Tanks and soldiers billeted in the Saltmarket area of Glasgow, 1919. English troops were brought in because of the fear of Scots soldiers going over to the socialist cause.
Scotland's hidden history
by Eddie Truman
In the aftermath of the revolutionary events that swept Clydeside in
1919 there was a massive upsurge in working class demand for Scottish
independence.
Home rule had been central to the programme of the Labour Party from
it’s foundation but Scotland pre 1914 remained a country where trade
union and socialist agitation was ruthlessly suppressed.
The Scottish capitalist class were terrified that their reliance on vast
pools of low paid labourers left them vulnerable to an organised and
politicised working class.
Pre 1914 Scotland had a third less trade unionists per head of population
than England and Wales, in 1906 it elected only two Labour MP’s compared
to the 30 south of the border.
All this was to change with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Scottish industry turned to munitions production on a massive scale and
workers flooded into the industrial centres, particularly Clydeside where
250,000 were employed.
Trade unions suddenly became far more powerful than ever before in Scotland
and while the bosses and state had developed sophisticated methods of
control in England, no such accommodation between capital and labour
existed in Scotland.
Moving quickly, the state imported arbitration structures from England
and London based trade union officials were despatched northwards.
But the attempt to tame the militant Scots completely backfired and workers
rejected the official unions for their own organisations built at shop
steward level.
The Forty Hours Strike Bulletin of 12th February 1919 was absolutely
damning in reference to the boilermakers and engineering unions refusal
to pay strike pay;
“We have to emancipate ourselves from the dictatorship of the London
juntas by building an organisation which will be under our control and
function when we want it to”
By 1922 the pre war situation had been reversed; there were 29 Labour
MP’s and 1 Communist out of 73 MP’s, in England 95 Labour from 484 MP’s.
The events of 1919 had given birth to John Maclean’s Scottish Workers
Republican Party as an independent answer to the already London dominated
and centralised Communist Party of Great Britain.
The Scottish Independent Labour Party also gave voice to the political
aspirations of the Scottish working class; ILP MP’s Tom Johnston and
James Maxton addressed rallies at Elderslie, birthplace of William Wallace
and the ILP held it’s own Bannockburn commemoration ceremonies.
In 1922 Clydeside elected 10 socialists to Westminster, at their victory
Rally in St Andrews Hall, Glasgow, Tom Henderson, newly elected MP for
Glasgow Tradeston urged his colleagues;
“… go to Edinburgh and take over the old House of Parliament and set
up a government in this country”.
The Glasgow Herald reported that a quarter of a million people came out
to see the socialists off to Westminster, singing Scots Wha Hae, A Man’s
a Man for a’ that, the Red Flag and the Internationale.
The Red Clydesiders first act was to lay down a bill in the name of George
Buchanan, MP for Gorbals, for an independent Scotland within a federal
Britain.
Furthermore, this period saw the re-launch of the Scottish Home Rule
Association, an organisation originally founded in 1886 to campaign for
a Scottish Parliament.
Although this was supposed to be a non political body it soon attracted
widespread support from within the labour movement.
Between 1922 and 1924 membership included 150 trade union branches, over
60 co-operative societies, fifty separate political organisations and
29 Scottish MP’s.
The programme of the Scottish Socialist Party stands on the shoulders
of the Scottish Independent Labour Party and of John Maclean’s Republican
Socialists.
We fight for an independent socialist Scotland, a Scottish workers republic, and we see independence for Scotland as an integral part of that struggle.