by Maggie Craig
‘Yes, sir,’ wrote Willie Gallacher – whose vigorous turn of phrase often shows the evidence of the year he spent in the United States as a young man, visiting two of his sisters, who had settled in Chicago, and learning how revolutionary syndicalist trade unions worked with the Wobblies – ‘they had money to burn.’
Arthur Henderson arrived a few moments later and made ‘a pathetic appeal to us to assist Lloyd George in the great fight he was making to win the war’. Willie Gallacher wiped the floor with him:
Isn’t it clear that Henderson isn’t here as a free agent? He is permitted to come and speak to us as the servant of one of our worst enemies. How is it possible that a man can fall so low? Fellow members, let us send him back with a message to his master that the Clyde trade unionists are not the lackeys of the workers’ enemies!
The decision to boycott the Christmas Day meeting stood. Gallacher and the others rode home through the December night in the fleet of taxis which was waiting for them, laughing all the way back to Paisley.
The late night was followed by an early morning. On Christmas Eve Willie Gallacher rose at his usual time of half past four, the early start he needed to cross the Clyde to start work at six. When he arrived at the Albion Motor Works in Scotstoun where he worked as a fitter, he found the place buzzing with anticipation. Everyone was wondering if Lloyd George might come to the factory to plead the case for dilution directly to the workers and their increasingly influential leader. Willie Gallacher was beginning to get himself noticed. He rather liked that.
Sadly for the other employees, that excitement was not to be. Instead, the Albion’s manager took a phone call which asked if Gallacher would go up to the Central Hotel to meet Lloyd George. He took the tram for this trip. When he arrived at the luxurious station hotel, he found some fellow members of the CWC but as yet no sign of the Minister for Munitions. Tables had been arranged in a square and everyone sat down.
It was Lord Murray of Elibank who took the lead. A Liberal politician and a tactful man, he appealed to the CWC to support the national interest at this time of international crisis. Davie Kirkwood described him as having a face that would thaw an iceberg, one of those ‘imperturbable gentlemen whom nothing can harass’.
Britain needed men to serve at the front and Britain needed munitions. Dilution was necessary. Lloyd George sympathized with the workers – of course he did – but there was a war on. Surely the members of the CWC wanted to help their country win it? Once Lord Murray had finished speaking, all eyes turned to Willie Gallacher. As usual, he called it as he saw it:
None of us here is prepared to accept the statement that Lloyd George is, or ever was, a friend of the workers. If he’s so keen on winning the war, let him tackle the employers, stop their profits. They’re piling up profits at our expense. However, that’s our war, the war against the employers. We don’t mind him being with them. It’s what we expect, but when he asks us to assist him in carrying through their plans, that’s treating us cheap, to say the least of it. We stand for the workers we represent, and while there are employers reaping profits we’ll carry on the war against them.
A Glasgow bailie leapt to his feet and declared that Gallacher was ‘out for bloody revolution’ and didn’t care whether the war was won or lost. After some shouting, Lord Murray managed to call the meeting to order. It then emerged that Gallacher’s own union had collected tickets for the Christmas Day conference and was ready to hand them out, which is when Lloyd George himself slid out of the woodwork. Dismissing everyone else, he asked Willie Gallacher to wait behind.
Lloyd George proceeded to treat the bloody revolutionary as though he were his new best friend. Could Mr Gallacher possibly arrange for him to meet representative members of the CWC that evening? No problem, said the wee man who lived in a tenement flat in Paisley to the mighty Minister for Munitions as they stood in one of Glasgow’s most exclusive hotels, we’ll see you here at seven o’clock tonight.
Lloyd George started the Christmas Eve meeting with the smaller CWC group by exercising his well-known charm, circulating a box of cigars. His own staff all took one. The workers of the CWC brought out their proletarian pipes. ‘That’s right, boys,’ Lloyd George said, digging his own pipe out of his jacket pocket. ‘Why should we be formal? If we are going to talk, let us be comfortable; and what’s more comforting than a good pipe?’ As Willie Gallacher observed, the Minister for Munitions was never one to miss a trick. Wreaths of cigar smoke and clouds of pipe tobacco: the air in that room must have been quite delightful. The two women who were present probably didn’t smoke. Even if more ladylike cigarettes had been on offer, only fast women smoked in public.
Willie Gallacher tells us that the two women spoke but not what they said, a bit remiss for a man with such apparently accurate recall for dialogue. Socialists could be sexists too, and frequently were. It’s an intriguing thought that one of those women might have been Jane Rae of the Singer’s Strike. She certainly attended the Christmas Day conference, keeping her ticket as a souvenir.
Through the tobacco smoke, Lloyd George launched into what Gallacher called a ‘typical propaganda speech’, explaining that:
. . . munitions were the key to victory. We were short of men to man the factories at present operating; new factories had to be built. Therefore thousands of workers were needed, and we had to find them. He looked to us for support. As he looked at us he could see that strong spirit of independence that would never tolerate the military domination of Germany. Yes, he knew that we were the very men to rely upon in a crisis.
Lloyd George had told the newspapers a few days before that he would have absolutely no truck with the CWC. Now he was trying to schmooze them. They took their revenge via the eloquent words of one of their number, another shop steward from the Albion Motor Works called Johnny Muir. Willie Gallacher fair cries him up:
Johnny was masterly in the handling of the subject. He dealt very briefly with the development of capitalism and with the fact that the one and only concern of the employers was profit; that in pursuit of profit every change in the method of production was used to cheapen the cost, and that this took the form of continually introducing new types of semiskilled or unskilled labour at the lowest possible rate of wages. Thus he showed that dilution had always been a feature of capitalist development.
However, Muir continued, since it was obvious to everyone there was currently a shortage of labour, the CWC was prepared to accept dilution for the time being. On one condition: the government had to take the factories out of the hands of the employers and allow the workers to run them through factory committees.
It was an astonishing suggestion, yet this revolutionary idea did not immediately provoke a spluttering response from Lloyd George. Willie Gallacher described ‘the pompous little peacock at the top of the room’ as appearing not even to be listening to Johnny Muir. Instead, he was stroking his moustache and luxuriant hair, whispering to Arthur Henderson.
Gallacher exploded, demanding they should have the courtesy to listen to Muir. Lloyd George insisted that he was listening. After Johnny Muir had said his piece, Davie Kirkwood, Arthur McManus and the two female shop stewards spoke, all of them supporting Muir. As far as they were concerned, this was ‘a war for trade and territory, a war carried on for the purposes of imperialism’, and they were completely opposed to it. The only question they were prepared to address was who was going to administer dilution of labour and who was going to run the factories while the war continued to rage and cause the labour shortage.
Again according to Gallacher, Lloyd George praised Johnny Muir for his eloquence but told the CWC he could not agree to the demands that the workers should control dilution. That would be a revolution and they couldn’t have a revolution in the middle of a war. As Willie Gallacher drily put it in Revolt on the Clyde, ‘It was only a couple of years later, however, that Lenin and the Bolsheviks showed him just how that very thing could be done.’
Although many of the det
ails in this story sound authentic, the tone of the interchange doesn’t quite ring true. It seems unlikely that Lloyd George would sit for so long to be lectured on the iniquities of capitalism. Perhaps it wasn’t quite so clear-cut as Willie Gallacher describes it. Be that as it may, the CWC did agree to attend the Munitions Conference at St Andrew’s Halls the following day.
So, on the morning of Christmas Day 1915, shop stewards gathered where, as Gallacher put it, ‘the modern St. George was going to slay the dragon of unrest and conquer the unruly Clyde’. David Lloyd George was famously and proudly Welsh, speaking that language before he ever learned English, the son of a race which cherishes the dragon as one of its most revered symbols. Presumably Willie Gallacher was thinking of the government the Welshman represented, seeing that as English rather than British.
Although he does not mention the personal detail in his memoirs, Gallacher turned 34 on Christmas Day 1915. His birthday treat was coming right up. As Forward put it:
The best paid munitions worker in Britain, Mr. Lloyd George (almost £100 per week), visited the Clyde last weekend in search of adventure.
He got it.
Trouble clearly being expected, rows of policemen and barricades were lined up in front of the platform at St Andrew’s Halls. The delegates filing into the hall reacted by breaking into song, a rousing rendition of ‘The Red Flag’, keeping this up as the platform party arrived. According to Davie Kirkwood, this started up in response to a choir singing ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ as the Prime Minister entered the hall. ‘As Mr Lloyd George sat down, a lock of hair strayed over his brow. Shouts of “Get your hair cut!” came from all quarters.’
As soon as the singing finished, Arthur Henderson, on the platform with Lloyd George, rose to his feet. The crowd roared its disapproval at him, drowning out whatever he was trying to say. Henderson gave it up as a bad job and Lloyd George stood up. Willie Gallacher, a hostile witness to be sure, described the Minister’s attempts to get the audience to quieten down: ‘He pranced up and down the platform; he waved his arms; he stretched them out in mute appeal.’
It was all to no purpose. The crowd continued to yell out its protest. Lloyd George tried to quell the tumult, shouting out, ‘I appeal to you in the name of my old friend, the late Keir Hardie!’ That he dared to take that sacred name in vain only made the audience angrier. They started singing ‘The Red Flag’ again, refusing to allow Lloyd George to speak. Accounts of what happened after that vary.
There’s the official report of Lloyd George’s speech to the conference. Issued to the Press Association the day before, it says nothing about any trouble. It was published in most newspapers exactly as they received it, as they had been asked to do: ‘Mr Lloyd George will address meetings at Glasgow, and it is particularly requested that no report other than the official version of his speech should be published.’
In this official version, the one which appeared in the newspapers on the Monday after Christmas, Lloyd George puts his arguments to the delegates. They all listen attentively, clap politely and then everyone goes home. The Scotsman did report that there were interruptions and ‘some singing of the “Red Flag”. The interrupters, however, were in a distinct minority, and the meeting was, on the whole, good-humoured.’ As we might by now expect, that’s not the way Willie Gallacher tells it.
He has Johnny Muir jumping up onto a chair and the whole hall immediately falling silent to listen as this supremely eloquent speaker begins to discuss the issues around dilution. In this version Lloyd George, Arthur Henderson and the rest of the official party walk off the platform and the meeting continues without them.
Remarking that the audience was pitiless, Davie Kirkwood says that he called out from the body of the hall for Lloyd George to be given a hearing. Forward confirms this, telling the story in some detail. They had a reporter there; Tom Hutchison took everything down, word for word, what the platform party said and what the audience hurled back at him in response.
Hutchison reported that Arthur Henderson did manage to make himself heard, although he was heckled throughout. His appeal to patriotism and how Britain had gone to war to save gallant little Belgium was given short shrift, with cries of ‘That’s enough! We don’t want to hear that! Get to the Munitions Act! Come awa’ wi’ Davy!’ That last comment might imply some respect and even affection in the hall for David Lloyd George. Indeed, as Henderson told the audience the Minister for Munitions would shortly address them on the subject of dilution of labour, there was hissing and booing but also some cheering.
Arthur Henderson struggled manfully on with his introduction: ‘The scheme of dilution that Mr Lloyd George will recommend to you did not come from any employer. It came from a Committee upon which there were seven Trade Unionists.’
Henderson’s no doubt well-meaning but misguided assurance brought forth cries of ‘Traitors!’ and a demand that those trade unionists be named. He gave them the names, including that of Miss Macarthur, who ‘certainly knows how to deal with the women workers’. Cue a cry of ‘Miss Macarthur’s the best man o’ the lot!’ This was the same Miss Macarthur who had spoken at Keir Hardie’s memorial service some two months before. Same venue, very different kind of gathering. There was laughter, but there was immense frustration too. Delegates felt they were being talked at, not allowed to express their own opinions on dilution. It didn’t help when they were told any questions they had for the Minister would have to be written ones, passed up to the platform.
When Lloyd George began to speak, the anger in the hall was too hot to allow him to do so unchallenged. In line with his approach to the CWC the night before, he appealed to patriotism and national unity at this time of crisis: ‘Let me put this to you, friends: while we are comfortable at home on a Christmas Day . . .’ he began, and was immediately interrupted by shouts of ‘No sentiment! We’re here for business!’
Lloyd George kept doggedly to his prepared speech, ‘. . . while we are comfortable at home on a Christmas Day there are hundreds and thousands of our fellow-countrymen, some of them our sons, some of them our brothers, in the trenches facing death’.
‘You’re here to talk about dilution of labour!’ came another exasperated shout.
The Welshman tried to pacify his listeners by dropping another famous Scottish socialist name, that of Ramsay MacDonald, ‘one of my greatest friends’. That got some cheers but not much else. This is when Davie Kirkwood intervened, asking the delegates to give Lloyd George a fair hearing, but the heckling and heated interruptions continued.
‘The responsibility of a Minister of Munitions in a great war is not an enviable one,’ Lloyd George told the hall. ‘The money’s good,’ came the cynical response. Becoming ever more exasperated, the Minister responded to the derisive laughter which greeted that sally with an eloquent few words about the war, telling the delegates what he thought it would mean for everyone:
There will be unheard of changes in every country in Europe; changes that go to the root of our social system. You Socialists watch them. It is a convulsion of Nature; not merely a cyclone that sweeps away the ornamental plants of modern society and wrecks the flimsy trestle-bridges of modern civilization. It is more. It is an earthquake that upheaves the very rocks of European life.
In no mood to listen to this purple prose, the delegates continued to hiss and boo. Lloyd George announced that he would now begin answering the written questions. He might not get through them all, though, because he had an engagement at twelve o’clock. It was an astonishingly crass thing to say and may indicate just how badly this smooth operator had been rattled by the noisy and hostile reception he got at St Andrew’s Halls.
According to Tom Hutchison of the Forward, this was when Johnny Muir jumped onto the chair and demanded to put forward the facts of dilution of labour as the CWC saw them. However, in this account an instantaneous and respectful silence does not fall: ‘As it was impossible to hear either the Minister or Mr. Muir, the Chairman closed the proceedings,
and the meeting broke up in disorder.’
Lots of sound and fury but nothing achieved for either side: and the mailed fist was just about to appear from beneath the velvet glove.
15
Dawn Raids, Midnight Arrests & a Zeppelin over Edinburgh: The Deportation of the Clyde Shop Stewards
Banished to Edinburgh!
Tom Johnston’s newspaper was first in the firing line. Years later, long after the heat of battle had cooled, he took the same mischievous delight in telling the story as he did when he originally reported it. Make that as soon as he was allowed to report it.
In his Memories, he recalled one of the many interchanges of that faraway but well-remembered Christmas morning when Lloyd George had dolefully declared his burden as a minister of the Crown in wartime was a heavy one and had the reply thrown at him that the money was good.
‘All this,’ wrote Johnston, now himself a highly respected elder statesman, ‘was too much for Mr. Lloyd George, who completely lost all sense of proportion and ordered a complete raid of all copies of the Forward in every newsagent’s shop in Scotland; he even had the police search the homes of known purchasers.’
In the first few days of 1916 the military as well as the police were deployed to censor the upstart newspaper, raiding its offices in Howard Street, off St Enoch Square. This was carried out by ‘high ranking police and military officers smelling through wastepaper baskets and old correspondence files in an endeavour somehow or other to find evidence post facto for an amazing and petulant and wholly illegal act of suppression’. The newspaper was banned from publishing until further notice.