by Maggie Craig
John MacCormick was by no means the only person to make the journey from the ILP to the SNP. Another was John L. Kinloch, a man who wore the kilt each and every day of his long life. Knowledgeable as he was about Scottish history and traditions, Kinloch was also a visionary. Like Tom Johnston, he was an early advocate of hydroelectricity and other developments which would bring work and people back to Scotland’s deserted glens.
Chief among these was a proposed new city and deep-water port at Loch Eriboll on Scotland’s northern coast. The dolomite to be found in the surrounding rocks was to provide the abundant mineral wealth which would make this dream a reality.
In 1927, when Kinloch was a Labour Party candidate for Argyll, John MacCormick helped him campaign on Mull, ‘addressing meetings in every clachan’. MacCormick noted that John L. was as keen on Home Rule as he was, as were their audiences. He also made a telling observation, which says as much about Labour and parliamentary politics as it does about John L. Kinloch, who had by then spent years putting the case for socialism and the Labour Party: ‘But for his complete personal integrity and his ignorance of the art of wire-pulling he would by then have had a safe Labour seat in Parliament.’
There was a long road to be travelled for those who wanted Scotland once more to have control over her own affairs. On 11 September 1997, 60 per cent of Scotland’s electorate voted in a referendum. By 75 per cent to 25 per cent, this demonstrated overwhelmingly that a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was ‘the expressed will of the Scottish people’.
On 12 May 1999, veteran MP and MSP Winnie Ewing opened the new Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh with these words: ‘The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March, seventeen hundred and seven, is hereby reconvened.’
In May 2011 the SNP under Alex Salmond swept to a stunning victory in the third election to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, securing an impressive overall majority of 69 seats out of a total of 129 and routing their political opponents. The Liberal Democrats won only five seats, Scottish Labour only thirty-seven. Tom Johnston might have had some advice for both those parties on the dangers of betraying the electorate or taking their votes for granted.
What he and his fellow Red Clydesiders would have thought of twenty-first-century Scottish politics and politicians we cannot know. We might hazard a guess that, internationalists as they all were, they would have shared the pride taken in the cultural diversity of the Scottish Parliament of 2011.
Honouring their own family origins, the new and returning MSPs took their oaths in English, some also in Scots, Gaelic, Doric, Italian and Urdu. Glasgow Labour MSP Hanzala Malik offered a prayer in Arabic. Humza Yousaf, newly elected SNP member from Glasgow, wore an elegant traditional Pakistani sherwani, to which he had added a bright splash of colour. Pinned to his right shoulder by a handsome silver brooch was a red plaid in Partick Thistle tartan.
Leading as it does to the likelihood of a referendum on Scottish independence, the sheer scale of the SNP landslide of 2011 took many commentators by surprise. Reaching for suitably dramatic metaphors, they told Scotland and the world that a seismic shift had taken place in Scottish politics. The BBC spoke of a political earthquake.
We’ve heard all this before. Back in 1922, when the first big group of Red Clydesiders was elected to the Westminster parliament, The Bailie wrote that ‘there is a serious “fault” under our feet. Earthquakes are predicted.’
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Writing these words shortly after the event, it looks like we’re once more living in interesting times.
25
Socialism, Self-improvement & Fun
Love learning, which is the food of the mind.
The ILP was always more than just a political party. Red Clydeside’s socialists took an interest in all aspects of life, as The Times reported on 28 December 1922. In the wake of the Labour landslide in the November election, the newspaper had dispatched a correspondent north to find out how the political earthquake had happened. Unable to resist an amused curl of the lip at the fact that the ILPers were teetotallers to a man, the reporter acknowledged the socialists had worked hard for their victory:
I have been struck by the variety and extent of the propaganda. Even the stoniest ground has received its sowing. Socialist study circles, Socialist economic classes, Socialist musical festivals, Socialist athletic competitions, Socialist choirs, Socialist dramatic societies, Socialist plays – these are only a few of the devious ways in which they attempt to reach the unconverted. Then there are the Socialist Sunday Schools – a far more potent agency than the ‘proletarian’ Sunday Schools, with which they are not to be confused. Last, but not least, there are the Socialist newspapers, of which the Forward is the most important. From time to time free distribution of copies has taken place.
Socialist Sunday Schools were first established in London in the 1890s during a dockers’ strike. Soup kitchens were set up to feed the strikers’ children. Mary Gray came up with the idea of running classes for this captive audience, giving them the socialist analysis as to why they were poor and other people were not, and what might be done about that.
The idea caught on. By the beginning of the First World War, there were 200 Socialist Sunday Schools throughout Britain. They had their own version of the Ten Commandments:
Love your school-fellows, who will be your fellow-workmen in life.
Love learning, which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teacher as to your parents.
Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions.
Honour good men, be courteous to all men, bow down to none.
Do not hate or speak evil of anyone; do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights, and resist oppression.
Do not be cowardly; be a friend to the weak, and love justice.
Remember that all the good things of the earth are produced by labour; whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers.
Observe and think in order to discover the truth; do not believe what is contrary to reason; and never deceive yourself or others.
Do not think that he who loves his own country must hate other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism.
Look forward to the day when all men will be free citizens of one fatherland, and live together as brothers in peace and righteousness.
Glasgow ILP member and trade unionist Tom Anderson founded the South Side Socialist Sunday School in Glasgow in 1897. The children were taught about socialism, how to think for themselves and about working-class heroes and rebels. Songs helped get the message across.
Anderson later joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), the revolutionary group which ran much of the Singer Strike of 1911. The SLP set up proletarian schools and a proletarian college, where they taught economics, history, sexual science, drama and music. Anderson was principal of the college for 30 years, assisted at times by John Maclean and John S. Clarke, who wrote The Young Worker’s Book of Rebels. Published by the Proletarian School at 550 Argyle Street, Glasgow in 1918, the first rebel it quoted was Spartacus.
Proletarian and Socialist Sunday Schools were anathema to some, the issue raised several times over the years in the House of Commons. In November 1920 the Conservative MP for Nottingham demanded there should be ‘supervision over the Socialist Sunday schools of Glasgow and the industrial districts of the Clyde, the teachings of which are of an undisguisedly revolutionary character’. He was told no control could be exercised, as the Socialist Sunday Schools were outside the jurisdiction of the Scottish Education Department.
In the 1920s and ’30s those who were appalled by the very existence of Socialist Sunday Schools tried to legislate against them. In 1927 a private member’s bill got as far as a second reading. In 1933 Sir Reginald Craddock, MP for the Combined English Universities, tried again:
I have often heard quoted, from Lenin’s article in the publication called ‘The Workers’ Dreadnought,’ these
two sentences: ‘Give us the child for eight years, and it will be a Bolshevik for ever.’ ‘Hundreds of thousands of teachers constitute an apparatus that must push our work forward.’ It is no exaggeration to say that these two texts of Lenin are the inspiration of the anti-God campaigns which have, unfortunately, been introduced into this country. They are like the germs of some contagious disease, which may spread and destroy men’s lives.
He based his information on the supposed iniquities of Socialist Sunday Schools on a lady of his acquaintance who had for years done charity work with disabled ex-servicemen: ‘This work brings her into contact with working people, including some Communists. She keeps clear of all those things herself and is in no way a bigoted person.’ Sounds like Sir Reginald himself didn’t often come into contact with working people.
Exercising his cynical sense of humour, James Maxton told him the bill was never going to become law anyway:
When a new member of Parliament comes here and draws a place in the ballot, well down the list, he goes to his Whips and consults them, as a child does his parents. They look down a long list and say, ‘How can we find something that will not do anyone much harm, will give the people who are foolish enough to come on that particular Friday a pleasant entertainment, while the members of the Government can go down to the country or to the seaside?’
Maxton told the Duchess of Atholl, Scotland’s first female MP, that he was surprised to see her supporting the proposals, ‘although I have some doubts about my own rights in opposing it, because I notice she has taken care to exclude her own native land from the provisions of the Bill’.
Another MP asked Maxton, ‘Has my honourable friend forgotten that Scotland is still part of England?’ Maxton asked him, ‘Has my honourable and learned friend, who has a distinguished career at the English bar, forgotten that as far as legal matters are concerned he is not allowed to practise in Scotland?’
Although the ayes had it, the Seditious and Blasphemous Teaching of Children Bill never did become law. North and south of the border, Socialist Sunday Schools kept on going right into the 1930s.
There were plenty of educational opportunities for adults too. Although short-lived as an independent body, in existence for only five years, the Scottish Labour College founded by John Maclean in 1916 taught and influenced thousands. Evening classes on Marxism, economics and history were held in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. With the same belief as Maclean in the power of education, Helen Crawfurd worked with him within the college.
Kinning Park Co-op put on Friday-evening lectures on subjects which included geography and post-war literature. Govan ILP put on winter lectures at seven o’clock on Sunday evenings. Glasgow University held extramural classes in Glasgow, Pollokshaws and Paisley. Their ten-week courses cost only one shilling and threepence and were free to unemployed women and men. Astronomy was popular, as was ‘English Composition; Writing and Speaking’.
In Glasgow, the ILP put on regular Sunday lectures in the Pavilion and Metropole theatres, the venues chosen suggesting large audiences, and Saturday-afternoon classes on public speaking for women. In January 1926 a course of ten lessons cost two and six, half a crown: ‘Come and prepare to spread the light when Summer days are fine.’ The class books were Fred Henderson’s The Case for Socialism and William Morris’s News from Nowhere.
The same advert reminded ILPers of the carnival dance in the Central Halls in Bath Street. Socialists were allowed to have fun too. Forward carried adverts for pianos, fur coats and party frocks – bought at the Coop, of course – engagement rings, bakers who would cater to ‘picnics, excursions and outings of all kinds’, tea rooms and restaurants, such as the King’s Café and Granny Black’s, and Socialist holiday camps.
One of those which regularly advertised was on the Norfolk coast, at Caister-on-Sea, near Great Yarmouth, open to both sexes from May to October. A week in a tent would cost you one guinea, a week indoors one pound five shillings. You could enjoy fine sea views, bracing air and lovely gardens: ‘All surplus profits to the cause.’
Or you could go on excursions closer to home. One ‘Catholic Socialist Notes’ column advised, ‘To all whom it may concern notice is given that the following Sunday will witness our annual descent on Gourock-on-thesea. Pawn something and come.’
The sense of humour which runs through the Forward extended to its advertisers. In the first edition allowed to publish after Lloyd George’s censorship of the paper of 1916, ‘Tom Lloyd, “Himself”, British and Best Tailor for Men, Argyle Street, Near Stockwell Street Corner’, offered ‘Uncensored News for Readers! The Greatest Tailoring Value Ever Offered in Glasgow!’
John S. Clarke’s take on ‘The Folk-Music Craze’ in an article published in 1926 is funny but surprising. He didn’t think much of Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser’s newly published collection of Hebridean folk songs: ‘It is simply marvellous, one might almost write miraculous, that an old lady can wander about the lone sheilings of the misty islands harvesting such a crop of folk melodies.’ Nor did he much care for ‘the negro singer, Paul Robeson,’ dismissing the music of the man who was to be admired so much for his voice and the integrity of his politics as ‘Three moans and a few howls.’
For socialists and everyone else who could afford the tickets, there was always plenty of entertainment on offer at Glasgow’s many theatres, the Pavilion, the Metropole, the Empire, the Alhambra. In December 1915, at the King’s Theatre, the D’Oyly Carte Opera were working hard to keep spirits up during the First World War. In one week, one night after another, lovers of light opera could see The Yeomen of the Guard, Patience, The Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers, The Mikado and Iolanthe. The Bailie was only a little sarcastic about Gilbert and Sullivan:
If there was anything new to say we would say it, but there isn’t. We welcome G. & S. as we do the song of the lark, the purr of the stream, and the laughter of girls. We grow young again under the influence of this essentially British opera, remembering first nights of their production away back in the ’eighties, and yet we do not envy those youngsters who are seeing these operas for the first time, for the reason that they grow better the oftener we see them.
More sombre entertainment was to be had on Monday, 13 December 1915 at St Andrew’s Halls, when Mr Hilaire Belloc gave a talk with ‘coloured lantern slides’ on ‘The New Development of the War’. Tickets went from five shillings down to one shilling. Those of an artistic turn of mind could view watercolours by an artist called W.B.E. Ranken. The proceeds of this show were being donated to ‘Miss Fyfe’s Belgian Relief Fund’.
During the First World War, the Glasgow Corporation Belgian Workroom had premises in North Portland Street, off George Street behind the City Chambers, and a central office in Bothwell Street. On behalf of the Belgian refugees, they gratefully received donations of clothes and shoes. Headed by the Lord Provost, the Corporation Belgian Committee was also ‘pleased to receive offers to give Four or Five Days’ Hospitality to Belgian Soldiers who are in the Trenches, and who, on getting leave of absence, are prevented from joining their Family Circle in the invaded parts of Belgium’.
One year-round and long-running attraction which cut across politics and social class was Hengler’s Circus, a Glasgow institution which advertised in Forward and every other Glasgow newspaper. In February 1920 they were promoting the last three weeks of The Sioux. Playing every evening at half past seven and with matinees at half past two on Tuesdays, Wednesday and Saturdays, this offered a ‘Sensational Water Spectacle’.
Dramatic water effects were Hengler’s speciality, along with real live horses and riders performing ‘feats of daring horsemanship’. At times there were elephants in the show and another favourite act was ‘Duncan’s Scotch Collies, Wonderful Canine Intelligence’. All of this went on at the Charing Cross end of Sauchiehall Street, in the lee of Glasgow School of Art, on the site later occupied by the ABC Cinema and which is now a music venue.
For years the Forward’s masthead carr
ied an advert couched as a challenging question: ‘Are YOU eating the ALLINSON Wholemeal BREAD?’ Like healthy eating, the great outdoors was always popular, the benefits of fresh air and exercise another of the enthusiasms of the age. Running was particularly popular with young working-class men, many of them members of clubs like Garscube Harriers.
The Clarion Scouts were active in Glasgow and Clydeside. This group, where Patrick and Agnes Dollan first met, combined spreading the word about socialism with cycle rides and country rambles, often camping overnight or staying in their own hostels. By the 1890s, they had 120 clubs across Britain and an estimated 7,000 members.
Guy Aldred originally came to Glasgow because the Clarion Scouts invited him to speak at the Pavilion Theatre in 1912. He went down a storm, also addressing open-air meetings, including a rally held at the Charing Cross fountain.
Davie Kirkwood recalled in his memoirs that for many years he and John Wheatley made a point on Sundays of going out together for a walk in the country. People didn’t only want to get out into the natural world, they needed to. It was a necessary counterbalance to the harsh and unnatural surroundings of the industrial world in which they worked.
For many working-class Scots their upbringing was both urban and rural. Industrial development having occurred where the resources were and without any checks on its sprawling growth, the coal bings and forges and shipyards were often no distance from the bluebell woods, the sparkling burns and the green and heather-clad hills. One woman who grew up as a girl in a tenement in Radnor Park in Clydebank remembered being sent up to buy eggs at a local farm at what is now the Boulevard dual carriageway which speeds Glaswegians to Helensburgh and Loch Lomond: ‘The countryside was at the end of the street.’
Hillwalking and hiking could take you further afield. That walking in the country for pleasure was still considered a somewhat eccentric thing to do is demonstrated by the inverted commas in a report in The Scotsman in October 1933: