe Moffat, contrary to some claims, a key force in the creation of the UMS. He was, at the time of its foundation, a pit delegate - an important but not leading position; however, he was UMS secretary from 1931 to 1935. His leadership of the UMS was primarily devoted to finding a way to achieve organisational unity amongst miners once again. In 1933 attempts to merge with the official union were rebuffed and, in 1935, arising from a proposition by Abe Moffat himself, UMS members balloted to apply for membership of the official Fife union, to maximise the possibilities for unity. Their overtures were rejected and the UMS went into voluntary liquidation.

Davie Proudfoot Proudfoot, like all Communist miners, found himself in the United Mineworkers of Scotland. He was a local miners’ leader in Buckhaven & Methil an activist during the 1926 strike and lock-out. So much so that, when elections for the miners’ union in the Fife coalfield were held, Proudfoot was one of the Communists who won positions. Proudfoot’s father had been a member of the SDF and BSP. He became a Communist a short while after foundation and had been influenced by the Fife Communist League, which set up a bookshop in Cowdenbeath in 1916. He was the main force behind the establishment of `Spark’, the highly influential pit paper produced by the Methil Communist Pit Group, both Party and YCL. Its first issue in 1925 sold 240 copies and a year later it was up to a thousand copies. Initially a fortnightly and then a weekly publication from 1927, it ended its days with the last issue in December 1931. The increasingly vitriolic nature of the publication after 1926, in common with most Communist pit papers of the time, seems to have become an issue for Proudfoot. The bitter internal divisions were, of course, associated with the period of Class Against Class  with the Communists denounced their former allies as "social fascists". Some idea of the scale of such problems is provided by a letter written by David Proudfoot to Allen Hutt at the end of 1928. The Cowdenbeath comrades used their pit-paper to denounce some local miners as hypocrites and traitors solely because they had not supported Communists in a recent ballot. Proudfoot appears to have thought that it all needed toning down. When challenged by Proudfoot, the Cowdenbeath "hundred per centers" claimed that "no personal reflection is being cast on" such traitors, and that the sole purpose of this language was to bring its recipients closer to the Party. Proudfoot's critical position is in some respects close to that of Arthur Horner, the leading Mardy Communist, who also ran afoul of Party purists during the same period because of his refusal to carry out the policy of establishing an alternative miners union in Souh Wales. Proudfoot became the General Secretary of the UMS in early 1931 but only lasted seven months. He did not prove either popular or successful. He then withdrew from activity and Abe Moffat took over, making much more of a success of events and, in 1935 helping to lead the way back towards unity of Scottish miners by the dissolution of the UMS.

Other participants to mention in the passing are CPer Willie Allan also served as general secretary for the UMS as well as with Minority Movement. John McArthur was another miner active in the United Mineworkers of Scotland. McArthur was elected as a Communist councillor for Buckhaven on Fife County Council in the 1930s. Jimmy Shields was born in January 1900 in Greenock, Scotland, of Irish parents and joined the Communist Party in 1921. In 1925,  in search of work, Jimmy moved to South Africa, where he soon became Chairman of the South African Communist Party until 1927 when he moved back to Scotland. He  played an active part in supporting the United Mineworkers of Scotland before moving to become editor of the Daily Worker and on to spy for the Soviet Union!

According to one commentator the UMS leaders in Lanarkshire had a tendency to inflate their successes and became notorious for recklessly placing "far too much emphasis...on getting a pit idle...[using] any kind of issue, real or imaginary...to get the men to walk home, so that they could report that a strike had taken place." During one strike in late 1930, they invited strikers to "demand the death penalty for the 'Industrial Party plotters' then on trial in the Soviet Union."

 The United Mineworkers of Scotland were, in the words of one delegate to the 400,000 strong  Miners Federation of Great Britain conference in 1930, "loud speakers and very few listeners in".

Appendix
In 1938, Abe Moffat was  elected a County Councillor, making the Communist Group of councillors five strong. He remained unbeaten as a councillor until 1944, when he left public elective office to become a full-time official for the miners  union. His brother, Alex Moffat also became an elected Communist Fife County Councillor, serving for 19 years in a seat that was held by the Party for 40 years. In 1938, with the discreet connivance of a full-time union official, both Alex and Abe were able to obtain work at a small private mine, not part of the county owners' association, largely due to their reputation for hard work. Fortunately, the union was then structured on localities not pits, so, in 1939, Abe Moffat was elected delegate for Lumphinnans, amicably replacing another brother, David, who had kept the seat warm for him! The following year he was elected to the EC of the Scottish miners' federation. He was elected President of the Scottish miners in 1942, and then proceeded to lead the campaign for a single Scottish miners' union to be created out of the county associations. After the formation of the National Union of Miners (NUM) in 1944, across the whole of Britain, he was elected the Scottish President, a position he held until his retirement in September 1961. By that time, he served on the Scottish Communist Party District Committee for at least 25 years and the Party's national Executive Committee for 30 years.

Proudfoot appears to have stayed with the Communist Party for the next decade or so. Nonetheless, his eventual break with the Communist Party became very public when he supported Labour Party candidate Tom Hubbard in a by-election in February 1944 for the Kircaldy parliamentary seat. David Proudfoot was himself elected in 1945 as a Labour Party councillor in Buckhaven & Methil and was prominent in the post-war planning and development matters; he died in 1958.

See SOYMB for history of the Communist Party Third Period and the creation of the United Clothing Workers Union

UCS Shipyard Occupation - What we said

Former Glasgow shipyard trade unionist Sammy Barr recently passed away.  Alongside Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie and Sammy Gilmore - he was one of the organisers of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders workers occupation in 1971. The shipyard work-in was an alternative to a strike to thwart attempts by the then Conservative government to close the yards by refusing subsidies. The decision meant at least 6,000 of the 8,500 shipyard workers employed by UCS would have to be made redundant. The work-in saw workers manage and operate the UCS shipyards until the government changed its policy. It was intended to prove that the yards were viable. The Heath government finally relented in February 1972 and announced a £35m injection of cash into the yards. Within three years, shipbuilding on the Upper Clyde had received about £101m of public grants and credits, with £20m going to the UCS.

The following is an article written at the time of the UCS work-in.

A Report from the Clyde

At the time of writing the UCS situation is still unresolved. It would appear that the government's plans for Govan and Linthouse may be extended to include Scotstoun with the remaining division, Clydebank, possibly being sold to a private buyer encouraged by favourable government terms. This would give the workers concerned a respite, however temporary, and leave them still hoping - and we shall return to this - that a future Labour government will nationalise the whole Upper Clyde shipbuilding complex. Whatever happens it seems unlikely that the original proposals which meant a reduction of another 6,000 jobs and the closure of the Scotstoun and Clydebank yards will go through. It looks, then, as if the resistance put up by the men has been at least partially successful. Of course their actions have nothing to do with Socialism and fall within the confines of trade union activity, an activity which is and only can be defensive in nature.

Much ink has been spilled over these events and many opinions have been expressed on the "work-in" tactics employed in the struggle. Several alternative courses of action have been suggested, the most popular one being that a "sit-in" would be more productive. This would entail occupation of the yards with no work being done on the ships already under construction in the hope that the delay would force the government to capitulate. However, this would mean finding money to pay the entire workforce instead of, as at present, only the several hundred made redundant. As the weekly wage-bill for UCS amounts to £250,000 then it can be seen that the task of providing even half this sum each week would be a monumental one. Also, it is unlikely that such a tactic would have secured as much popular support as the work-in and doubtless the shop stewards' committee to ok these and other considerations into account. Then there is the possibility that a non-working sit-in would present the government with an excuse to clear the yards on the grounds that the men had no legitimate reason for being there.

It is heartening to see a group of workers refusing to passively accept the sack, but we deplore the repeated promises to work harder and give the fullest cooperation to their employers in future. Of course these promises may only be so many words and were, after all, the product of having had the unemployment gun held to their heads. At least they didn't meekly accept their fate or rely solely on appeals to Labourite and trade union leaders to save them. They took positive action on their own account.

It could be argued that since shipbuilding is, at least at present, unprofitable and is bound to be run-down anyway, then the redundant workers should bow to the inevitable, take their redundancy payments, if any, and get out. This view could be supported by pointing out that even if the UCS workforce could be maintained at its present level then this would probably be at the expense of shipyard workers elsewhere : more orders coming to the Clyde means less orders for Tyneside or Belfast. This, of course, is true but because the industry is declining there is already a high level of unemployment in shipbuilding on Clydeside, so the chances of finding work locally are poor.

For many it would mean uprooting their families to seek work in England or overseas. And it is unreasonable to expect workers who generally think production for sale at a profit (capitalism) is the only way to run society, to put first the interests of the whole working class - that will come when they are socialist minded and not before. They joined a trade union for the limited purpose of combining with their fellow members on a craft basis to protect their own interests. We recognise this and accordingly don't expect revolutionary policies from non-socialist trade unionists.

We also recognise that before men can have any views at all, political or otherwise, they must have access to the necessities of life. They must have sufficient food, cothing, shelter, and all the other things which have come to be regarded as making life tolerable. For most workers nowadays "necessities", or their current standard of living, aren't acquired by dole money. Living standards should rightly be measured in relation to the wealth of society. Despite all the talk about how well-off to-day's workers are, their wages only enable them to live in a state of relative poverty. Nevertheless, these wages at least prevent them sliding into destitution which for many is what dole money means. Besides, there is either the personal experience or the handed-down knowledge of what large scale unemployment can do to men, so they feel that their backs are to the wall and that they must unite to save their jobs.

In their fight to change the government's mind the men have an unrecognised ally - the fact that governments cannot simply ignore political, economic and social pressures. For example, the Tories must have been dismayed at the general response to the proposed sackings and closures; they cannot afford to lose too many votes between now and the next general election. Also, the consequences of such severe unemployment might well result in increased social problems like the break-up of families or a steep increase in the crime rate, and there have been local warnings to this effect. So factors like these could account in part for the softening of the government's attitude.

The whole UCS episode has once more thrown into relief the utter hopelessness of the "left-wing". They have offered every solution under the sun but the real one; they will talk about absolutely anything except production for use and the abolition of exchange relationships. Some of their utterances have been simply ridiculous. The Communist Party actually called for an "end to redundancies and the nationalisation of shipbuilding". As if nationalisation ever meant anything less than the rationalisation of the labour force involving, as with British Rail and the Coal Board, large scale redundancies. Hugh Scanlon of the Engineers claimed that success for the UCS could mean the abolition of unemployment in Britain. Small wonder if workers remain convinced that their problems can be solved within capitalism. Scanlon should know that while production for profit remains, then so must unemployment in one degree or another. The "Militant" Trotskyists were outraged that the government sbould grant Yarrow's, which is outside the UCS,$4.5 million of "taxpayer's money". Apparently the taxes wbich are a burden on the capitalist class alone should be spent in a way Trotskyists approve of. We also bad the usual "appeals" for "soviets" plus howls that the imagined revolutionary situation was being betrayed by traitors, etc., etc.

Whatever the outcome on Clydeside the unpleasant fact remains that the production for profit system will still be with us. Even if the UCS workers realised their dearest wish to see the four yards remain as an integrated whole, production there as elsewhere must be subject to capitalism's economic laws - it must be profitable or, if under nationalisation, at least make the minimum of loss. This means that the process of removing as much unnecessary labour as possible must continue. Indeed, J. Reid, the men's spokesman, recognises this when he argues that by remaining together the yards would be "more viable" through a "lack of duplication in terms of marketing, design, research and many other factors" (Glasgow News 11 October). The avoidance of duplication is only achieved by sacking some of the workers concerned. So in order to be "more viable" the realities of capitalism - the need to produce cheaper ships to meet competition - must result in future sackings whether by the hand of the government or even by a shop steward's committee.

There is no way out of this. The fact is that in shipbuilding, just as in every other industry, the productive forces have outstripped the demand. True, there will be a continuing growth in the amount of tonnage required to meet the increasing volurne of world trade, but even a considerable increase in the demand for ships could not satisfy the present world capacity to produce them, so the contenders will still have to fight for a share in the market.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain will continue to urge workers everywhere to resist attacks made on their living standards by their employers. This is a basic necessity so long as capitalism lasts. At the same time we recognise such action to be purely defensive, besides never-ending, and which still leaves the factories, mines, shipyards, land, transportation systems, and the other places where wealth is produced, in the hands of the owning class. We therefore have organised politically to work to bring nearer the day when capitalism's inhumanity, waste and chaos will be swept away by the democratic action of the majority of the world's working class - the useful people.

Vic Vanni
(Socialist Standard, December 1971)

Red or Pale Pink Clydeside?

In the eyes of many, Glasgow during the First World War and its aftermath gained the reputation of being a centre of socialist ideas, a hotbed of revolution. The city acquired the nickname "Red Clydeside". There remains a debate on the Left, over whether the Red Clydeside movement constituted a genuine revolutionary opportunity for the working class, or that the revolutionary potential of the Clydeside working class has been exaggerated. Prior to the Red Clydeside, Glasgow was quite solidly Liberal at elections and did not have a significant history of workers’ militancy. The city shared the jingoistic wave which swept Britain at the outbreak of the First World War. Thousands of Glaswegians signed up for the armed forces of their own volition. The trade unions, supported by the overwhelming support of their members, agreed not to call any strikes and didn’t bat an eyelid at repressive pieces of legislation such as the Defence of the Realm Act. To undermine the war effort was to risk alienating the working class, which many labour leaders were unwilling to do.

Although, at Clydebank, there was a fore-taste of the militancy in 1911 when 1,000 workers at the largest factory of Singer sewing machines factory went on strike in March–April, ceasing to work in solidarity of 12 female colleagues protesting against work process reorganisation. Following the end of the strike, Singer fired 400 workers, including all strike leaders and purported members of the Industrial Workers of Great Britain , the Socialist Labour Party affilated offsping from the Industrial Workers of the World, among them Arthur McManus. Labour unrest, in particular by women and unskilled labour, greatly increased between 1910-1914 in Clydeside, with four times more days on strike than between 1900 and 1910. During these four years preceding World War I, membership of those affiliated to the Scottish Trades Union Congress rose from 129,000 in 1909 to 230,000 in 1914.

When war broke out excepting John Maclean, none of the labour leaders on the Clyde developed a class analysis of the war, nor did they seriously consider threatening the power and authority of the state. Some of the labour leaders, including Maclean opposed the war; others, including David Kirkwood, who later became manager of an ammunitions factory, did not. It was the behaviour of those conducting the war, not the war itself that really provoked opposition within the labour movement. As the war dragged on, a disenchantment with politicians, who had claimed the war would be over by Christmas, grew as those in power were exposed as liars.

The Clyde Workers' Committee (CWC) was formed, with Willie Gallacher as its head and David Kirkwood its treasurer. The CWC led the campaign against the Liberal government of David Lloyd George and their Munitions Act, which forbade engineers from leaving the company they were employed in. While another core issue was the skilled workers' protest against "dilution", which meant bringing in unskilled men and women to do parts of skilled trade jobs. Dilution was a calculated move by the state and employers to free up engineers, to fight and die in the fields of France and Belgium. This movement has received a great impetus from the introduction by the Government of a measure for extending the power of Conscription by the military authorities, usually referred to under the misleading but catchy title of the “Man Power Bill.”   It was seen that trusted and prominent men, both parliamentarians and trade union officials, were associated with every piece of legislation that fettered the workers more. The growth of the “Shop Stewards” movement up and down the country helped to undermine the influence of the “official” cliques in the trade unions, as shown by the numerous “unauthorised” strikes. It would be a big mistake to suppose that these strikes and threats to strike indicate an acceptance of the principles of socialism, or even a general awakening to the fact that they are slaves to the master class, on the part of those engaged in this movement, nevertheless,  the oppression became so unbearable, the injustice so apparent, that little scrappy revolts and outbreaks ensued.

The Socialist Standard wrote at the time:
"The Clyde trouble of Christmas 1915 is perhaps the best specimen of these sectional and local revolts. The principle of the men was strong, but they were driven down by lies, hunger, victimisation, deportation of their leaders, and, what is more important still, because the strike was local. Instead of abandoning the political machine to ambitious wiseacres and unscrupulous plotters, and letting them, in the secrecy of Cabinet conclaves, everlastingly scheme to set the social changes on you, see to it that those who are now proven the enemies of your class are no longer sent to represent you. Fill their places with class-conscious men of your own ranks, controlled and guaranteed by the political organisation of your own class.Engineers! At an early date you will be confronted with other trouble. We want your demands to be more exacting, and more deep the principles you struggle for. Fight with your brothers of other industries for these bigger and nobler things as earnestly and solidly as you recently fought. Fight politically as well as industrially, then, with the principle of the class struggle to guide your fighting."

In Germany and Austria strikes began on the dire problem of securing of food, but nearly always accompanying this demand, and in some cases forming the sole object, was the call upon the governments to declare an armistice and enter into negotiations for peace. In this country a similar movement spread. A resolution moved at Glasgow at a meeting resolved: “That having heard the case of the Government, as stated by Sir Auckland Geddes [the manpower Director of Recruiting], this meeting pledges itself to oppose to the very uttermost the Government in its call for more men. We insist and pledge ourselves to take action to enforce the declaration of an immediate armistice on all fronts; and that the expressed opinion of the workers of Glasgow is that from now on, and so far as this business is concerned our attitude all the time and every time is to do nothing in support of carrying on the war, but to bring the war to a conclusion.” Better late than never the Clyde workers realised that they have nothing to gain but a good deal to lose by the continuance of the war.

As these outbreaks were only spasmodic they were easily over-ridden by the ruling class. Of course, the Government soon arranged for a counterblast. Government propaganda denounced the strikers for their self-interest. "Even now your protest is not on behalf of the working class, but a claim that a small section – the members of the ASE. – should not be placed in the Army until the ‘dilutees’ have been taken. Surely if you did not complain when we smashed agreements and pledges given to the whole working class it is illogical to complain now when a section of that class is being similarly treated.” This latter fact is the fatally weak point in the ASE. case, and was being used effectively by the capitalist press and spokesmen against them, keeping alive the jealousies and divisions that are so useful to them in their fights with the workers.  A. G. Gardiner, of the Daily News was easily the cleverest of their agents at the game of misleading the workers by using a style of seeming honesty and openness to cover up a substance of slimy deceit. A good example of this was his ‘Open Letter to the Clyde Workers’. His articles, while appearing to condemn the government, were strenuous attempts to defend the existence and maintenance of capitalism. Their purpose was to persuade the workers to still leave in the hands of the bosses  the manipulation and direction of affairs. And there was a great danger that the workers, so long used to following this course, so long in the habit of following “leaders”, would succumb to this influence. Some of them not daring to trust themselves to manage their own affairs, believe it better to leave the management to their "betters" ” If only half of the blunders and appalling crimes of this war had been brought into the light of day, these timid workers would  have had a rude shock concerning the ability of those “experts.” The biggest danger that confronts them – the biggest mistake they can make – is to place power in the hands of “leaders” under any pretext whatever. It is at once putting those “leaders” in a position to bargain with the master class for the purpose of selling out the workers. It allows the master class to retain control of the political machinery which is the essential instrument for governing society. All the other blunders and mistakes the workers may make will be as dust in the balance compared with this one, and not until they realise this fact will they be on the road to socialism.

The Rent Strikes

Class struggle activity also took place outside the workplace and on the streets in general. Many working class women were outraged that while their husbands were off fighting and dying for King and country they and their children lived in worse conditions and with less money. Was the war really worth it? Was it really being fought in the interests of all sections of British society? The drastic rent increases of 1915 proved massively unpopular. With their men fighting at the front, the women left behind were seen as vulnerable by landlords, and massive rent increases became the norm. With the city becoming a major centre of arms manuafacture during the war, it was necessary to bring in workers from outside the city, which only added to the overcrowding problem and pushed up rent. Existing tenants who could no longer afford the rent were evicted, causing widespread alarm among the now mainly female populace. By October of that year, some 30,000 tenants were withholding rent and huge demonstrations were called whenever bailiffs dared to attempt an eviction. When three engineers were arrested for non-payment of rent, some 10,000 workers in Govan downed tools and marched to the court to demonstrate. The initial failure of the government to restrict the raising of rents revealed that the interests of working people in Glasgow were not the real priority of the government. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, the women organised an effective opposition to the rent increases. The main figure in the movement was Mary Barbour, later to be elected a Labour Party city councillor, and the protesters soon became known as "Mrs. Barbour's Army".The usual method of preventing eviction was to block the entrance to the tenement. Photographs of the time show hundreds of people participating. If the sheriff officers managed to get as far as the entrance, another tactic was to humiliate them - pulling down their trousers was a commonly used method. The mood of the placards carried by the protesters was that the landlords were unpatriotic. A common message was that while the men were fighting on the front line the landlords were in league with the enemy e.g. "While my father is a prisoner in Germany the landlord is attacking us at home".

Bloody Friday - The Battle of George Square

After the war a campaign for a 40-hour week and improved conditions for the workers took hold of organised labour. 40,000 Glasgow workers came out on strike on Monday 27 January and 70,000 on the following day. On January 31, 1919, a massive rally organised by the trade unions took place on George Square in the centre of Glasgow. It has been estimated that as many as 90,000 were present, and the red flag was raised in the centre of the crowd. The riot which ensued on between the police and protesters is widely believed to have been started by a police baton charge against what was, up until that point, a peaceful demonstration. Some sources indicate that trams running through the strike may have started the riot. City magistrates had been forewarned of the dangers of keeping trams on the streets at a time when thousands of strikers were marching to occupy George Square. But the warning was ignored, and the riot started after a tram tried to make its way through the square. The peaceful protest having been provoked changed the scene and the mood almost immediately and the rally transformed  into what is generally considered to now have been a police riot, with the Riot Act being read.  The police were now confronted by an angry crowd of workers who met baton charges with fists and bottles. As they exited the City Chambers, Davie Kirkwood and Emmanuel Shinwell to try and quell the riot and before they could reach the crowds outside Kirkwood was beaten to the ground by police and both himself and Shinwell arrested.

 The police had anticipated that their baton charge would drive the crowd out of the square - not so. Not only did the strikers and their supporters stand their ground but drove the police back. Eventually there was a re-grouping and the workers began to move off from George Square to march towards Glasgow Green. When they reached the Green the police were waiting, ready to charge again. Undaunted the strikers, including many ex-servicemen, pulled up the park railings and chased off their attackers. For the rest of the day and into the night, further fighting took place throughout the city.

Troops based in the city's Maryhill barracks were locked inside their post, with troops and tanks from elsewhere in the country sent into the city to control unrest and extinguish any revolution that should break out. No Glaswegian troops were deployed, and few veterans, with the government fearing that fellow Glaswegians might sympathise with the strikers if a revolutionary situation developed in Glasgow. Young, mostly untried, troops were transported from camps and barracks around the country and stationed on the streets of Glasgow specifically to combat this possible scenario. Howitzers were positioned in the City Chambers, the cattle market was transformed into a tank depot, machine guns were posted on the top of hotels and, remembering Easter 1916, the main post office, and armed troops stood sentry outside power stations and patrolled the streets. New regulations were also introduced by the government to legalise whatever violence the troops might need to use to break the strike. If the troops were used to suppress any fighting involving the strikers the Riot Act must first be read - but only "if circumstances permit". Similarly, the commanding officer had to consult with the magistrates before opening fire - but again only "if time permits". Most revealing of all was regulation 965: "It is undesirable that firing should take place over the heads of rioters or that blank cartridges should be used."

Willie Gallacher, as well as Harry Hopkins, secretary of the ASE and George Edbury, national organiser of the BSP were also arrested. Shinwell and Gallacher were found guilty and sentenced to 5 months imprisonment.

"It is a misnomer to call the situation in Glasgow a strike - this is a Bolshevist uprising."  were the words of hysteria from the Secretary of State for Scotland to describe what was happening in Glasgow at the beginning of 1919

William Gallacher, who would later become a Communist MP claimed that whilst the leaders of the rally were not seeking revolution, in hindsight they should have been. He claimed that they should have marched to the Maryhill barracks and tried to persuade the troops stationed there to come out on the protesters' side. "We had forgotten we were revolutionary leaders of the working class. Revolt was seething everywhere, especially in the army. We had within our hands the possibility of giving actual expression and leadership to it, but it never entered our heads to do so. We were carrying on a strike when we ought to have been making a revolution."
Plainly, that would have been a recipe for a disaster and a massacre, in light of the government's determination tosuppress sedition through use its military might.

At the 1922 General Election,  10  Red Clydesiders were elected to serve in the House of Commons. They included Maxton, Wheatley, Shinwell, Kirkwood, Neil Maclean and George Buchanan. Before leaving together from St Enoch Station to take their seats at Westminster, they had a send-off where the audience sang "The Red Flag" and Psalm 124, the Covenanters' "Old 124th", described as "Scotland's psalm of deliverance". Red Clydeside nurtured some people who later became prominent in the Labour Party or the Independent Labour Party or went on to be founders of the Communist Party.

The story of Red Clydeside is one of disappointment in that the "revolutionary" movement was not truly revoltuonay and was ultimately unsuccessful. Red Clydeside was far more pragmatic, from a trade union perspective, and not to mention more patriotic, than the Left's rhetoric asserts. But it does offer us a message of hope and a glimpse of what we can achieve. In 1919, Lloyd George in a memorandum remarked “there is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt amongst the workmen… existing order in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned… by the population from one end of Europe to another”. That statement is as relevant today as ever when we witness the protests of the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring. 

Docs Get Ready to Fight

The British Medical Association is poised to ballot its members on industrial action for the first time in 40 years. Under the Dept. of Health plans, doctors' pension contributions would increase immediately by up to 2.4%, with continued increases over the next two years. It also wants to raise the retirement age to 68 and end the final salary scheme for hospital doctors. Although the DoH proposals are intended to apply to NHS workers throughout the UK, Scotland has its own devolved NHS pension scheme which is overseen by the Scottish Public Pensions Authority. However, if the Scottish Government decided to break with the reforms it is likely Holyrood would have to pick up the tab for any shortfall.

Dr Dean Marshall, outgoing chairman of the BMA's Scottish General Practitioners Committee, said doctors north of the Border had been let down by Holyrood's inaction and the Scottish Government's "complicity" with Westminster on the issue.

Dr Marshall said: "Is it fair for NHS staff to be taxed for the Government's failures to properly regulate the banking sector? And while the Scottish Government argues it does not agree with these plans it appears to be going along with the UK Government and is therefore complicit in taxing public-sector workers for the failures of the private sector. Scottish ministers could seek to do something different and I urge them again to find that solution – not just invite us to new talks"

Dr Marshall said doctors were unhappy that pension reforms were being "foisted" on them just four years after they agreed substantial changes to their package.

He added: "We agreed to tiered contributions where higher earners contributed more than lower paid workers. We agreed to the increased retirement age of 65 and we agreed to a cap on employer contributions so that the taxpayer would not pay for any future shortfall in the scheme. These changes worked and the NHS Pension Scheme is in surplus to the Treasury to the tune of £2 billion, and this is projected to continue into the future."

workers defy management

Workers at Scottish Water have rejected a pay freeze. The GMB union said there were fears the ground was being laid for a wage freeze which could last for five years.

“Members resent the fact that five directors will share a bonus pot of £90,000 each while they are being asked to accept a pay freeze.” Richard Leonard, the GMB organiser for Scottish Water said.

The union's membership had rejected the pay freeze offer, which came with a one-off payment of £250 for employees earning less than £21,000, by a margin of 62 to 38 per cent. Strike action could see key employees such as emergency call-out staff and water sewage treatments workers staying away from work during the winter.

Council workers in strike action

Up to 150,000 council staff in Scotland staged the second 24-hour strike over pay in two months.

Schools, ferry services and rubbish collections are being disrupted as members of the Unite, Unison and GMB unions take part in the action.

It comes after the rejection of an amended offer from local authority umbrella group Cosla to change the 2.5% pay offer from three years to one year.

The unions are calling for a 5% increase in line with inflation.

Matt Smith, Unison's Scottish secretary, said he was impressed by the turnout for the strike and threatened more industrial action if the dispute continued.

Members of the Socialist Party participated in this walk out, just as ordinary workers who are union members.We reject any notions of wage increases 'ever' being the cause of inflation.Wages always play 'catch-up' with inflation.

There is over a century of socialist writing on this subject which can be accessed on the SPGB website, as this search will show.

Labour cant and won't

Goodness me , after all this time Labour has re-discovered that class counts .

"...we know that inequality doesn't just come from your gender, race, sexual orientation or disability. What overarches all of these is where you live, your family background, your wealth and social class..." says Harriet Harman to the TUC conference

Ms Harman accused the Conservatives of being "false friends of equality" and of "sidling up to the unions".

Hmmm.....Socialist Courier wonders what the reason for her own speech may have been , eh ?

This is just more hypocrisy and cant from the Labour Party .

Gordon Brown conceded in an interview with Monitor magazine that "social mobility has not improved in Britain as we would have wanted".

ethical exploitation

The "ethical" fish restaurant group, Loch Fyne, pays staff salaries below the minimum wage . Loch Fyne champions marine conservation, and proclaims a corporate philosophy of "an enterprise with respect for animals, people and ecology." according to the BBC
It relies on customer tips to boost total pay to a lawful level . Staff at Loch Fyne Restaurants say they are on a salary of £5.05 an hour, compared with the legal minimum wage of £5.52. The Unite union called the company's behaviour "appalling", and said all restaurant staff should be on a minimum wage salary, as well as getting a fair share of tips. Restaurants are legally allowed to include tips in the calculation of employees earnings, but the practice has been criticised as unethical.
The BBC also revealed that salaries at the Hard Rock Cafe in London were less than half the minimum wage, with waiters on £2.06 an hour

A new International

Even in the 19th Century it w2as recognised that capitalism was a world wide system and that the working class required an international workers association to effectively resist the bosses .

Once again trade unions are recognising the global effects of the employers and are re-organising appropriately .

The Finiancial Times reports a historic alliance between Unite, Britain's biggest trade union, and the almost 1m-strong United Steelworkers union in North America is about to create the first transatlantic union, with more than 2.5m working members.

The move is designed to provide greater protection for workers whose jobs are threatened by the spread of global capitalism. The UK and US partners hope unions from other countries will join the alliance, increasing its strength.

Amicus had previously signed co-operation deals with USW and the International Association of Machinists in the US, and the IG Metall union in Germany, while the T&G had forged working relationships in the US with the Teamsters and SEIU, the services sector union.

Previous examples of cross-border union co-operation include T&G's support for the Teamsters' campaign against FirstGroup, the UK-based bus and train operator accused of frustrating attempts by unions to organise workers at its expanding US business.

"One of the main reasons for the merger between Amicus and the T&G was our desire to create an international trade union that would be able to deal with multinational companies on an equal footing and organise working people in even greater numbers," said Derek Simpson, Unite's joint general secretary last year."Multinational companies are pushing down wages and conditions for workers the world over by playing one national workforce off against another. The only beneficiaries of globalisation are the exploiters of working people and the only way working people can resist this is to organise and band together."

The ragged trousered philanthropists

Workers in Scotland are doing increasing amounts of unpaid overtime and would receive an extra £4517 a year if they were paid for the additional hours they are putting in, according the STUC.
The number of employees in Scotland working unpaid increased by 20,000 in 2007, bringing the total to 436,000. The average amount of unpaid overtime is six hours and 54 minutes a week.
The STUC has calculated that if everyone in the UK who works unpaid overtime did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would get paid would be February 22.
The number of employees working unpaid overtime across the UK increased by 103,000 to nearly five million; about one in five of the working population. The average annual value of unpaid overtime in the UK is £4955 per employee.

"..today's figures suggest many people are not even being paid for putting in these extra hours.Workers in Scotland are giving away over £4500 a year in unpaid overtime. That's too much time and money that could be better spent with friends and family..." Grahame Smith, general secretary of the STUC said

Tesco drivers' strike

Tesco drivers' strike continues Up to 150 Tesco lorry drivers have begun a strike after refusing to sign up to new working terms and conditions. The dispute came after the supermarket chain revealed plans to move its depot in Livingston, West Lothian, to a new site nearby. Local MP Jim Devine has called for a one-day boycott of Tesco for threatening to sack drivers who refuse to sign the new contract. A Tesco spokesman said the chain "strongly refuted" Mr Devine's claims. The drivers, all members of the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G), are taking part in a strike which is due to last from Thursday until Saturday. Tesco vehicles were having to turn around at the warehouse as workers formed a picket line, according to union members. The T&G claims the new contracts, brought in with the move to the new site, mean losses to the drivers of between £3,000 and £6,000 and the de-recognition of the union. Tesco strongly refuted claims that the drivers would lose any earnings under the new conditions. The T&G, now part of the Unite union, said drivers voted by 126 to six to strike. Ron Webb, the T&G's national transport secretary, said: "We said we'd fight back against the way our members were being treated and that fight has begun. "We are determined to expose this company for the arrogant way it has treated its staff, our members, and the union itself." He said Tesco had stepped up security in the area. A strike involving almost 150 Tesco delivery drivers enters its second day on Friday, with no sign of a settlement between the workers and supermarket giant. Drivers at the Livingston depot in West Lothian walked out after midnight on Thursday over proposed changes to their contracts. Members of the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&G) formed a picket line at the site, claiming to have turned away several lorries.

May Day

The First of May is the day when the workers’ movement celebrates its internationalism, and affirms the unity of their class across all borders .

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike to achieve the goal, since legislative methods had already failed. With workers being forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, rank-and-file support for the eight-hour movement grew rapidly, despite the indifference and hostility of many union leaders. By April 1886, 250,000 workers were involved in the May Day movement.

By May 1st, the movement had already won gains for many Chicago clothing cutters, shoemakers, and packing-house workers. But on May 3, 1886, police fired into a crowd of strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing four and wounding many. Anarchists called for a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square to protest the brutality.The meeting proceeded without incident, and by the time the last speaker was on the platform, the rainy gathering was already breaking up, with only a few hundred people remaining. It was then that 180 cops marched into the square and ordered the meeting to disperse. As the speakers climbed down from the platform, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring seventy. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing one worker and injuring many others.
Although it was never determined who threw the bomb, the incident was used as an excuse to attack the entire Left and labor movement. Police ransacked the homes and offices of suspected radicals, and hundreds were arrested without charge. Anarchists in particular were harassed, and eight of Chicago's most active were charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the Haymarket bombing. A kangaroo court found all eight guilty, despite a lack of evidence connecting any of them to the bomb-thrower (only one was even present at the meeting, and he was on the speakers' platform), and they were sentenced to die. Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison, The remaining three were finally pardoned in 1893.

In 1889 , the first congress of the Second International called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. These were so successful that May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891.

In 1904 , the International Socialist Conference called on "all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May the First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace.

May Day has come again. Let it be an occasion of fresh resolve. There are many who are with us but not of us. The struggle for Socialism is a long and arduous one, needing the help of every class-conscious man and woman. On this day, then, we urge the need to work for Socialism ...

...May Day is workers' day, the day of our class. However hollow the cries and futile the demonstrations, it remains the anniversary of protest, a continual reminder of exploitation and, subjection. “Class” is the reason and the theme of May Day – class in its fullest, truest sense. The working class is not the labourers or the artisans or the machine-minders: it is all people to whom wages are life. The working class is international: so is its cause. Among the cries and chants and slogans of May Day, only one has meaning:

“Workers of all countries unite!”

Socialist Standard May 1955

Unpaid overtime

Workers put in £23bn of unpaid overtime last year, losing out an average of £4800 each, according to a study which highlights Britain's long-hours culture.

Scottish employees who do unpaid overtime lose £79.82 a week for the extra six-and-a-half hours they work. This is the equivalent of £4151 a year in lost earnings.According to figures released yesterday by the Scottish TUC, Scots worked £1728m worth of unpaid overtime last year.

A survey by the TUC found employees work an average of seven hours and six minutes extra every week and if they did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the earliest they would be paid would be February 23.

On February 23, employees will be encouraged to take a proper lunch break and go home on time. Employers will be asked to use the day to thank their staff by buying them lunch or taking them out after work.

Is this really going to be the response of the STUC ? To request a free meal from management for us working for our bosses for nothing ?

And of the working class ?? It is one of the cornerstones of Marxist economics that unpaid labour is the source of the Capitalists' profit - the Labour Theory of Value . It is why we in the The Socialist Party call the Capitalists thieves for appropriating this unpaid labour . Now , to actually do even more extra unpaid work beyond our contractual hours of employment , that's an act of the greatest charity by workers - and the Capitalists go laughing all the way to the bank . Indeed we are truly the ragged trousered philanthropists .