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Snapshot: Timeline of Red Clydeside

Snapshot: Timeline of Red Clydeside. What was Red Clydeside?. Shorthand for events between 1915 and 1919, when strikes and demonstrations convinced the Government that a revolution might take place. Debate about significance of events. First phase: events in wartime.

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Snapshot: Timeline of Red Clydeside

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  1. Snapshot: Timeline of Red Clydeside

  2. What was Red Clydeside? • Shorthand for events between 1915 and 1919, when strikes and demonstrations convinced the Government that a revolution might take place. • Debate about significance of events. • First phase: events in wartime. • Second phase: post-war strikes and demonstrations. Election of 10 Labour MPs in the 1922 elections.

  3. Key events of Red Clydeside • DORA and the Munitions of War Act forbids strike action. • 1915: Engineers at Weirs threaten strike action over fears of their position as skilled workers and the introduction of more highly paid American engineers. • Weir and Lloyd George refer to union leaders as idle drunkards (most teetotal).

  4. Key events of Red Clydeside • Dilution of Labour dispute, Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Lang’s of Johnstone, 1915. • Two strikes at Fairfields over the leaving certificate system. Strike leaders punished and fined. • Glasgow Rent Strikes. • Clyde Workers’ Committee became the focus of opposition to the Government.

  5. Key events of Red Clydeside • John Maclean, Patrick Dollen, James Maxton, Willie Gallacher and David Kirkwood emerge as radical leaders. • Disastrous meeting 25 December: Lloyd George heckled and booed. • The Forward and Vanguard socialist newspapers suppressed. • 1916: socialist leaders arrested for sedition.

  6. Key events of Red Clydeside • March 1916, David Kirkwood and other union shop stewards arrested and ‘exiled’ to Edinburgh. • Most leaders allowed to return to work by 1917. • Only John Maclean not released until July 1917. • Russian Revolution, 1917. • January 1918, Maclean appointed the first Bolshevik consul for Scotland.

  7. Key events of Red Clydeside • Maclean arrested April, 1918 for sedition. • Vast May Day demonstration, 1918: many demands for an end to the war. • Maclean imprisoned. Attempts made to ‘section’ him. • Maclean refused to eat prison food; was force-fed. • Maclean released from prison, December 1918.

  8. Key events of Red Clydeside • Demands to reduce the working week: the Amalgamated Society of Engineers sought a 47-hour week. • In Scotland there was support for a 40-hour week (this would ease unemployment and was supported by the Labour Party, ILP, STUC and Glasgow Trades Council). • January 1919: strikes, ship-workers came out, as did other skilled workers.

  9. Key events of Red Clydeside • Friday 31 January: ‘Bloody Friday’ saw 100,000 demonstrate in George Square in Glasgow in support of a 40-hour working week and at the end of rent restrictions. • Fighting between police and demonstrators led to massive overreaction by authorities, who moved 12,000 English soldiers to the city, supported by six tanks. • Strike ended swiftly as strike leaders were shocked at the violence. • Demands of strikers never met.

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