Industrial Nation: Work, Culture and Society in Scotland, 1800-Present [Illustrated] 0748610855, 9780748610853

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1999. Edinburgh University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Copyright

Industrial Nation Work, Culture and Society in Scotland, 1800—Present EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 6/8/2020 8:09 PM via UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE AN: 2398204 ; Knox, William.; Industrial Nation : Work, Culture and Society in Scotland, 1800-present Account: ns075038

INDUSTRIAL NATION

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INDUSTRIAL NATION Work, Culture and Society in Scotland, 1 SOC—Present

W W Knox

E DI N B U RG H University Press

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For Patty

© W W. Knox, 1999 Transferred to Digital Print 2009 Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Sabon by Pioneer Associates, Perthshire, a n d

printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7486 1084 7 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 1085 5 (paperback)

The right of W W Knox to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations

viii

List of Tables Abbreviations

xii

xiii

Introduction PART I: SOCIAL C H A N G E A N D POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

Interpretations

29 31

The Social Consequences of Industrial and Urban

Growth, 1800—1850

34

‘Rough and Respectable’: The Culture of the

Scottish Working Classes, 1800—1850

40

Technological Change and Workplace Struggles, 1 800—1 850

47

Class Struggle and the Growth of Trade Unions in Scotland, 1800—1850

52

Nation v. Class: Radical Struggles in Scotland,

>1

1800—1850

56

PART II: MID-VICTORIAN S C O T L A N D A N D T H E POLITICS OF CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

79

Interpretations

81

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CONTENTS

Heavy Industry and Social Change, 1850—1880

85

Respectability and the Scottish Working Classes,

1850—1880

94

10. Skill and Managerial Authority, 1 85 0—18 80

1 04

11. Trade Unionism in Scotland, 1850—1880: A New Model?

114

12. A Mid-Victorian Political Consensus? Labour Politics in Scotland, 1 85 0—1880

122

PART III: THE CHALLENGE OF LABOUR, 1880—1914

127

13. Interpretations

129

14. Relative Economic Decline and the Problem of Poverty, 1880—1914

132

15. Drink, Football and Sectarianism: Working—Class Culture in Scotland, 1880—1914

137

16. Skill under Pressure: Changes in the Workplace, 145

1880—1914

17. Trade Unionism on the March, 1880—1914

156

18. The Challenge of Socialism, 1880—1914

163

PART IV: WAR, DEPRESSION A N D THE REMAKING O F LABOUR I N SCOTLAND, 1 9 1 4 — 1 9 4 5

185

19. Interpretations

187

20. ‘Starving in the Midst of Plenty’: Economic Depression and the Social Impact of Mass Unemployment, 1 9 14—1 945

189

21. Billies and Dans in the Jazz Age: Working-Class Culture and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 196

1914—1945

22. Technological Change and the Skilled Worker, 203

1914—1945 vi

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Contents

. Trade Unionism in a Cold Climate, 1914—1945

216

. The Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class, 1914—1945

232

PART V: T H E COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE A N D THE RISE O F NEW LABOUR I N SCOTLAND, 1945—19905

249

251

. Interpretations

. ‘From Ships to Chips’: Economic and Social Change 254

in Scotland, 1945—19905 . The Affluent Worker? Working-Class Culture, 1945—19905

265

. The End of Skill? Work and Workplace Relations 272

in Scotland, 1945—19905 . The Demise of Craft Unionism and the Rise of White—Collar Unions in Scotland, 1945—19905

280

. Labour and Nationalism: Working-Class Politics in Scotland, 1945—19905

296

Select Bibliography

308

Notes

313

Index

356

Vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the culmination of much of my academic and intellectual endeavour over the last ten years or so. Because of this I have been able to incorporate a fair amount of previous research into my analysis of Scottish work, society and culture over the last two hundred years. As such, many individuals and institutions have played a large part in facilitating the writing of this volume. Financial support and intellectual assistance has been forthcoming on a generous level. However, since these sources have already been thanked for all they have done for me, I hope I can be forgiven if on this occasion I only

thank those individuals who have materially and intellectually supported the writing of the current volume. Of course, any researcher needs the support of efficient and helpful archivists and librarians. Thankfully, in Scotland there are a large number of institutions in which these qualities are to be found in large measure. The staff of the Scottish Record Office, the National Library of Scotland, the Mitchell Library, and, not least, the University of St Andrews’ Library have helped me in so many ways that it would be impossible to list them all. All I can say is thank you for making research such an enjoyable and rewarding experience. In this vein I would also like to thank Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre, Scottish Life Archive, University of St Andrews Library, and Ian MacDougall for their kind permission to reproduce photographs from their collections.

I have also benefited from discussions with colleagues and students concerning the contentious intellectual issues that the book attempts to grapple with. In particular, Alan McKinlay has acted as a sounding board and, at times, a mentor for my theories and speculations. All I can say is thanks for your patience and advice Alan. I also have

to thank him for allowing me access to unpublished work and for providing me with research material. In this connection I would viii

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Acknowledgements also like to thank Chris Whatley for reading and commenting on the first chapter. His erudition and knowledge of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scottish history proved invaluable. Chris, of course, bears no responsibility for any mistakes and misunderstandings on

my part. The same can be said of Hamish Fraser, who not only refereed the typescript, but also made some very valuable comments on the text and introduced me to sources which have been of great help in the process of redrafting the book. Finally, my thanks go to the commissioning editor of Edinburgh University Press, John Davey, who was a delight to work with and provided all the encouragement and support an author could need. To end on a personal note I want to express my thanks to my wife, Patty, and my children, David, Kim, Liam and Natasha for their unflagging support, their occasional criticisms, and their love. They make the whole endeavour worthwhile.

ix

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LIST O F ILLUSTRATIONS (between pages 144 and 145)

. A half-time school in Arbroath, 1887. Note the class size and age range. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

. Female jute workers in Dundee, c.1900. Note the ages of the workers and the presence of the supervisor in the background. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

. Paisley mill girl strike, 1907. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

. The Lady Victoria Pit bottom, Newtongrange, c.1900. A com— paratively early example of a Scottish pit using the longwall method and machinery to mine coal. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

. Steelworkers in Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge, Glasgow, 1910. Craft pride on display! (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

. A cartoon showing the links between the worker in factory and yard and those at the battle front, c.1915. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre) . Miners’ leader, A. J. Cook, addressing a mass meeting in Fife

during the General Strike of 1926. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

. Harp Athletic FC c.1921—2. The name was chosen by the team’s trainer, Patrick Drummond, but the sectarian overtones are clear. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

. Unemployed men, Edinburgh, c.1930. Hanging around the streets was one of the few free leisure pursuits open to the unemployed. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh) X

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List of Illustrations 10. An elderly couple living in the Overgate, Dundee, in wretched conditions in the 19205. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

11. A woman gathering sea coal in Fife in the 193 Os. One of a number of casual jobs women did which went unrecorded in the occupational census. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

12. Female cop winders in the Dundee jute industry c.19303. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

13. Fife miners using hand-got methods of coalmining, c.1930. Note the very cramped conditions. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

14. A Clydeside riveter using a pneumatic rivet machine, c.1930. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

15. The Youth Guild of the Independent Labour Party, Glasgow, c.1930. Note the presence of James Maxton in the middle of the second row. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

16. A programme not only showing the range of Beardmore’s business activities, but also containing an interesting address from staff and workers, c.1942. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

17. Clyde welders at work, c.1942. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

18. A woman welder on Clydeside at work during the Second World War, c. 1 942. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

19. An engineering workshop, c.1942. Note the presence of women

in the fitting shop; a sight calculated to reduce a craftsman to tears! (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

20. Women assembly workers in a television and radio factory in Crail, Fife, 1952. The growing electric and electronics industries relied heavily on the nimble fingers of increasing numbers of female workers. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

21. A sugar beet factory outing in Fife in February 1952. The male xi

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

smoker not only bonded workers, but also was a means of identifying with the firm. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

22. An Orange parade in Glasgow c.1959. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

23. A Right to Work March in Glasgow, c.1971. Note the presence of Tony Benn linking arms with James Airlie and Jimmy Reid, leaders of the UCS Work-In. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

LIST O F TABLES 26.1 Percentage of adults on low wages in Scotland at selected dates

259

29.1 Occupational structure of the General Council of the STUC at selected dates

285

29.2 The number of working days per 1000 employees lost through industrial action in Scotland in the years 1975—78 and 1980—82

288

30.1 Percentage of Conservative support in England and Scotland among manual workers, 1974—1992: random sample

297

xii

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ABBREVIATIONS

ACU ALU AWMA AEU AEEU ASCJ ASE ASRS ASW AHR ACLW ACLL ASTMS

Aberdeen Charter Union Aberdeen Ladies Union Aberdeen Working Men’s Association Amalgamated Engineering Union Amalagamated Engineering and Electrical Union Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners

Amalgamated Society of Engineers Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers American Historical Review Annual Conference of Labour Women Anti Corn Law League Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff

BIFU BPU BSP

Banking, Insurance and Finance Union Birmingham Political Union British Socialist Party

CSA CWC CPGB CLP

Clyde Workers’ Committee Communist Party of Great Britain Constituency Labour Party

ETC

Edinburgh Trades Council

FCM

Free Collier Movement

GMWU GCLP GTC GTLC

General and Municipal Workers’ Union Glasgow City Labour Party Glasgow Trades Council Glasgow Trades and Labour Council

Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association

xiii

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ABBREVIATIONS

GLWEU GNCTU GDP

Grand National Consolidated Trade Union Gross Domestic Product

HWJ

History Workshop Journal

ILP IMR IOGT IOR IRSH

Independent Labour Party Infant Mortality Rate

JPs

JSLHS

Justices of the Peace Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society

LMC LRC LWMA

Labour and Monopoly Capitalism Labour Representation Committee London Working Men’s Association

MF GB

Miners’ Federation of Great Britain

NALGO NCB NUWM NUDL NUM NUSMW

National Association of Local Government Officers National Coal Board National Union of Dock Labourers National Union of Mineworkers National Union of Scottish Mine Workers

PBR PBS PAS

Premium Bonus System Protestant Action Society

SCLP SEC SESH SGYB SHMA SLP SLLL SLA SPL SRL SNP SSP

Glasgow Liberal Working Men’s Electoral Union

Independent Order of Good Templars Independent Order of Rechabites International Review of Social History

National Unemployed Workers’ Movement

Premium Bonus Rate

Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish

Council of the Labour Party Economic Committee Economic and Social History Government Year Book Horse and Motorman’s Association Labour Party Land and Labour League Liberal Association

Scottish Protestant League Scottish Reform League Scottish National Party Scottish Socialist Party xiv

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Abbreviations

STUR STUC SWAC SWPEC SEF SDF SOCLP SL SLC SB

Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish

Trade Union Review Trades Union Congress Women’s Action Committee Workers Parliamentary Elections Committee

Shipbuilding Employers’ Federation Social Democratic Federation Socialist Labour Party Socialist League Socialist League Collection Supplementary Benefit Total Abstinence Societies

TAS TUC TGWU

Trades Union Congress

UA UCS UFC UIL UMS

Unemployed Association Upper Clyde Shipbuilders United Free Church United Irish League United Mineworkers of Scotland

Transport and General Workers’ Union

XV

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INTRODUCTION

This book is about Scottish workers: their culture, their working lives, and their politics. Twenty-five years ago such an enterprise, whether viewed from a methodological or ideological standpoint, would have been relatively unproblematical. Marxist categories of analysis dominated theoretical discourses in the arts and social sciences and class was seen by all, with the exception of those on the right of the political spectrum, as the key to unravelling the processes of transformation in society; indeed, class struggle was viewed as the motor of change in history. A quarter of a century later, writing a

book about the working class of any country calls for a very different set of academic considerations and as an historical exercise appears to need some form of intellectual justification. New challenges posed by the growth of feminism, nationalism and a resurgent right-wing historiography have forced historians, particularly on the left, to

confront the philosophical certainties of the post-war decades. The great isms and truths of philosophical systems, of social analyses, of historical and cultural studies have come under greater critical scrutiny, and in the process have been rejected by newer generations of academics as less than useful in understanding past and present developments in society. We now live, it is argued, in a world of postmodernist rationality, in which everything is relative and identities and values compete with each other in an incoherent and indeterminate

hierarchy of significance. Whereas in the past historical and political analysis rested on the

rock of class division, of a social landscape divided into owners and non-owners of capital, post-modernist philosophy views human behaviour as deeply complex, diverse and fragmented, and, as a result, impossible to explain by recourse to a reductionist, all—encompassing

theory of human affairs based on social class.1 Human beings, their behaviour and values, are seen by post—modernists as the product of a multiplicity of influences. Thus, we are not simply workers or 1

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INTRODUCTION

bosses, but members of churches, of football clubs, of ethnic, nation— al and racial groups. We are men and women, young and old, urban and rural dwellers, Highlanders and Lowlanders, fashionable and unfashionable, carnivores and vegetarians. In essence, there is not one variable that assumes primacy in shaping social and political behaviour but many. Everything is in flux and explanations of actions

and events highlight the uniqueness of factors and circumstances. In this mode of analysis, religion or gender might be seen as more important than social class as a nodal point around which solidarities

might be grouped. Class, then, has been dethroned as historians look elsewhere for explanatory categories in order to understand the processes of social and political change. Politically, the turn away from class and the modes of analyses connected with it coincided with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet state in the 19803 and the early 19903; and, in Britain, with the election of the Thatcher government in 1979, and the inability of

the Labour Party to break the Conservative stranglehold on political power in the 19805 and for most of the 19905. The self-confidence of the Labour movement so brilliantly captured in Francis Williams’s whiggish interpretation of its history — The Magnificent journey — was shattered. Eric Hobsbawm, and others on the left, began to write and talk of the ‘forward march of Labour halted’.2 The pessimism was fuelled by the fact that millions of trade unionists had deserted Labour and voted for the Tories in the 1983 general election. The defeat of the miners in the following years only added to the gloom. It was from this political nadir that ‘New Labour’ emerged, committed to the politics of consumption rather than production. The underlying analysis pointed to changes in the occupational structure of the country. The process of de—industrialisation saw the collapse of working-class communities, of old style collective values, and community institutions such as social clubs and co-operative

societies. The ‘new’ working class was to be found in the service sector. Its values were far more instrumental and materialistic than

the old working class. As a result, the ‘new’ working class was more interested in tax cuts than in a fairer distribution of wealth, or in defending collective provision through the welfare state. The growth of owner occupation, as mortgages became more easily available and tax relief on them more generous, encouraged workers and their families to join the property-owning democracy so beloved of the ex-Tory prime minister, Harold MacMillan. Increasingly the division in society was between those who were part of the private property

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Introduction

system and those who were not, that is, the unemployed, the poor, and other elements of the so-called underclass.3 In the light of these changes in the social structure of Britain, the taken-for-granted working-class Labour voting bloc simply evaporated. The shift in theory also exploded myths of working-class commu-

nity and solidarity. Workers were seen as less than the salt-of-the-earth types with socialist leanings portrayed by writers from the inter-war period such as D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell and J. B. Priestley, through to post-1945 commentators and novelists such as Richard Hoggart, Alan Sillitoe, and historians like E. P. Thompson.4 In contrast to this ‘idealised’ portrait, workers were shown as nationalistic, patriotic, racist, misogynist, materialistic and privatised.5 If they

were not, then how could a third of the working class traditionally vote Tory, and how could appeals in the 19805 and beyond by the Conservatives to patriotism and self-interest command so much support from workers and their families? It was obvious that a reappraisal of the role of class in shaping identity and political behaviour was necessary if we were to account for the phenomenal success of the Tories and their values in winning over even long-standing trade unionists.

Historians have been to the fore in this process of reassessment regarding the impact of social class on human attitudes and behaviour. The various critiques, notably by Craig Calhoun, of E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963),6 and Hobsbawm’s theory of the labour aristocracy7 could rightly be viewed as the starting point in the recent process of dethroning class as the foundation of historical analysis. But more recently the debate has focussed on Harry Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital (LMC) (1974), which initiated a whole series of investigations and theoretical speculations regarding the relationship between work and politics. The polemics of that debate brought to the fore revisionist historians such as Patrick Joyce, Charles More, Alastair Reid and Jonathan Zeitlin. Although with no formal or institutional attachment, as a group they mustered a powerful and compelling critique of Braverman’s thesis

concerning deskilling, and, by direct implication, the whole Marxist idea of class conflict as the motor-force of societal change.8 In this introduction these intellectual critiques of Marxism and the role of social class as an explanatory concept in history will be critically discussed before examining the extent to which they have influenced historical writing on these issues in Scotland. Additionally, the extent to which the experience of workers in Scotland fits the

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INTRODUCTION

national scenarios constructed by the revisionists will also be considered. By doing this we will be in a better position to decide how far the revisionist critique is peculiarly anglocentric, and, conversely, how far it provides the basis for a genuinely British history of workers and their families in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, before embarking on this task, the theoretical background to these debates has to be filled in.

1. Marxism and the Capitalist Labour Process It was the student and worker unrest in France and Italy in the late 19608 and early 19705 which stimulated social scientists to re-investigate the relationship of the workplace to politics? The workplace had been the site of resistance to Gaullism and Christian Social Democracy in these years, and because of this it appeared to offer important clues as to the process of how the more narrowly econo— mistic struggles of the shop floor interacted with the wider world of

politics. Furthermore, the student/worker revolts of this period also demonstrated the continuing revolutionary potential of the prole-

tariat, something which contradicted those consensus commentators in the 1960s who had spoken about the end of ideology.10 Marx, as so often in these decades, provided the starting point for analysis with his pathbreaking study of the capitalist labour process. By the labour process Marx meant the way humans interact with nature to produce things to meet their needs. In a primitive society based on common ownership such endeavour, outside of its organisation, is relatively unproblematic since what is produced is consumed by the producers and their kin and friends. However, in a capitalist society it is not enough that what is produced can be consumed, or is socially useful; the capitalist has to be able to exchange it for a

price greater in value than the cost incurred in its production. As labour is seen by Marx as the source of value, the capitalist must ensure that the worker creates a superior value than he or she gets back in the form of wages. Production in a capitalist society is therefore bound up with exploitation, or, as Marx would put it, the creation of surplus value. The process by which surplus value was extracted from the workers was termed by Marx as valorisation.11 As valorisation becomes the rationale for production then the labour process becomes inextricably linked to the struggle for profitable production. To ensure the continuous flow of profit the capitalist must not only provide the materials for labour to work on; he or she

4

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Introduction

must also acquire control of the conditions under which the speed, skill and dexterity of the worker operates. Once that is realised the goal of capital becomes the subordination of labour. In the process of subordination science and technology are used to break down complex skills into routine operations performed by unskilled labour. In this way capital and its agents in the system of production gain control of the labour process and effectively destroy any resistance

coalesced around skill. Deskilled labour becomes homogenised and easily exploited and manipulated as recalcitrant workers are dismissed and replaced by more passive ones without significantly disrupting

production. Braverman adopted Marx’s work on the labour process and enriched it by drawing on theories of scientific management, such as those propounded by Frederick W. Taylor in The Principles of Scientific Management (1914).12 By doing so Braverman was able to take a fresh look at questions surrounding skill, technology and work organisation, particularly in the period of monopoly capitalism.

From his research two main conclusions were drawn regarding the labour process: firstly, crucial to understanding its development in a capitalist society is the desire to cheapen the cost of production by substituting unskilled for skilled labour; and secondly, and more important, is the desire to guarantee effective employer control of

the labour process by, as Tony Elger puts it, ‘dissolving those esoteric skills which underpinned effective craft control and reorganising production in the hands of capital and its agents’.13 However, the homogenisation of labour Which results from deskilling was a doubleedged sword for the capitalist class. It may have cheapened production costs and increased the level of exploitation, but it also created the potential for a unified working-class response to the pressures of capitalist society, since all the divisions resulting from gradations of skill were obliterated. Capitalism in its relentless pursuit of profit by implication was creating its own gravediggers.

The relationship of work to political change was made very clear in Braverman’s account. However, in spite of its clarity and elegance, his thesis on deskilling was attacked by all sides of the political spectrum. His thesis concerning the development of work in industrial society was seen as simplistic and one—sided, relying too heavily on

scientific managerialists, such as Taylor. Left-orientated historians and sociologists criticised Braverman for failing to understand the role of class struggle in resisting changes in the organisation of production.14 Feminist historians also exposed his lack of appreciation of

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INTRODUCTION

the role gender played in shaping the structure of industrial relations

and the occupational hierarchy in the workplace.” However, for our purposes, the most damning critique came from the previously mentioned revisionist historians associated with ‘New Labour’, and those influenced by the neo-liberal economic theories emanating from the right-wing of British politics. 2. The New Revisionism and the Labour Process

Drawing on an important article by Raphael Samuel on the uneven development of nineteenth—century industrial capitalism,16 the revisionists argued that there was no linear trend towards deskilling as the nature of work patterns remained disjointed and haphazard.

Far from being deskilled many workers were able to retain a large measure of control over the work process. The labour intensive methods favoured by employers, and the highly differentiated product markets they operated within, ensured that skill remained at a premium throughout the nineteenth century. Consequently, the scope employers had to deskill was limited, and because of this, instead of acting to destroy skills, employers actually went out of their way to nurture them. In what could be interpreted as a re-articulation of nineteenth-century views on the mutuality of capital and labour, Patrick Joyce argued that the Victorian workplace was a terrain of compromise rather than conflict with ‘capital often ced[ing] to labour the control [over the labour process]’.17 This view is underscored by Charles More’s work on apprenticeship. He claims that employers and employees co-operated to ‘encourage skill’ development. Apprenticeship survived and skill was maintained because it was economically rational on both the part of the employer and the apprentice. The former saw that it was in his interest to ensure that the lad was well-taught in order that he could benefit from skilled apprentice labour at low wages; while the latter had a desire to learn a skill which would give him secure earnings and regular employment at the end of his apprenticeship.18 As part of the emphasis on the skilled nature of work, More rejected the idea of skill as a social construct and the role of trade unions in determining skill.19 Although the twentieth century has seen major changes in the nature of technology and the organisation of the workplace, revi—

sionists have maintained that the tendency has not been towards the destruction of skill, but towards its recomposition. Some skills have, of course, completely disappeared, increasingly so with the onset of

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Introduction

computerised techniques in industry. Riveting in the shipbuilding industry gave way to welding; muscle power in dockwork gave way to automatic methods of cargo handling and containerisation; and so on. However, the disappearance of older competencies has made way for the emergence of new skills. In 1963, the Technical and Salaried Staffs Association listed seven categories of technical worker, including draughtsmen, designers, estimators, planning engineers and others. Ten years later the list had grown to 486, of which 400 were of a technical nature and the rest clerical or supervisory.20 These changes in the division of labour in engineering was further proof against any tendency within capitalism towards the degradation of labour as the numbers of workers with technical expertise in the industry was

increasing rather than diminishing. The new technologies also encouraged greater flexibility in the distribution of tasks. This increased the sense of relative autonomy in making decisions, which reduced the level of alienation, and allowed workers increased

freedom within a production regime which was more challenging and interesting than routine.21 Taken as a whole the revisionist critique amounts to a complete rejection of Braverman’s theory of deskilling and, as a consequence, a denial of the Marxist concept of class struggle as the determinant of power and authority in the sphere of production. By shifting the focus of the historian’s concerns away from the terrain of class conflict to the terrain of compromise industrial relations could be depicted as a search for a mutually reciprocal agreed set of rules and codes of conduct, rather than a struggle over the distribution of the social product. Patrick Joyce’s notion of ‘reciprocity’ became a key term in the new social histories of the workplace. By stressing the mutuality of capital and labour over issues of common concern, revisionist history did not lose sight of the fact that conflict was still embedded in workplace relationships; however, it was seen as less to do with abstract notions of power and authority, and more with instrumental issues of pay and conditions of work. Contrary to Braverman, far from being a radicalising agent the workplace was depicted in these accounts as disabling radical initiatives by continuing to promote material and status divisions among workers. Alastair

Reid sums up the views of the revisionists when he writes that in the period 1850—1914:

Most working men and women . . . retained real skills and real autonomy at work, experienced a rising trend in real incomes, 7

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INTRODUCTION

and were increasingly able to sustain their own independent economic, social and political organisations. As a result the inevitability of fierce conflict between capital and labour was considerably reduced and there were many areas where agreement was possible even over the organisation of work itself.22 The links between work and politics seem in this scenario to be tenuous, and, contrary to Braverman, there is no clear and unambiguous trajectory of deskilling in the workplace.

3. Rethinking Deskilling and Politics The revisionist view that skill was preserved and nurtured within the changing economic and technological regimes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century capitalism can be contested. Although this will be dealt with in greater detail in the succeeding chapters of the book, a few basic points have to be made in order to establish the theoretical currency of class as a basis of analysis in the sphere of production. Firstly, there is the evidence of testimony. All the histories of work in the nineteenth century point to a widespread restructuring of skill and a tightening up of industrial discipline. And while these changes

were experienced unevenly, few trades were left untouched. As autobiographies of working men show, the cumulative effect of these changes was to create a sense of bewilderment and 1055 among skilled workers.23 Secondly, even if one could argue that some of these changes involved an element of re-skilling, to suddenly find that one’s skills, which were developed over a long period of time, were no longer required must have been a profoundly disturbing experience for those affected by technological change. Whether this acted to radicalise workers, or, indeed, provides us with clues in which to theorise the relationship in general terms between work and politics

is problematic. While it is empirically impossible to verify the relationship between the two worlds, it might be possible to establish a number indirect and broad connections. In spite of the general reduction in working hours that took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, people still spent a considerable part of their daily lives in the workplace. Average hours of work for a skilled man were about fifty-four a week in 1900, but with overtime it might be much longer. Railway engine drivers and guards spent around seventy hours a week at work. The inner life of the workplace and the relationships built around it deeply embedded

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Introduction

themselves in the consciousness of the worker. Moreover, since it was

work and the status it conferred on a worker which provided him or her and family with a place in the wider society of working-class communities the importance was multiplied in complex ways. The removal of the foundation of that status and the income that underpinned it through changes in the work process involved a loss of face for those involved. A recent example of this can be found in the destruction of mining communities in Britain through changing world markets for coal. This has been accompanied by the demise of the miner as the symbolic hero figure of the proletariat. The fear of

sinking into poverty was enough to drive displaced workers, and those threatened by displacement, to seek a modicum of protection from the state either in the form of a reduced working week, or a minimum wage. The pursuit of social security inevitably involved them in political struggles. Furthermore, as changing work regimes impact themselves on wages and status, workers are normally moved in the direction of trade unionism. Although greater union densities do not make industrial conflict any more likely, during periods when production systems are changing and profoundly threatening inherited skills the conflicts that erupt are on such a large-scale they assume a highly symbolic nature. This is because they are not confined simply to the specific work group or groups involved in the action, but engulf whole communities. Alan McKinlay’s work on inter-war shipyard riveters has shown how important kinship networks are not only in terms of recruitment to the trade, but also in enforcing solidarity during periods of industrial struggle.24 The 1984/85 miners’ strike demonstrated the importance of women’s groups in the maintenance of solidarity. Therefore, the tensions induced by the introduction of new technologies and the conflicts they produced tend to draw in whole communities. In major industrial set pieces, this may have also involved the worker community in an encounter with the state in the presence of the police; normally seen by workers as pro—employer. Dealing

with the sharp end of the state’s coercive arm inevitably produced a politicising impact on the local community.

Thus, the workplace cannot be written off as having no relationship with the world of politics. As industrial relations became increasingly politicised by the state from the late nineteenth century onwards workers in struggle were drawn into politics whether they liked it or not. The cultural shift in social and political history with its emphasis on discourse fails to take these factors into account and in

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INTRODUCTION

doing so separates politics from economics. This leads to a number of intellectual problems which can be best illustrated by examining the social history of class.

4. The Social History of Class The implications of these studies of the labour process for working-

class politics in the nineteenth and twentieth century are highly important. For if the history of workplace relations is the story of the acceptance by the workers of the rights of private property and the unsocial ownership of wealth, then how far did the legitimisation of property also signify acceptance of the major institutions of liberal capitalism? If the answer is one of affirmation, then, the whole

Marxist project regarding the historic mission of the working class to overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist society is a false and ahistorical one; a product of the philosophical imagination of a German émigré. The political story of the working class can, therefore, be written as voluntary incorporation rather than as class

struggle. The Labour Party can be seen in this historical scenario as the institutional expression of incorporationist tendencies with the organised working class, instead of a vehicle for restructuring the economic basis of society in favour of the proletariat. As Ross McKibbin, in his celebrated essay, ‘Why there was no Marxism in Britain’, put it: Two of the prime assumptions of any Marxist party - a rejection by much of the working class of existing social institutions and

a belief in the unity of ‘economics’ and ‘politics’ — simply did not hold. The Labour Party was not free to choose between Marxism

and reformism but only between varieties of reformism.“ McKibbin’s essay was a riposte to the dominance of Marxist thought in historical studies in the 1960s and 19705. Accepting the main philosophical tenets of historical materialism, historians saw the history of the working class in relatively unproblematic ways. In these accounts there was a clear and unambiguous relationship between one’s economic position and one’s political behaviour. The historical project of Marxist historiography was to discover why ‘reformism’ had dominated the politics of the labour movement, rather than more radical alternatives, then, to shift the workers in the latter direction.“ As a result, labour history was written as a series of disjunctures in 10

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Introduction

which the forces of accommodation and struggle vied with each other as rally points of working-class political allegiance. This way of patterning the past led to the construction of a periodised scenario peopled by the demons and heroes of class struggle. Firstly, there was the period of political radicalism in which the

working class accepted middle-class political leadership and political economy in an attempt to democratise the British state. The culmination of this phase of political struggle was the First Reform Act of 1832 in which the urban property owners were enfranchised. The failure to include the working class in the constitution set the stage for the next phase — Chartism. This movement for the political enfranchisement of the working class was a reaction to middle—class betrayal in 1832 and the establishment of the New Poor Law in England in 1834. Chartism was the first independent political

expression of the proletariat, and through its political struggles an ideology of class interests was developed and entrenched within the worker’s consciousness. Its failure to achieve its goals opened up a period of class collaboration in the third quarter of the nineteenth century in which the leadership of the working class, or labour aristocracy, was bought off by the ruling class with the promise of material and status rewards. The third phase saw the rise of socialism as socialist agitators mobilised the previously unorganised unskilled workers towards a new political alignment with skilled workers, who themselves faced displacement by semi-skilled labour, due to the growth of big business and technological change. The culmination of this phase in the history of the working class was the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900. From this point onwards the history of Labour became the struggle between reformism and revolution. On the wider front, British politics had polarised into working-class Labour and middle—class Tory, with the Liberals in the political wilderness. Class, therefore, provided the key to the understanding of the process of political change, which was depicted by labour historians as inevitable and predictable.27

However, the sight of millions of trade unionists turning their backs on Labour and voting for the Tories in 1983, moved historians to question the basic assumptions of class interpretations of political behaviour. The jettisoning of reductionist emphasis on the relationship between economics and politics, saw the whole trajectory of Marxist-

inspired labour history undergo a profound revision. E. P. Thompson’s view that class consciousness emerged within the working class out of the traumatic experience of industrialism, and that by 1832 it was 11

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INTRODUCTION

‘made’, in the sense of having its own institutions and ideology, was heavily attacked. Drawing on developments within post-modernism

which stressed the determining importance of language in shaping political actions, Patrick Joyce argued that the language of ‘the people’ was a far more potent shibboleth than the language of class.28 Thompson was further criticised for failing to show that his dispos— sessed and displaced artisan radicals represented the ‘working class’, rather than a small intellectual élite. Moreover, there was a tendency to concentrate on the pre—industrial losers in the process of modernisation at the expense of the winners. The stress on language was also evident in Gareth Stedman Jones’s revisionist essay on Chartism. Discarding social explanations of the rise of Chartism, Stedman Jones saw the movement as part of the tradition of political radicalism dating back to the late eighteenth century. Chartism, he argued, never developed a socialist critique of the capitalist system and neither did it seek to establish a society based on the common ownership of wealth. Chartism saw as its constituency not simply the working class but ‘the people’, and it employed a language of politics drawn from the radical tradition in keeping with this vision.29 The enemy still remained ‘old corruption’ and hereditary power. As the Chartist Circular put it: Hereditary power corrupted the whole government, poisoned the press, demoralised society, prostituted the church, dissipated the resources of the nation, created monopolies, paralysed trade, ruined half the merchants, produced national bankruptcy — it could be overthrown if capitalocracy united with the people.30

By establishing Chartism as a movement for political reform organ— ised round the main shibboleths of the radical tradition, rather than as a movement based on the political interests of a single class, once the movement had collapsed, it was the core political values of that radical tradition, rather than socialism, that motivated workers in their continuing search for a share of political power. Biagini and Reid, in a recent collection of influential essays on political radicalism, argue that there ‘is enough continuity in political radicalism [to] . . . demonstrate [that] . . . social explanations of major changes [are] unnecessary’.31 They go on to stress the importance of radical Liberalism in the early formation of the Labour Party, rejecting the views of Marxist historians, such as Thompson and Hobsbawm, that the latter was formed out of socialist activity amongst the unskilled, 12

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Introduction

or that intensified class conflict brought it about. Thus, working-class history in the nineteenth century can be viewed in terms of continuity rather than in terms of disjuncture. Alastair Reid claims that there was no ‘Widespread support for state socialism, whether of a revolutionary or reformist type, among the British working people in this period [1850—1914]’.32 Indeed, the choice was between Liberal or Conservative parties. However, if socialism was not an option for working people in the period 185 0—1914, how far did the experience

of the First World War and the inter-war depression create the kind of class society, and with it the level of class struggle predicted by Marx and his followers? John Stevenson and Chris Cook in The Slump (1977) show British

society divided between a prosperous South and a depressed North, with the rising living standards of the former contrasted with the poverty and unemployment of the latter. They argue that there was little threat to liberal democracy of the dimension faced by Germany

in the early 19305 because the main institutions of British society still were accorded legitimacy by subordinate groups. The unemployed were fatalistic rather than radical as extremist left—wing political parties, such as the Communist Party, received only minuscule support from redundant workers. Those in work gave overwhelming support to the National government in the 1931 general election. Political

and industrial protest may have occurred in this period, but it rarely amounted to more than a series of economistic demands for work, improved wages and welfare benefits. The Britain of the post-Second World War decades is the story of dimming of class awareness as encapsulated in the work of Goldthorpe.33 Rising living standards saw consumption become the key to understanding political behaviour rather than class. The old communities and heavy industries which sustained notions of class consciousness were swept away by housing redevelopment and the transformation of the labour market due to the growth of the service sector. The class structure which emerged from this profound period of economic and social restructuring became more, rather than less, complex. Braverman’s prediction of a homogenised proletariat was

contradicted by the persistence of income and status differences, as well as the recomposition of skills demanded by new computerised technology.34 The Conservative breakthrough in 1979 was the climax of this long transformation in the economic and social fabric of British society. Thatcher’s electoral victory and the changes it has wrought in society found even sympathetic voices on the left writing 13

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INTRODUCTION

that: ‘Socialism is not inherent in the consciousness of the working class, but is one possible development amongst others’.35 Class in this revisionist scenario is a meaningless concept in British history as its relevance to the experience of working people is, at best, tangential, and, at worst, irrelevant. It remains as only one of a

series of relatively minor forms of self-identity. As Patrick Joyce puts it: it is ‘seen less as objective reality than as a social construct’.36 Liberal capitalist, or social democratic regimes, survive not because of coercion, or the ‘false consciousness’ of subordinate groups, but

through the freely given consent of workers and their families to the major institutions of civil society.37

5. Languages of Class The powerful revisionist critique of the role of class in British history would appear to make a book on the Scottish working class a redundant and an otherwise useless project; that is, of course, if we believe that class is as jejune a concept as the revisionists would have us believe. Not all historians and social scientists are prepared to follow the revisionists down the yellow brick road to the classless society. Although one can appreciate that reductionist theories of class linked to teleological models of historical change may obscure more than they shed light on issues concerned with social and political change, does this mean that more refined and subtle usages of the concept need be discarded too? Class interest and communual concerns over religion, gender, ethnicity, and so on, can come into conflict with each other leading to one or more of these factors obscuring the other as focal points of identity and association, but any sophisticated use of the concept of class should be able to accommodate these tensions. As Eley and Nield comment, part of the problem of the post-modernists in their messianic fervour to dethrone Marxism is: The refusal to talk about Marxism as anything other than a single and undifferentiated thing. . . . The vanished — or vanquished - utility or plausibility of Marxism is apparently con— nected in the minds of Joyce and others with the implosion of

the Soviet Union, and the irreversible ‘failure’ of the experiments begun in 1917.38

Likewise, when it comes to the question of class the tests applied to its currency by revisionists in explaining social and political behaviour 14

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Introduction

are so rigorous that the working class continues to fail to achieve a pass mark. Only evidence of revolutionary consciousness is permitted within the parameters of revisionist discourse as Patrick Joyce makes clear. He defines class consciousness as the capacity of a class ‘to

behave as a class actor’ through organisation;39 in other words the old dichotomy of Marx’s ‘class in itself’ and ‘class for itself’ rephrased. Texts are scrutinised for any hint of departure from this pedantic reading of class consciousness. But, as Neville Kirk points out, to adopt such a severe test of class consciousness would be to write off almost all of the working-class political activity in Britain from the 18403 to the 19905.40 This point is underscored by Michael Mann when he says that ‘classes have never had a full, pure and independent life’.41 For a variety of reasons classes fail the tests of Stedman Jones and Joyce, but what is of concern is that failure pushes us even further down the linguistic path of analysis. By rejecting the link between social being and consciousness, post-

modernists are heading, as Ralph Miliband argues, in the direction of subjectivism in which ‘notions of class, structure and society itself, cease to be regarded as proper tools of analysis’.42 Indeed, the stress on language, or the ‘text’, as the only means of analysis leads to a form of linguistic determinism in which human agency and non-linguistic

historical phenomena are considered irrelevant or unknowable. Within this new framework of analysis the influence of literary criticism allows historical documents to be stripped of any referential or contextual links, which misses the obvious point that language, and the way it is understood, depends on the context in which it is articulated. If that was not the case then language itself could not be the object of historical analysis since it would be timeless. As Neville

Kirk points out: ‘if reality does not extend beyond representation in language and discourse how is it possible to investigate between “the linguistic”, “the social”, “the political” and nomic”’.43 There is, then, obviously a relationship between and structure; a relationship which can be further explored

the links “the ecolanguage by exam-

ining in some detail Stedman Jones’s revisionist critique of traditional interpretations of Chartism. Stedman Jones, as we have seen above, saw Chartism as movement of the ‘people’ bound together by subscription to a common political language, rather than the first politically organised expression of the industrial proletariat. But as John Foster points out, the lan— guage of radicalism is a ‘historian’s construct’.44 What Chartists said is perfectly well-known; what they meant, and how that language 15

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INTRODUCTION

was interpreted by the ‘people’ is altogether a different matter.

Searching the voluminous writings connected with Chartism can lead the historian in diametrically opposing directions in which the

language of the people vies with the language of class. Such linguistic tensions have always existed within Chartist texts. The above quota-

tion from the Chartist Circular can be set aside the following quotation from a leading Chartist: If they will not reform this, aye uproot it, they shall have the revolution they so much dread. We shall destroy their abodes of guilt. . . . If they will not . . . [provide] that every man shall by his labour find comfortable food and clothing for his wife and babes — then we swear. . . that from the East, the West, the North and the South, we shall warp in one sheet of devouring flame . . . the manufactories of the cotton tyrants, and the places of those who raised them by rapine and murder, and founded

upon them the wretchedness of millions whom God . . . created to be happy.“ Although blood—curdlingly unsophisticated compared to Marxist analysis, the sense of class hatred is clearly and overwhelmingly articulated. It is also clear from a reading of more moderate Chartist texts that incorporation into the constitution was never seen as an end in itself, but as a way of redressing economic and social grievances. Neville Kirk, in his analysis of the writings of leading Lancashire Chartists, also makes this point, showing them to be acutely aware of class and exploitation.“ Stedman Jones, therefore, in his eagerness to establish the continuity of Chartism with previous forms of political radicalism, seems to be guilty of a selective reading of the movement’s texts. In reality, Chartism was a diverse political and social movement which spoke to a great deal of concerns, although primarily to the working class. The diversity of the political constituency, which included at various times pre-industrial workers, such as handloom weavers and colliers, and more modern workers, such as cotton spinners, along with petty bourgeois types, and a complex array of religious and social visionaries, demanded a varied political language

that on inspection is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. Justification for one, highly particular, reading of Chartism simply does not hold up. Whether linguistic analysis provides the key to unlocking the mys— teries of the past and making more rigorous our approach to its study

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Introduction

is, thus, open to severe doubt. But the debates engendered by the ‘linguistic turn’ have been fruitless. The stress on language has led to the

abandonment of simplistic reductionist notions of the role of class. It has also made us more aware of the differences and complexities

within working-class communities, and drawn our attention to the need to adopt a more critical analysis of the documents of workingclass life. But, in spite of these undoubted gains, the influence of post-

modernism has had a baneful impact on labour and social history. It has influenced historians to jettison accepted and worthwhile categories of analysis with bewildering speed and with little regard to the intellectual consequences. The extremism of the post-modern

revolutions has led even those broadly sympathetic to the linguistic turn to comment that: Although class history is fading, the histories that remain still present a story of power relationships and exploitation . . . [and] while a history based on ideal class types may have run into the ground, a history that testifies to the ongoing narratives of subordination and social discipline continues.47 Even Patrick Joyce has recognised that there existed tendencies in the nineteenth century towards a unity of labour experience and class

solidarity and that this could fuse in times of economic and political crisis. He concludes his review of the relationship between social class and political radicalism by saying: ‘Simply, class mattered’.48 It would appear that, at least, some revisionist historians do not quite wish to throw the baby out With the bath water. The concept of

class remains central to our understanding of historical development, not simply because it is a convenient tool of positional measurement within the social-structure, but also because it allows us to address the larger historical questions linked to the distribution of power and wealth in society. By focusing on the working class as the most disadvantaged and exploited section of society, and its relationship with other more advantaged groups, the nature of power and authority in all their guises is made clearer. The working class, however, is not a

static economic category. It is re—made and re-makes itself in a dialectical interplay as changes which occur in the economic and social structure of capitalism elicit political responses. As I was informed as an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh by R. J. Morris, class formation is an historical process; since that time there has been little written to convince me otherwise of the compelling nature of

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INTRODUCTION

his insight. The working class of today may be quite different to that which emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century — muscle is less of a qualification for membership in an economy dominated by services than it was 150 years ago — however, powerlessness and exploitation remain a fact of working-class life in modern society.

Moreover, the traditional working class has not disappeared. Manual workers made up 51.8 per cent of all employees in 1980; a figure higher for men at 55 per cent than women at 35 per cent. As Eley and Nield eloquently put it: We accept that class is being re-composed; it is not available in its previous manifest forms; it is no longer recognizable via former iconographies, typologies and embodiments. But this does not mean that either capitalism or its characteristic forms of exploitation have gone away. Current analyses of race, gender, space, sexuality, ethnicity are important not least for their purchase on changing modes of ensuring an inequitable distribution of the product. They provide access to the late capitalist modal— ities of exploitation and inequality — of class — in this sense.49 The recognition of the enduring nature of capitalist social relations ensures that class remains a salient feature of socio-political analyses. As Michael Savage and Andrew Miles conclude: The working class is constantly being made and re-made, and the political implications of class formation are often ambiguous and uncertain . . . as long as we live in an unequal society, in which some people exploit others, class divisions are likely to have profound political ramifications.50

6. Rethinking Class Class, then, still matters, but it is important that it is studied in a dialectical way as a social entity subject, in the case of the working class, to recomposition, constantly negotiating and re—negotiating its relationship to other social classes and interests groups, rather than as a fixed and immutable economic category. There should also be an awareness of the tensions within the working class which result from divisions based on skill, gender, ethnicity, religion and nationalism. The model used in this book is one which tries to encompass the insights derived from post-modernist writings with the more 18

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Introduction

traditional concerns of labour and social history. Although on the

surface the process of social and political change may appear to be theorised in a relatively unproblematic and somewhat linear manner,

the nuances and subtleties of class and inter-class relationships are prominent in the analysis. In dealing with the history of class formation and structure the book takes as its starting point the nature of

the economy and the level of technology, since it is the way they interact with each other that determines the structure of the labour market and the mechanisms of income distribution. The inequalities

and insecurities which result from a hierarchically structured system of rewards, the trade cycle and an ever—changing technological production regime create common or shared experiences and grievances among wage earners. These give rise to the need to organise to protect oneself, family and community from the vicissitudes of impersonal economic forces.

Organisation is at first localised. However, as capital grows and nationalises itself labour follows suit assisted by the spread of communications and transport. The larger the organisations, the greater

the potential for conflict and disruption, and the greater the necessity for the state to adopt an interventionist role in industrial relations. The more the state intervenes, the more it acts to politicise industrial relations, and the more it is viewed as pro—employer by workers. Recognition of bias in the state’s actions pushes the trade unions in the direction of politics, eventually resulting in the formation of an independent working-class political party, since middle-class parties cannot accommodate in whole the interests of labour. Indeed, all successful labour and socialist parties have evolved out of the trade unions and survive and grow because of this political bond. While this might appear teleological, the question of speed of formation, the nature of the ethos and ideology of the party, become more problematic and draw in factors concerned with ethnicity, gender, religion, regionalism, and nationality. It is these sometimes ambiguous, com— peting and contradictory factors which act to prevent the emergence of any predestined or given pathway of labour’s political development. Their influence also demonstrates the need to view labour’s arrival and continued presence on the national stage of politics as a constant process of negotiation and re-negotiation. Theories based on predes-

tination fail to answer obvious, but important, questions of timing, such as why, when the objective economic conditions of insecurity and

poverty were conducive to the formation of an independent workingclass party, did it take until 1906 in Britain? Relying on sloppy theories

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INTRODUCTION

of ‘false consciousness’, or vanguardism, prevents us from engaging with the realities of working-class consciousnesss and creates ultimately unhistorical categories of analysis. Questions concerning the nature and content of political conscious— ness can only be addressed by developing a dialectical and subtle model of social and political change which allows for the interplay between the economic, the social and the political. This has obvious

implications for the way the subject is written about. Adopting a totalising historical approach necessarily involves an abandonment of reductionist views of class, and also of workerist models of social

change which abstract the workplace, and the social relations it gives rise to, from the wider community, in favour of a model which establishes linkages between the workplace, the community and the political system, and which takes account of the relationship of material conditions to thought and language. Although the focus of this particular study is the Scottish working class’s experience of industrial capitalism and the responses this engendered at a variety of levels, the underlying aim is to realise this conceptual desideratum.

7. Scottish Historians and Class History The study of the Scottish working-class’s historical development offers an important and instructive corrective to the almost exclusively anglocentric focus of current debates on the issues of class and

class formation. Indeed, the failure to consider the experience of workers in the celtic fringe of Britain is somewhat bewildering given

the suitability of these regions for examining the relationship of class to other socio-political factors. Scotland stands out as a paramount ommission in this respect. Economically, it has traditionally experienced higher levels of poverty and lower wages than England and Wales, had a higher proportion of immigrants from Ireland, and, in the west of Scotland, the greatest concentration of skilled workers

anywhere in Europe with the possible exception of the Ruhr. Socially, Scotland has suffered extreme inter—class divisions resulting from religious sectarianism and endured higher levels of overcrowding and low amenity housing than the rest of Britain. Politically, it was more

entrenched in support in the nineteenth century for the Liberal Party, and more for Labour in the twentieth century, than anywhere else in Britain. Moreover, in recent years the Scottish working class has undergone profound restructuring with the shift from heavy industry to services and light manufacturing which has all but destroyed the

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Introduction

skilled, male, Protestant culture. In spite of this, Scotland has bucked the electoral trends exhibited elsewhere in the UK since 1979 by steadfastly and increasingly voting Labour, while, at the same time, encompassing a growing movement for national independence. These factors alone make Scotland an interesting and almost ideal social laboratory to test recent theses concerning the demise of class. At the very least, it allows for a greater comparative dimension to be added to an agenda dominated by insular and nationalist concerns of English historians and social scientists. Indeed, the political development of the Scottish working class has taken a different trajectory from that of its English counterpart. It has been more influenced by the rational and educational philosophies of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment than has the English.51 This has resulted in moral suasion and rational argument being a more powerful part of the armoury of political resistance north of the border than south. As a consequence of the stress on literacy and education by a Calvinist-dominated social theology, the tradition of

auto-didactism and self-improvement was entrenched in the working class and the labour movement from an early stage. Somewhat con— tradictorily, given the influence of rational thought, the labour

movement in Scotland also adopted the moral concerns of Calvinism, hence the powerful influence of temperance, something which

appealed to both moderates and revolutionaries alike.52 Religion itself has exercised a longer and more powerful grip on the consciousness

of workers in Scotland than in England, with higher levels of membership and attendance throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.53 The divisions caused by sectarianism’s purchase on working-class affections have proved a much more disabling factor in Labour’s political progress than in England, With the possible exception of Liverpool, and in spite of the traditional religious enmity between Anglicans and Methodists.54 The other major difference between Scotland and England has been the potently enduring appeal of national self-government. The enduring tensions over the hugely unpopular settlement of 1707 have seen Home Rule figure as

an important and enduring symbol of working—class resistance, particularly to the landed élite. Anti-landlordism has featured more strongly in the political agitation north of the border, not least because of the Highland Clearances, and the large waves of Highland and Irish migration to the urban central belt of Scotland.“

Unfortunately, there exists no history of the Scottish working class which provides an overarching account of its development since the

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INTRODUCTION

18005 to the present, or attempts to synthesise the various strands and nationally specific peculiarities of this development within a

totalising model of socio-political change. However, a number of studies do exist which address themselves to working-class history. The first of these was Thomas Johnston’s whiggish interpretation of the rise of labour in Scotland — A History of the Working Classes in Scotland (1923). Since then only two serious attempts have been made to offer some kind of overview of working-class history in modern

Scotland — J. D. Young’s The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class (1979) and T. C. Smout’s A Century of the Scottish People, 1 83 0—1 950 (1986). However, both studies provide only partial accounts of the historical experience of the Scottish working class and the chapters are written with little attempt to synthesise their conclusions and fit them into the wider perspectives of class history. Also their concerns and ideological positions are very different: Young presents a class in constant struggle for emancipation, while Smout, in a more subtle account, shows how the working class accommodated itself to the main institutions of power and authority in Scottish, and British, society.

Both Smout and Young show the influence of E. P. Thompson’s ‘history from below approach’; an approach which with the publica-

tion of The Making of the English Working Class (1963) signalled a move away from institutional labour history to a social history of the working class. With this shift the whole question of class and class consciousness became the focal point of labour history and was treated as problematical rather than being taken for granted. In practice, the new approach meant that labour history was less concerned with union structure and institutional political histories and more with the workplace, the family, the community and popular struggles. Thompson’s intervention made people more aware of the differences within the working class and this resonated with the growing disenchantment of those historians operating within the so-called celtic fringe of Britain with English-based history. The disillusionment of historians in Scotland coincided with a resurgence of the national question as the key item on the Scottish political agenda in the 1970s. Both the volume and quality of his— torical writing were greatly enhanced at this time as the dramatic revival of the Scottish national movement, in part, accompanied and,

in part, stimulated a greater interest in Scottish history, society and culture in its own right. Labour historians became concerned to define the distinctive national characteristics of the Scottish labour 22

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Introduction

movement, in particular, and the working class, in general. From this came a very distinctive kind of historical project which had as its

overriding concern the need to delineate and define the organisations, interests, values and politics of the skilled, male, Protestant worker.

However, in spite of its narrow focus, the gains from this approach have not been negligible. An impressive amount of published material

in recent years has illuminated the darker areas of the experience of the skilled worker within the context of the workplace and the wider society. The work of Braverman on the capitalist labour process has influenced a great deal of research on the question of deskilling in Scottish industry. Studies of shipbuilding, engineering and coalmining

have stressed the means by which skilled workers adapted to the changing imperatives of production and how this allowed them to sustain the craft culture in spite of economic decline.56 The work of R. Q. Gray on the artisan élite of mid—nineteenth—century Edinburgh

has highlighted the ways in which skill and status in the workplace resonated with wider societal values to establish a culture of respectability.57 Regrettably, Gray’s work has not been satisfactorily extended into the twentieth century, but there are a number of individual studies of aspects of class culture, for example, on temperance and religion, which are of interest in this connection.58 However, given the overconcentration on skilled workers, it would appear to anyone new to Scottish labour history that certain sections of the working class will have only to be seen to play a minor role in

shaping its historical development. These omissions have distorted the historical record. As a result of the process of exclusion, women and the whole issue of gender in the workplace and politics have been severely under-researched. Women’s issues and their position in the class structure have been traditionally marginalised in labour

historiography north of the border, although to some extent this has been addressed in the last decade or so. However, in spite of worthy attempts by historians to alter the focus of labour history, the volume of published work on working-class women is small and does little to alter the impression of historical marginality.59 Similarly, material

on white-collar workers and their experiences in the workplace, their involvement in trade unionism, and their political behaviour is virtually non-existent.60 More crucially, outside of a consideration of

the labour market, there has been a general lack of interest shown in the position of the unskilled worker. The changing nature of

unskilled work, the historical narrowing of wage differentials in industry and the relationships this created between skilled and 23

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INTRODUCTION

unskilled, as well as the rise of unskilled unions, have not as yet excited the interest of Scottish historians to any large degree. The

only full-scale published study of unskilled workers in Scotland and their unions is Angela Tuckett’s institutional history of the Scottish carters and motormen, although recent work by William Kennefick on dockers holds out the promise that this lucana will at some point in the future be addressed.“ More impressive progress has been made in the areas of ethnicity and popular struggles of the radical era. The role of the Irish Catholic

immigrants in shaping the development of the Scottish working class and the labour movement is now more widely appreciated than it was twenty years ago.62 However, the phenomenon of internal migration from the Scottish Highlands to the Lowland cities is not as yet well understood,63 although there is little doubt that the presence of two ethnic communities competing in the same labour markets exacerbated sectarian and national tensions. There is also much evidence, as

we have said, to support the idea that the existence of large migrant communities pushed the early socialist organisations in the direction of land reform.“4 Anti—landlordism linked with the idea of Home Rule for Ireland and Scotland became an essential and self-evident part of the political culture of the Scottish working class and the Labour Party north of the border in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The struggles over land reform were part of a tradition of popular revolt against authority and deprivation dating back to the late eighteenth century. During the first phase of industrialisation the struggle was mainly aimed at democratising Scottish and British politics through reforming the franchise. Although normally peaceable, at times the conflicts assumed greater intensity which pushed the participants in the direction of insurrection and violence. Rioting was a frequent response by working people to unfavourable economic conditions, but as the industrial system became more entrenched the unrest increasingly took a political form, culminating in the Radical War of 1820. Strikes and the use of insurrectionary violence to overthrow (unsuccessfully) the British state emphasised the growing class dimensions of Scottish politics. Such incidents form the backcloth to ongoing debates among Scottish historians regarding the vexed question of class and class consciousness. While few historians in Scotland would accept the completeness of class formation articulated in Thompson’s epic work, there has emerged a division among the former over the degree of class consciousness exhibited by Scottish 24

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Introduction

workers in this period.“ Although the debates are still in progress, it can be argued that they have been carried out within the parameters set by a historiography that fails to take account of the new work on

politics and language. The insights of revisionist historians such as Stedman Jones into the meanings and significance of political discourse and the language of class struggle in this period have not been incorporated in a serious way into the evaluations of class formation and political struggle. The main text on Scottish Chartism - A. Wilson, The Chartist Movement in Scotland (1970) — was written over twenty-five years ago. In spite of these conceptual failings, the more recent studies of political radicalism have the virtue that they are set within a consid— eration of Wider questions of class formation, although significantly little appreciation of the economic basis of exploitation or the labour process exists in them. Other works on popular agitation in nineteenth-century Scotland lack this conceptual dimension; in particular, studies of the political development of the women’s movement are almost bereft of any conceptual awareness.“ This is compensated to some extent by the studies of the struggles on Clydeside during the period 1915—1919. Here we witness evidence of the impact of more

recent sophisticated and nuanced approaches to social history.67 However, even among the more informed and intellectually rigorous

historians of the ‘Red Clyde’, there remains a tendency to highlight moments of heroic class struggle and disjuncture at the expense of wider, more discreet and continuous narratives of class history. The tendency to focus almost exclusively on the heroic at the expense of the mundane is understandable, but the silences of the past

have left the working class in modern Scotland unable to comprehend or make intelligible its own history. There are no overarching histories of the development of the Scottish working class or the Labour Party in Scotland which cover the period 191 8 to the present. Thus, the historical memory of popular mobilisation and struggle has, outside of ‘Red Clydeside’, been virtually erased from the conscious— ness of even the organised working class. And while other European socialist parties have continued to mobilise historic symbols of popular resistance which speak to contemporary concerns,68 currently Labour in Scotland has to operate within an iconography — the rose

— and language — nee-liberalism — borrowed from other political traditions that address themselves solely to instrumental and functional

concerns over consumption. Ambitious it might be in terms of period and scope, this study 25

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INTRODUCTION

cannot hope to fill the lacuna or make wholly intelligible the silences

of the past. There remains too much work to be done in this direction. What the book does attempt to do is to synthesise the author’s own original research with other published monographs and articles. By doing so it is hoped that a more theoretically credible and challenging

account of the development of the working class in modern Scotland can be produced. The study is split into five main time periods. The first period deals with the impact of industrialisation and technological change on the growth of working-class organisations in the workplace and in the

political realm, culminating in the rise and fall of Chartism. The second period covers the decades of the the third quarter of the nineteenth century and addressess itself to questions regarding the demise of the radical Chartist agenda and the creation of socio-political consensus in Scottish, and British, society. The third period deals with the rise of Labour to 1914 and asks whether this posed a real challenge to

the Liberal hegemony north of the border in the light of important changes in the workplace and in trade union organisation. The fourth period addresses the issues connected with the debates on ‘Red Clydeside’ and extends this into the inter-war period, examining how

mass unemployment and widespread social dislocation forced the ethos and politics of the Scottish labour movement to undergo a fundamental revision. The final period of the book analyses the impact of far-reaching economic and technological change on the occupational and social structure of Scottish society, in particular, looking at destruction of the skilled, male Protestant culture; asking why this did not lead to a fundamental re-structuring of the political landscape as happened in England in the late 19705 and 1980s. Dividing the book into these time periods is done for convenience

sake; it does not mean that the approach to working-class history taken is insensitive to the importance of the continuity of older forms of social relationships, past political practices, values and attitudes in shaping current configurations of social and political relations. Because of its pioneering nature and large chronological terrain covered, the study will no doubt appear, at times, faltering in its methodology and interpretations. However, perhaps it is more important to initiate the process of dialogue with all the dangers and pitfalls inherent in it, than to maintain a silence on these contentious

theoretical and historical issues. After all the history of the Scottish working class and its organisations is rich in content, and rewarding in study, offering those who wish to delve into it valuable comparisons

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Introduction

which are illuminating and instructive in dealing with the nature of class and class formation in Britain and elsewhere. If this book succeeds in winning the recognition of this from anglocentric historians, then perhaps it will mark the end of the peripheralisation of the experience of those workers on the celtic fringe of Britain. From this a truly comprehensive and comparative account of the historical evolution of the ‘British’, rather than the ‘English’, working class

may emerge in the future. The argument for it could not be more compelling, or the moment more appropriate, given the present

debates regarding national identity initiated by Linda Colley’s study of the formation of British nationalism in the eighteenth century.69

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PART I

Social Change and Political Radicalism, 1 8 00—1 850

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Chapter 1

INTERPRETATIONS

The Great Reform Act of 1832 marked a turning point in the political history of Scotland and Britain as a Whole. The enfranchisement of the non~landowning propertied classes climaxed decades of political agitation dating back to the 17805, and resolved the main tension between the different strata of property regarding the question of ‘no taxation without representation’. Although the main offices of the state remained in the hands of the aristocracy, the political economy of the government, particularly with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, became more attuned to furthering the interests of the industrial arm of capital. These political changes belatedly reflected the shift in wealth—holding and ownership of property in Britain which had taken place since the mid-eighteenth century and had been ushered in by the series of economic and technological changes which we, for convenience sake, call the Industrial Revolution. However, while in

Scotland the Edinburgh Whigs and their middle-class supporters congratulated themselves on their constitutional triumph, another section of society had much less reason to be enthusiastic. Working people had campaigned as ardently as the middle classes for the franchise, but had found themselves ignored in the new constitutional arrangements following 1832. This sense of alienation in the sphere of politics was intensified in England by the introduction of the oppressive New Poor Law in 1834 and in Scotland by the failure

of its Radical MPs to support reform of the Factory Acts. These political actions only served to underline the growing distance in the workplace between capital and labour. Social and political factors thus conflated after 1832 to create profound feelings of disenchantment with the new British state in working communities and from this emerged the Chartist movement in the late 18305. Although as a political movement Chartism failed in its mission to

win a share of political power for the working classes, and was a spent force by 1850, its activities have generated a great deal of 31

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

debate as to whether it constituted a movement of a single class or a ‘people’. The debate has been fuelled by the revisionist writings of Gareth Stedman Jones, who, as we have seen, argued that Chartism cannot be understood as a knee-jerk response to the social distress of industrialisation, nor can it be understood ‘in forms of consciousness

of a particular social class, since the form pre-existed any independent action by such a class’.1 This View is underscored by R. Q. Gray who urges us to take ‘seriously’ Chartism’s rhetoric of ‘the people’ and ‘not dissolve that specific identity into class or occupational bases’.2 The ideological rupture prefaced by Stedman Jones’s intervention has provided a strong and compelling alternative interpretation to older, more class-based analyses. It is surely correct to stress that Chartism was part of an ongoing political tradition of radicalism which pre-figures the creation of social class. Equally, it seems perfectly acceptable to question the wisdom of analysing Chartism using Marx’s concept of class consciousness, or to see it as a defining moment in the history of socialism. However, to suggest, as he does, that the movement can be abstracted from the material conditions in which it took root appears less than helpful.3 This type of idealistic, non-referential analysis of Chartism can only be sustained by assum— ing that the language of Chartism was in itself uncontradictory and that it was capable of coalescing disparate groups of the politically powerless within a commonly understood political vocabulary. While to an extent Chartism achieved this latter goal, its success in mobilising ‘the people’ was only ever realised because its language of political reform was appropriated and ‘deconstructed’ by each of the social constituencies which made it up in ways which addressed their own particular sets of aspirations and grievances. The social experiences of industrialisation, particularly privation, squalor and unemployment, helped mobilise the powerless in a popular revolt against state power; a revolt which gained increased momentum during downturns in the trade cycle. The language of political reform made sense to many in this context because it appeared to offer relief

from harsh social policies and economic hardship. The link with the social was also confirmed by the fact that political reform was never seen by the Chartist constituency as an end in itself; indeed, it was an

integral part of a wider programme of social reform which included a more generous poor law, a progressive system of taxation, and so on. Linguistic explanations of the development of political radicalism have, therefore, a useful, but limited, role in explaining Chartism’s rise and fall, or its relationship to the development of working-class 32

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Interpretations consciousness. Part of the problem is that Stedman Jones and other historians influenced by post-modernist trends have relied on an ideal type of Chartism with little regard paid to the regional differences which were apparent in its leadership, organisation, rhetoric and value system. Without wishing to pre-empt the foregoing analysis, Scotland had a higher proportion of Chartist Churches than anywhere else in Britain, and temperance also played an important part in shaping the values of Chartists north of the border. It is little wonder that political speeches by Chartist leaders were heavily weighted with religious symbolism and that their choirs sang with gusto verses three to eight of the ninety-fourth Psalm.4 Moreover, given the strength of anti-landlord feeling in Scotland, attacks on hereditary privilege resonated more powerfully with the consciousness of Scottish workers, many of whom were rural migrants, than in other parts of Britain. Diversity on this scale has to be understood by a referential

analysis which links material conditions to the development of political consciousness. Therefore, to understand fully Chartism’s origins, appeal and ultimate demise in the case of Scotland, we must: firstly, delineate the shifting character of the country’s social and economic bases, with particular reference to the occupational structure,

emigration and the growth of urban settlements; secondly, show how technology altered the nature and distribution of skills and how this affected the development of workplace and community solidarities; and, finally, examine whether the Chartist experience altered the political consciousness of the working classes in Scotland in the long term.

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Chapter 2

THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES O F INDUSTRIAL AND URBAN GROWTH, 1800—1850

Under the impact of the new economic history industrialisation has now come to be viewed as an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process.5 A regional perspective, however, offers the possibility of a different interpretation of the British economy’s development.6 Because of the pivotal role played by the cotton industry north of the border in the process of industrialisation, compared to England, Scotland’s economy developed in a series of dynamic stages. From an economy based primarily, but not exclusively, on agriculture in the eighteenth century, Scotland developed in a short space of time an overwhelming reliance on textiles, particularly cotton, before under— going a transformation after 1840 to heavy industry. Although older forms of production co-existed with more modern ones, and Scotland in 1830 could still be described by one historian as a ‘rural country’,7 it was nevertheless true that by 1840 it had become ‘irreversibly a different kind of society’.8 Even landed society had experienced massive changes in its social structure with the peasantry, or sub-tenancy, of Lowland Scotland being swept away between 1780 and 1820.9 In the period 1780—1840 it was textiles, with its novel methods of organising work, its rapidly changing technologies and its dynamic growth, which was the engine of economic growth. By 1826 nine out of ten manufacturing workers in Scotland were in textiles, with a ratio of six workers in cotton to three in linen, to one in wool.10 Indeed, everywhere textiles was the dominant manufacturing employer, even in the less industrially developed east of Scotland. By 1843 a quarter of the population of Aberdeen, and a third of that of Edinburgh, were employed in textiles. However, in Glasgow the figure was nearly 37 per cent in 1 841, while in smaller towns such as Paisley the numbers

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Social Consequences of Industrial and Urban Growth

were even larger.11 The spinning factories tended to be large b y contemporary standards with more than 150 workers being the norm b y

1840, although in Glasgow the figure was higher at 244.12 The large outlays of capital involved in constructing and equipping a factory meant that the structure of ownership favoured partnerships over

family or sole control. This closed off avenues of mobility for artisans and small farmers as the industry became dominated by capitalists. With large numbers of workers and capitalist ownership and control, textiles, and in particular cotton spinning, gave birth to the modern industrial proletariat in Scotland. And as the 18403 wore on that

trend intensified with the mean workforce in textiles put at 662 per firm in 1851; a figure much higher than that in England.13 However, although dynamic, the growth of textiles was uneven, with the weaving sector lagging behind spinning. In Paisley and the surrounding area there was only one power-loom factory in 1837,

while in Lancashire the weaving process had been almost completely mechanised by this date.14 The domestic system of production continued to dominate weaving in Scotland with handloom weavers being numbered in tens of thousands: Glasgow alone was estimated to employ 20 000 in 1831, while for the country as a Whole the figure

was around 84500 in 1840.15 With average weekly wages for handloom weavers as low as 65 6d a week in 1831, the abundance of cheap labour retarded the drive towards mechanisation.“ In spite of the fact that in the east of Scotland all the carpet weaving in Dunfermline was factory-based, and over 1000 of Aberdeen’s weavers were

employed in factories, as well as a quarter of Arbroath’s and five-sixths of Montrose’s weaving population, ‘factory weavers represented only a small minority of the workforce even in the east of Scotland and the typical webster of the area, even as late as 1840, was still the domestic outworker’.17 However, in the Border towns woollen weavers, although the handloom still predominated, were being increasingly grouped in loom-shops ‘in the interests of managerial efficiency’.18 Employers persisted with labour intensive methods of production as it avoided them having to shoulder the burden of high overhead costs during economic downturns. The weavers were dis-

missed or simply denied webs; stocks of cloth built up in good times saw the employers through the bad.

The limited manufacturing base combined with the uneven development in the cotton industry had a retarding effect on the wider economy. Transportation was slow to develop with the only railway of note in Scotland in 1832 being the Garnkirk/Glasgow line of

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

eight-and-a-quarter miles. It was not until 1842 that Edinburgh was

linked by rail to Glasgow, and it took until 1848 for a rail link to be established between the capital city and England. The low level of demand in the economy for capital goods necessarily slowed the progress of the coal and iron industries. Although output increased thirteen-fold in the period 1700—1830, it was still far short of Lanca-

shire, Wales and the South—West of England.19 Coalmining until after 1832 was basically an industry which supplied local markets. Low levels of demand allowed miners to follow a dual occupation in some parts of the west of Scotland. Until 1840 many colliers were ‘tenants or owners of small holdings’; as, indeed, were linen weavers

— it was not until 1820 that weaving became a full—time occupation in the east of Scotland and, even as late as 1838, over a quarter absented themselves during the summer harvest.” Shipbuilding was

a small affair on Clydeside based mainly on wood and sail; indeed, in 1831 Aberdeen with a workforce of 681 men was arguably the most important centre of this activity in Scotland.21 To underline

the limited development of Scotland’s industrial base at this time agriculture and domestic service were still the largest employers of labour in 1851.22 However, in spite of the importance of older forms of employment, the decade after 1830 witnessed a massive leap forward in terms of the modernisation of Scotland’s economic base. Following the introduction of Neilson’s hot blast furnace in 1828, which dramatically

lowered the cost of pig-iron production north of the border, Scotland’s share of British output grew from 5 to 25 per cent, or from C37 500 tons in 1830 to 700 000 in 1849.23 The railway building mania of the 18403 had much to with the mushroom growth of the Scottish iron industry, and it in turn had multiplier effects on other parts of the economy. Coal production soared from 3m tons in 1830 to

around 7.4m in 1851, with 76 per cent of this produced in the west of Scotland.24 Steamship building also benefited from the surge in

cheap iron production, and by 1850 the Clyde was responsible for 66 per cent of the tonnage of iron vessels in Britain.” These develop— ments, according to Chris Whatley, meant that in a very short space of time Scotland had become ‘more industrialised than the rest of Britain’, although even north of the border industrial employment was more concentrated in Strathclyde, Central, Fife and Tayside than elsewhere in the country.26 The growth of textiles and ancillary trades, such as chemicals, and, later, heavy industry drew in thousands of migrants to the cities and 36

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Social Consequences of Industrial and Urban Growth

the growing industrial towns of the west of Scotland. Scotland which had been tenth in the world’s urban league in 1700 was fourth b y 1800, and second only to England and Wales by 1851.27 Under the weight of mass migration places such as Glasgow mushroomed with the population growing from 77 000 in 1801 to 275 000 forty years later. Small industrial towns also grew spectacularly in this period with Paisley’s population more than doubling in twenty years. By 1841 70 per cent of the population of the west of Scotland was living in urban settlements.28 Migration played a major role in the growth of urban settlements

with 53 per cent of the inhabitants of the ten largest Scottish towns in 1851 being born elsewhere.29 Hugh Miller, stonemason, recalled in his autobiography that in Edinburgh in the mid-18205 ‘less than one—fourth’ of the mechanics he made an acquaintance with were ‘natives of the place’. The rest had migrated to the capital from ‘country districts and small towns’.30 As early as 1801, 29 per cent of the population of Greenock was from the Scottish Highlands, and b y 1851, 54 000 Highlanders had settled in the west of Scotland.31

Indeed, Highlanders tended on the whole to migrate to the western Lowlands, with 60 per cent of them living there in 1851.32 On top of this came Irish immigration. Although constant since the late eighteenth century, emigration from Ireland tended to be temporary.

In spite of this 4.8 per cent, or 126 321, of Scotland’s population was Irish-born; however, in the west of Scotland the figure was much higher. Forty-four thousand, or 16 per cent, of Glasgow’s population in 1841 was Irish-born, but if we include those of Irish extraction the figure might be put at double this.33 Although most were Catholics, there was a sizeable Irish Protestant community in Glasgow b y this time. James Cleland, the early statistician of Glasgow, estimated that of a total Irish population of 35 534, 8569, or just under a quarter, were Protestant in 1831.34 What turned this steady stream of immigrants into a flood was, of course, the Irish famine of the mid—18408.

By 1848 an average of 1000 Irish migrants were arriving every week in Glasgow, and as a result of this explosive diaspora Scotland’s Irishborn population increased by 90 per cent in the decade 1841—51.35 Compared to only 2.9 per cent for England and Wales, the Irish-born portion of the population of Scotland had reached 7.2 per cent at its peak.36 The growth of mining, handloom weaving and transport was an

attraction to the Irish, and by the late 18305 over 30 per cent of handloom weavers were Irish-born.37 Although most of them were of 37

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SOCIAL C H A N G E AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

Catholic origin, there is evidence that the Protestant Irish had estab—

lished themselves in the spinning and weaving factories of the Calton—Mile End area of Glasgow and in Blantyre in Lanarkshire.38 As an employer agriculture was also important to the Irish. A total of 16.5 per cent of the population of rural Wigtownshire in 1841 was Irish-born, and there was a sizeable Irish community established in Dumfrieshire by this date.39 Thus, settling in an area was related to the occupational structure. Aberdeen had only 1.8 per cent of its

population Irish—born in 1851, whereas its near neighbour, Dundee, with its vibrant textile industry, had over 20 per cent.40 Nearly half the female textile workers in Greenock in 1851 were Irish-born; and half the coal and ironstone miners of Coatbridge were of the same origin. Indeed, by mid-century over a third of the population of Coatbridge was Irish-born.41 Although most Irish workers were employed in unskilled, low paid occupations, there is evidence to suggest that some were able to penetrate into skilled occupations. A study of the marriage register in St Patrick’s RC Church, Anderston, Glasgow, shows that of 146 Catholic males engaged in metals, machines and

shipbuilding, excluding labourers, 28.1 per cent were low paid hammermen and 10.4 per cent were riveters; however, 16 per cent of the total described themselves as boilermakers and 9.7 per cent were moulders.”'2 This does not alter the fact that the majority of Catholic Irish workers were in unskilled jobs, but it would appear at this stage that religious persuasion was not the barrier to a trade that it became later in the century. However, the scramble for jobs and living space created tensions both within and Without the Irish community. By 1835 there were twelve Orange Lodges in Glasgow and in the following year they provided the platform for the launch of the ‘Tory and Presbyterian’ Glasgow Operative Conservative Society (1836-42).43

Priests and ministers reported on the open friction and social distance between the two communities in places such as Glasgow, Greenock, Paisley and Kilmarnock.44 The overcrowding and squalor which resulted from the mass

influx of migrants turned cities like Glasgow into the nearest suburbs to hell. The chief constable of Glasgow, Captain Miller, remarked at a meeting of the British Association in 1840 that in ‘the very centre of the city there is an accumulated mass of squalid wretchedness which is probably unequalled in any town of the British dominions’.45 The death rate in urban areas increased dramatically as disease took its toll on the squalid and impoverished town dwellers. Glasgow’s mortality rate was the highest in the country, peaking at 39.9 per 38

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Social Consequences of Industrial and Urban Growth 1000 between 1845 and 1849.46 Even Edinburgh with its small manufacturing and service-based economy saw its death rate increase from 25 per 1000 in 1810—19 to 29 per 1000 in the decade 1831—39. Fever mortality levels were higher in the capital than in the worst English town.47 Much of the poverty arose from the presence of a large reserve army of labour which led to work being scarce or irregular. However,

wages for most workers, even skilled, were lower in Scotland than south of the border; a result of the numbers crowding into trades rather than deskilling. Building workers earned somewhere between 15 and 25 per cent less than their equivalents in England.48 Ian Levitt and Christopher Smout, in their study of poor law returns in 1843,

confirm that, in spite of regional and occupational variations, Scotland was a low wage economy. The average weekly wage for Scottish stonemasons in 1843 was 15 .635, with colliers receiving 15.513 and millwrights 14.0s respectively. Moreover, earnings were also subject to fluctuation as in the economic depression of 1848 colliers’ wages fell to a nadir of 108 per week, and even in better times a shilling deduction was made for tools, lights and powder which brought their wages down; while woollen weavers in the southern counties of Scotland saw their wages fall from 15—185 per week in the early 18305 to only 105 4d in 1849.49 Those male workers in the lowest categories of employment were estimated to earn an average of 5.798 a week, or around a third of the skilled wage. Thus, although it was claimed at the time that ‘decent work people . . . [in Glasgow] have generally a tolerably furnished house . . . a carpet, a mahogany chest of drawers . . . good blankets and bedding’,50 a survey of average real wages in nineteen occupational groups showed that during the first phase of industrialisation many Glasgow workers in employment experienced a decline or stagnation in their standard of living, with the unskilled being worse off in 1830 than they had been in 1790.51 Even skilled workers experienced a fall in their real wages of over 30 per cent between 1815 and 1840.52

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Chapter 3

‘ROUGH AND RESPECTABLE’: THE CULTURE O F THE SCOTTISH WORKING CLASSES, 1800—1850

The inequalities in the distribution of rewards inevitably impacted themselves on the lifestyles and culture of Scottish workers, but tra— ditional notions of status were also important in this respect. Weavers, in spite of declining wages, saw themselves as superior to spinners, and even as late as the 18905 in Bridgeton in Glasgow there was ‘little social intercourse between the two’.53 However, as James Myles, author of several studies of working-class life in Dundee, observed, there were also gradations of status among domestic and factory weavers, with the former being: Mostly Scotchmen advanced in years, who work in their own homes, and who have a fair share of intelligence and education, and . . . maintain a more decent exterior than the latter class. Their wages are not higher than the factory weavers; yet as their families are mainly up, their burdens are not so oppressive. The majority of factory weavers are Irishmen and young Scotchmen, sons of poor house weavers.54 The social distance between handloom weavers and spinners and factory weavers was a legacy of the golden age of handloom weaving and the ethnic divisions within the industry. The Irish, lacking the skills to do complicated or fancy weaving, tended to crowd into the spinning sector or factory weaving, as occurred in Paisley and Dundee, and divisions based on skill were overlain by cultural and religious divides.“ The high wages earned by weavers in the early 18008 also allowed them a more than tolerable degree of comfort. It was said that the best paid weavers ‘had libraries equal to those of 40

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Culture of the Scottish Working Classes ministers or professional men’.56 Indeed, according to James Orr, himself a weaver, handloom weavers: to a great extent built their own houses, partly by their own savings and partly on borrowed money; they were careful to

educate their children and they never contracted a bad marriage until they had saved up the means of beginning to keep house.57 Although poverty and the influx of illiterate Irish peasants drove down the educational standards among the children of handloom weavers, in the east of Scotland weavers retained their book clubs and attended lectures.58 In contrast, the spinners with their Irish connections were invariably presented in contemporary literature as ‘uneducated, violent and drunken’. James Myles summed up Presbyterian Scotland’s View of the Irish when he wrote that: It is deeply to be lamented that the vast hordes who have migrated to the Scouringburn [Dundee] are composed of the most debased and ignorant of their countrymen. Their vile slang and immoral habits have seriously injured the general character of the poor population of Dundee, and I believe throughout Scotland. The low Irish are not a very improvable race. They cling to their rags, their faith and their filth with all the besottedness

of perfect ignorance and stupidity. The customs now prevalent amongst the poorer classes on Sundays of standing in their every-day clothes in groups in the street — sitting outside stairs, and smoking . . . tippling of counters, and swearing . . . are all derived from the examples of the vulgar Irish, who Within the last fifty years have . . . deluged all the manufacturing towns of modern civilization.” But ethnic stereotyping of the Irish by the Scots was duplicated in English attitudes to Scottish workers in the coal and iron industries. Rob Duncan’s study of the iron and coal industries of Monklands shows that workers from South Wales and Staffordshire saw themselves as superior to the Scots in these industries, and because of this ‘generally distanced themselves’ from the indigenous population.60 Differences were also observed in other trades. Hugh Miller regarded tailors in Edinburgh with their fashionable clothes and ‘grotesque’ manners as the most ridiculous and affected of mechanics; whereas in the complementary trade of shoemaking, the artisans 41

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SOCIAL C H A N G E AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

were said to be ‘intelligent’ and ‘manly’, although over-fond of St Monday.61 In Glasgow, letterpress printers were reckoned to be ‘the most intelligent’ of the artisanate ‘and . . . very well behaved’, while

outworkers such as tailors and shoemakers were considered ‘very irregular in attending to their work and in their habits of living’.62 Independence was a feature of the character of smiths and stonemasons; the latter were said by Miller to ‘rarely touch [their] hat[s] to a

gentleman’.63 Colliers too had an inherent sense of independence, ‘which the cringing slaves in other trades envied but could not match’.64 In 1842 a Lothian coalowner stated before the Children’s Employment Commission that: ‘I have no control whatever over the colliers in my employment . . . [they] go to their work at whatever hour of the night or day they think proper and work just as long as they choose’.“ The occupational culture of the skilled trades was a hierarchical one that was mirrored in their treatment of those below them. The unskilled and female workers were viewed as socially inferior by artisans and a kind of workplace and social system of apartheid kept these groups apart. Alexander Somerville, general labourer, remarked,

in his autobiography, that ‘masons were intolerable tyrants to their labourers’ and were allowed to beat and intimidate them, and when

he complained about this he was informed that ‘it was against the laws of their body to hear their privileges discussed by a labourer’. A labourer in a coppersmith’s shop in Glasgow underscored Somerville’s claim, remarking that ‘in all large shops . . . the labourer is the servant of every journeyman in the place . . . [and] to lord it over the labourers is the rule’.66 Things were no better for women. As the eighteenth century wore on they found themselves increasingly reduced to the role of performing ancillary or support work to that of men and that reflected in their declining social status and wages.67 One of the foundation stones of the exclusiveness of artisanal culture vis-c‘z-vis other groups was literacy. Although Scotland had a superior level of literacy to that of England, it was clear that many workers were excluded from the ranks of the skilled trades on the grounds of illiteracy. According to the 1834 Factory Act, 96 per cent of male mill workers could read, but only 58 per cent could write, compared to 86 and 43 per cent respectively in England. A more detailed study of the Grandholm Linen Works, Aberdeen, showed

that of 1119 workers employed at the mill, 28 per cent could both read and write, 45 per cent could only read and 27 per cent were illiterate. The Children’s Employment Commission of 1842—43 reported that

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Culture of the Scottish Working Classes

the children of miners left school at the age of nine years, if they went at all. A wider study of 3836 children and young persons found that ‘not a couple of dozen could be found to write a dozen consecutive lines on any given subject capable of being read and understood’.68

In contrast, the necessity to read plans and execute written orders called on a high order of literacy skills, all of which underscored the self-improving aspirations of the artisanal élite. Mechanics Institutes, debating clubs, literary and scientific societies, and other self-help institutions had a substantial artisanal membership. Total Abstinence Societies (TAS) flourished in lowland Scotland in the 18305 and 18403 and most Chartists were members of temperance organisations; indeed, Aberdeen TAS had 3000 members, which was made up ‘almost entirely’ of Chartists and other radicals, and a favourite song at Chartist gatherings was Neil Gow’s ‘Farewell to \Whisky’.69 However, parallelling this world of self-improvement was a rougher culture based on drink and linked to other forms of amusement, which in the pre-industrial period focused on blood sports, such as cock fighting which drew large audiences, as did bare-fisted fighting. Traditional football games tended towards violence and riot as sides were seemingly unlimited in terms of the number of players involved and were not subject to time limits, going on until the players were exhausted or bored. But as industrial change brought the need for a more disciplined labour force in the workshops and factories, and the movement of people away from rural areas to the towns and cities deprived them of space, popular community games of the pre-industrial order were increasingly outlawed or subject to greater regulation. As early as 1814, a ranger was appointed in Glasgow to keep ball games off Glasgow Green and to disperse crowds of noisy young people.70 Public order concerns and restricted space drove the unrespectable indoors. Penny theatres became highly popular with the working classes, in spite of the opprobrium showered on them by the respectable middle classes. In Glasgow, the Saltmarket/Jail Square

area abounded with these establishments offering cheap entertainment and alcohol. According to one minister, penny theatres were by-words for drunkenness, prostitution and every other vice imaginable. They were also very unsafe and the last major one — Anderson’s City Theatre — burned down in 1848. Supplementing the penny theatres was the annual fair, another event subjected to religious condemnation. The Glasgow, or St Mungo’s, Fair had been established in the fifteenth century as a religious celebration; however, during the first 43

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SOCIAL C H A N G E AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

half of the nineteenth century it was ‘reduced to a day or two celebrated in blind drunkenness’, attracting showmen, circuses, and freak shows from all over Britain.71

Thus, the disorder and violence of the ‘rough culture’ continued to persist into the 18308 and 1840s. Part of the problem was the easy access to drink. The replacement of porter and stout by whisky provided a cheap route to oblivion and Scots applied themselves with dedication. Most of the drinking was done in licensed premises and they proliferated with remarkable speed throughout Scotland. Edinburgh in the 18403, according to Hamish Fraser, had one pub per 30 families; Dundee had one for every 24 families; and Glasgow one for every 150 inhabitants.72 Therefore, the idea of a pub on every street corner was more than just an alcoholic’s fantasy. Young and old, men and women, all enjoyed a tipple, sometimes with devastating effects. A journeyman baker, who worked in an alehouse for a short period, spoke of the ‘fearful . . . scenes [he] witnessed’, saying: Many weeping mothers . . . came to the house pleading with their darling sons to come home; wives pleading with their husbands not to destroy their whole families by spending their earnings on drink. . . . I have seen children leading home their drunken

mothers and I have also seen companies of children come to the house and call for drink themselves.73 Age was no barrier to drink and with drunkeness came wife-beating. Anna Clark’s work on domestic Violence in Glasgow in the first half of the nineteenth century shows that it was directly linked to alcohol consumption and that it cut across all strata of the working class. Of

men convicted of wife-beating in the period 1813—24 over one-third were skilled workers, and that figure was maintained into the 1830s.74 However, in spite of repeated condemnation by the middle classes, little could be done to remedy the situation. Alcohol was woven into the social fabric of the workplace and the wider society. It was crucially important at life cycle events such as births and deaths, but it was used also during a boy’s apprenticeship to mark the various stages in his progression to skilled man. John Dunlop, temperance reformer, chronicled the drinking customs and habits among the Scottish workers at this time. Among plumbers, when the apprentice cast his first sheet of lead, he was expected to ‘treat’ his workmates to a drink; when a block—cutter cut his first printing block he was bound to pay 205 for the purpose of treating his fellow workers with

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Culture of the Scottish Working Classes drink.“ In the shipbuilding yards apprentices had to pay £2 entry money which was stored up until enough was accumulated to pay for a night out.76 Hugh Miller said of the masons of the Cromarty Firth area that they were treated to a drink when an apprentice joined the squad; treated to a drink when his ‘apron was washed’; and treated to a drink when his ‘time was out’.77 Even in occupations not normally afforded the accolade of being skilled similar practices

could be found. In cotton spinning, new hands coming in, or a spinner getting his wheels, all involved a celebratory drink.78 The moralising of Dunlop and Miller concerning drink in the workplace blinded them to the role it played in structuring social relationships. Firstly, few workers could avoid an association with a public house since, as Dunlop himself recognised, ‘most work-people are either paid in public houses, or receive pound notes and [are forced] . . . to go to the public house for change and division of the money’.79 Secondly, the charging of entry fees to apprentices was not simply a means of financing debauchery, but also of regulating the supply of labour. The print workers of Scotland charged an entry fee

of £7 which even Dunlop in his more lucid moments could see acted as a ‘check on the reception of apprentices, and kept up a monopoly of hands’.80 Alexander Somerville found that sawyers in Edinburgh would not work with him until ‘a certain quantity of whisky’ was supplied. Only after that was he ‘initiate[d] into the mysteries of brotherhood’ and was able ‘to secure the good will of the whole body’.“ The rituals associated with the drinking customs thus emphasised the closed nature of the group. Finally, employers plied their workers with drink at strategic times of the year or at the completion of a certain workload. Drinking in this context had the effect of symbolising the hierarchical relations of production, and in a period of political upheaval it could also be used to build understandings between management and workers. During the ‘Radical Rising’ of 1820, the employees in the Glasgow printfields were thanked by the manager for their lack of involvement who ‘afterwards entertained them with a case of Highland whisky’.82 But the

impact was ambiguous as alcohol could at the same time symbolise the independence of labour from capital. Thomas Stewart, the Larkhall collier poet of the 18405, recalled how, on the slightest pretext, the colliers would decide to retire to the pithead for a ‘social glass’; and the practice of St Monday was common among workers in Scotland. James Myles bemoaned the habit of power loom weavers in Dundee spending ‘Saturday, Sunday and Monday. . . indulging their passion for whisky’.83

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SOCIAL CHANGE A N D POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

Another elemental part of the skilled worker’s ethos was independence, which, in part derived from the relative autonomy they enjoyed in the workplace, but also found part of its origin in Scottish Presbyterianism. The Protestant notion of everyman his own priest, and the stress placed on literacy by the Church as the means of reaching God, inculcated a sense of self-esteem in Scottish workers

captured in Robert Burn’s line ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’. Although it was estimated that two-thirds of the slum-dwelling unskilled workers of Glasgow and one-third of the population of Edinburgh rarely attended a recognised place of worship,84 and contemporaries despaired that ‘upwards of a HUNDRED THOUSAND HUMAN BEINGS are to be found in Lanarkshire . . . unprovided with any accommodation in any place of worship’,“ the work of Callum Brown and Peter Hillis on church attendance and membership shows

that skilled workers predominated in the congregations of many Presbyterian churches.86 Proof of how important religion was to skilled workers can be seen in the way the whole debate over the future of the Church of Scotland in the early 18405 distracted a great

many artisans from radical politics. Even among those who were outside the reach of the Church, religion was used as a form of measuring status and policing the boundaries of the labour market. Indigenous Protestant hatred of Catholicism ensured a large measure of hostility to Irish immigrants throughout Scotland, and confined

Catholics for generations to come to unskilled, low paid work. Plebeian culture in the first half of the nineteenth century already prefigured the division of the working class into the respectable and unrespectable. However, acquiring the status of respectability was derived not simply from lifestyle, but also from occupation and the degree to which one exercised control over the terms and conditions of one’s employment. The long hours, low wages and recurring unemployment precluded the poor from respectable working—class

pursuits and pushed them in the direction of the shebeens, brothels and penny theatres. Textile workers in Lanarkshire were condemned

by Sheriff Archibald Alison for their immorality as ‘cohabitation, private marriages and bigamy were extremely common’.87 Thus, the workplace is central to understanding working-class culture in this

period in as much as it conditioned the form and determined the access.

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Chapter 4

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND WORKPLACE STRUGGLES, 1800—1850

The lower wages earned by Scottish employees were not compensated by a less authoritarian and harsh working regime. However, the sternness of the regime was tempered by the degree of skill involved in the occupation. Not all trades were to undergo profound trans— formation in this period, but all were drawn into regional and international markets, and because of this were open to the influences of the trade cycle. Although one might expect that the most far—reaching changes in technology and work organisation were to be found in

the those occupations associated with industrialisation, this was not necessarily the case as an examination of certain industrial occupations will show. The major change taking place in the cotton industry in Scotland at this time was the mechanisation of spinning and the growth of factory production. However, the development of the steam-powered mule did not result in the diminution of skill and neither did it increase the employers’ control of the labour process, although it did much to marginalise the role of female spinners and downgrade most of them to ancillary or supplementary work, such as piecing. Cotton spinners in Glasgow were able to establish an informal system of apprenticeship by which young boys entering the mill at the age of nine were trained gradually until the age of seventeen when they qualified as spinners. As most of them were the sons or relatives of existing spinners, the adult male workers were able to control and regulate the supply of labour. The physical demands of mule spinning

put the occupation beyond female labour. Women, on the whole, were confined to the lighter task of throstle spinning or ancillary tasks in the mill mainly in water-powered mills in the country.88 47

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

Attempts to alter the balance of power in the factory by the invention of a machine ‘which would dispense with the labour of the spinner’ by rendering the mule ‘self—acting’ did not get very far.89 Although it offered the possibility of automating many of the spinner’s tasks,

self-acting machines were never adopted on a large scale until the 18505. Wage cutting by employers retarded ‘the introduction of the

self-acting mules for some time’,90 as they began coupling existing mules together and, in the process, doubling the productivity of the spinner.91 In spite of the fact that the spinners were defeated in the 1837 strike over this issue, their defeat did not encourage employers to employ more female labour on spinning machines as long as the mule was favoured over the self—actor. There were only 70 female mulespinners in Glasgow out of a total of 1000 in that year.92 Advances in technology, therefore, increased the power of the male cotton spinner, and employers retaliated by tightening up industrial discipline. The motivation for factory production over the domestic system had, as Landes points out, been to increase the control of the employer over the workforce: ‘Factory equalled discipline cum supervision’.93 During the 18205 there were numerous strikes in the cotton industry over the question of discipline. A strike at the Broadford Mill in Aberdeen saw David Thompson of the Weavers’ Union accuse the managers of becoming ‘aristocratical and grasping’, of exercising

‘their generosity only when they have satisfied their own rapacity’. The West of Scotland Female Power Loom Weavers’ Association was set up partly to combat the ‘tyranny of the overseers’ in the Glasgow cotton industry.94 Generally, the target of the workers’ action was ‘too zealous managers’ and the protests were aimed at the excessive use of fining workers for breaches of managerial designed codes of working.” In Glasgow, the employers formed an association in 1823

to combat striking spinners challenging managerial control of the labour process.96 Weavers too were subjected to tighter discipline. The issue of embezzlement of webs had demented employers from

the late eighteenth century and in the 18203 it was still going on with 52 Glasgow companies and individuals reporting ‘very serious losses’. The employers set up a ‘Detecting Society’, the managers of which ‘scoured Glasgow in a search for weavers who took webs but did not work them’.97 If the tensions in the spinning mills and the weaving sector emerged

over the questions of control and discipline, in the skilled trades the issues tended to be connected with specialisation. Shoe-making underwent a complete reorganisation of the division of labour. James 48

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Technological Change and Workplace Struggles Myles, in his fictional autobiography, stated that he obtained employment in Dundee in 1835 as a ‘woman’s man’, that is, ‘an operative

who confines himself to the making of women’s shoes’.98 Further sub-division of tasks by 1850 led to the cutting out of leather and sewing together the uppers (‘closing’) as separate operations.” In the engineering trade a similar and more extensive process occurred. The

millwright’s craft was broken up into a series of sub-divided tasks each requiring a separate worker to perform them. Planers, fitters, turners, borers, and so on, were employed to carry out a portion of the millwright’s craft.100 In the building industry there was also a drive

towards specialisation of labour. The trade of carpenter and joiner, and that of plumber/ glazier/ painter, was broken down into its constituent parts.101 Finally, in the coal industry massive expansion took place in the 18305 and 18408 following the boom in iron production. Large integrated coal and iron consortiums such as Bairds in Lanarkshire developed as a result. Many former independent coal workers and newly arrived immigrants from Ireland were forced into waged labour for these giant firms. The independence of the Scots’ colliers

clashed with the more supine attitude of the Irish and the trade became divided between ‘honourable men’ and ‘degraded slaves’.102 Although there was little the majority of employers could do to control the labour process underground, the larger coal and iron combines in Lanarkshire were able to introduce an early version of the longwall method of coal-getting which reduced their dependency

on skilled colliers, as well as intensifying industrial discipline through a mixture of mechanisms, including fines for absenteeism and closer supervision.103

Another means of ensuring application from the miners open to the coalowners was altering the sexual division of labour. According to the report of the 1842 Commissioners on the mining industry in the east of Scotland there were 338 women for every 1000 men. These women were mainly employed to transport coal from the pit face to the bottom of the shaft, although some of them worked above ground. Most of the women were directly related to the colliers either as wives or daughters and were employed directly by them. The question of inducing greater responsibility among miners towards their work regime forced employers to the conclusion that by making them responsible for family maintenance, by prohibiting the labour of women and children underground, they could bring about a change in attitude. After prohibition was legalised in 1842, evidence, according to Jane Humphries, from pits where women had been excluded 49

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

suggests that the policy had a ‘steadying impact on male labour’.104 According to the Commissioners, ‘in the Duke of Buccleugh’s mines [the exclusion of women and children meant that] the colliers are

much more regular in the their labour than heretofore’.1°5 However, the intensification of the division of labour, or altering its sexual composition as in the case of the coal industry, did not

necessarily end on-the-job control and because of this a certain autonomy continued to be enjoyed by many skilled workers. Edinburgh stonemasons, for example, let their hammers fall without striking if time was called as an assertion of their right to control their own pace of work.106 This applied also in coalmining, in spite of the

stricter imposition of industrial discipline noted above. The ‘pillar and stoop’ method of coal-getting used in most pits made underground supervision almost impossible as colliers were spread out over a large area. This left them with a degree of responsible autonomy unknown to most industrial workers, at least in the smaller pits.107 However, the changes which had taken place in Scottish industry generally ensured that no one trade was capable of controlling the labour process in the way that, say, the millwright had been able to do in engineering and the shipwright in shipbuilding. Thus employers to a certain extent were able to break down craft privileges which allowed them greater freedom to adjust wages to prevailing market conditions. This placed the skilled workers in a more insecure position than previously and also put them at the mercy of the trade cycle. These uncertainties also struck at artisanal notions of the historic interests of the working community of brothers at the trade. The long period of training of between five to seven years and work experience required in most trades meant that, according to artisanal logic, a form of property had been acquired embedded in their skill, one of whose characteristics was that it was inheritable. As one foreman carpenter put it when asked by a Commons’ committee

whether limiting apprentices was ‘beneficial to the trade’: I think it rather beneficial, as the trade is at present quite overstocked and in order to give my brother carpenters an opportu-

nity of rearing up our children, our brothers, or nephews in this trade if we please. We consider that an employer, not a carpenter, has no right to take seven or eight apprentices to learn the trade . . . to the exclusion of our children or our brothers.108 Thus, the practice of sons following fathers into a trade as their

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Technological Change and Workplace Struggles ‘birthright’ had a functional dimension to it as well as an ideological one. Patrirnony ensured the transmission of certain customary practices concerning such important issues as workloads and wage differentials. But as trades expanded in the course of the first half of the nineteenth century this personal form of socialisation could not be guaranteed, and neither could a trade be restricted exclusively to sons and rela-

tives. As regulation broke down, it was increasingly the ownership of tools which symbolised the collective or social ownership of skill. As Eric Hobsbawm points out this not only advertised the ‘relative independence of the artisan from management, but, even more clearly,

his monopoly of skilled work’.109 In the building trade, for example, bricklayers’ labourers were not allowed to use the trowel.110 Changes in the workplace, therefore, had a contradictory effect on skill; however, all craftsmen were subject to greater competition from ‘half bred men’ and suffered from the vicissitudes of the economic cycle. During the eighteenth century the journeymen could expect some form of relief from the courts in regard to wages and working conditions. However, as Hamish Fraser points out, from certainly 1813 onwards this was no longer assured. Judicial interference in the market for labour was increasingly viewed b y a manufacturing class, raised on the laissez-faire doctrines of Adam Smith, and b y their sympathisers on the bench as ‘impracticable’.111 Without the protection of the JPs workers had little choice but to come together and unite to form associations for the redress of grievances.

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Chapter 5

CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE GROWTH O F TRADE UNIONS I N SCOTLAND, 1800—1850

As we have seen, the pressures emanating from the first phase of

industrialisation increasingly meant that the agent of socialisation and defence of trade practices lay with the trade unions or unofficial workshop committees. Although associations of workers existed in pre-industrial times and engaged in industrial struggle, they were mainly benefit societies, or ‘coffin clubs’, rather than trade unions in the modern sense of the word. The early unions, however, were small, local, based mainly on skilled workers, and concerned with limiting the supply of labour and controlling the labour process. They operated around the notion of the trade as a community of interests and defended these interests against strangers, females and ‘dishonourable’ employers. The rules of the Edinburgh Society of Bookbinders were typical in as much as they allowed that ‘all bookbinders, whether masters or journeymen . . . may choose to join us’.112 However, with the expansion of the economy and the changes in the labour process the unions became more class orientated. The Edinburgh journeymen bookbinders by 1822 had a change in the rules which stated that ‘when any member commences business, he must immediately leave the society; and if any employer, who has taken leave of the society, shall again become a journeyman, he shall be admitted free of expense . . . after he begins to work as a journeyman’.113 In pursuit of their goals the early unions adopted a form of organisation which was dualistic. The modern aspects of trade unionism, that is, visible leaders, conferences, branches and membership cards, competed with the pre-industrial ones, based on secrecy, rituals and signs, and violence. The Associated Colliers of Scotland had an 52

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Class Struggle and Growth of Trade Unions initiating ceremony and an oath which bound them not to reveal the collier’s password. The word ‘Balaam’ was derived from the biblical verse ‘and the angel said unto Balaam, Go with the men, but only the word I shall speak unto thee, that thou shall speak’.114 Among the Scottish blacksmiths there were ‘courts of justice’ in which ‘he who presides wears a quantity of tow . . . around his head, in imitation of a wig, and is styled the Lord Justice Clerk. The decisions of these judges are final: and such as do not comply with them, are compelled by persecution to leave the shop’.115 The United Joiners of Glasgow had to call an emergency committee meeting in January 1837 when it was reported that ‘a baker had become acquainted with the Password of the English order’.116 These passwords, rituals and signs were, therefore, fairly endemic in the trade unions of this time and owe something to the influence of freemasonry. In spite of their antiquated nature, they served an important function in impressing upon new members the seriousness of their undertaking, and were useful in building a collective identity and interests in the trade.

Acts of Violence also had a part to play in the enforcement of union strategy. Ear cropping was occasionally used in mining areas to deal with blacklegs; arson, intimidation and murder occurred in the cotton

industry. In 1819/20 the introduction of female spinners at the Broomward Mill in Glasgow led the men to burn the mill down. One woman was shot amid the mayhem. Similarly in 1832 women spinners were blinded by vitriol, and five years before this a new worker at

the Adelphi Mill was shot dead while sleeping.117 In spite of these pre-industrial forms of protest, a more visibly modern form of organisational structure was beginning to evolve among the unions. The Glasgow cotton spinners’ association, which relied on violence to maintain discipline among the membership, had a democratic structure which stretched from the factory floor to the executive committee. Elected delegates determined membership of the governing body of twelve members, collected dues and issued mem— bership cards. A supply committee arranged credit for strikers and organised the distribution of food; a finance committee raised money and distributed strike pay; and a guard committee took charge of picketing. On top of this the union also paid unemployment and funeral benefit.118

In keeping with the spirit of modernisation and in response to the formation of associations of employers, there evolved an appreciation among workers of the need to form national or, at least, larger trade unions, in spite of the fact that few succeeded for any length of time. 53

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

In this the cotton spinners and weavers showed an early awareness.

A general weavers’ association was formed in 1812 when employers attempted to dismantle piece rate structures; and the strength of the spinners’ union was so formidable that the employers formed an association of their own in 1810 to free themselves of the influence of ‘Third Parties’ combined for ‘the sinistrous and illegal purpose of controlling the trade at large’.“9 Other trades experiencing expansion and change adopted the strategy of the cotton workers. In 1817 the Glasgow and Ayr Miners’ Associations merged in order to ‘regulate the market for coal and labour’, although the arrest of its leaders shortly after this led to collapse.120 Eight years later the Lanarkshire miners formed the Associated Colliers of Scotland, although like its predecessor it was defeated by a counter offensive by the employers shortly after its formation.121 However, a national union — the General Union of Operative Colliers — resurfaced. Again it was defeated by

the ironmasters through the use of blackleg labour and evictions.122 In the building trade in 1832 a Scottish National Joiners’ Association was initiated by the Glasgow and Greenock joiners.123 More impressive than these attempts to establish occupational trade unions was the formation of the Glasgow United Committee of Trades Delegates formed in early 1830 to push for the Reform Bill. After 1832 it met sporadically; however, interestingly it was revived in 1837 to support the Glasgow cotton spinners in their strike. In Edinburgh, organisation was on a more ad hoc basis but ‘trades delegates’ organised a protest against the sentences of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834, and in 1835 opposed parliamentary grants to the Church of Scotland.124 However, the most formidable expression of solidarity among the labouring classes was the support given to Robert Owen’s Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (GNCTU). Although its main support was based in London, branches of Owen’s organisation were said to have existed all over Scotland; however,

the strongest centres were Glasgow and Paisley. The experience of the branch formed in Aberdeen was fairly typical. The branch was set up in the early part of 1834 and drew on the support of a wide

range of trades, but with the collapse of the GNTCU in mid—summer of that year, it rapidly went into terminal decline. However, in

Glasgow the Consolidated Union maintained a presence, thanks to the efforts of Alexander Campbell, until the end of the 18305.125 Trade unionism in general in Scotland received a crushing blow

in 1837 with the failure of the Glasgow cotton spinners’ strike. The spinners were the best organised workers in the west of Scotland. By 54

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Class Struggle and Growth of Trade Unions

adopting the primary craft principle of limiting the supply of labour through refusing to teach persons who were not ‘sons or brothers of a spinner’, the spinners had virtually established a closed shop in the Glasgow mills. It was estimated by one working spinner that out of

a total of 1000 spinners in Glasgow in 1837, 850—900 were members of the union.126 So effective was the union’s control of the spinning sector that the first factory inspector for Scotland was moved to remark: ‘the operatives have so completely organised their association, as not only to prescribe the wages to be paid to members of the association, but to all other persons, from whatever quarter they come’.127 In the course of events, however, the employers’ association proved stronger. Not only were the spinners defeated, but the identification of the strike with the worst excesses of violence led to the trial and transportation of their leaders.128 Defeat ensured that the Glasgow Association lost much of its power in the workplace and its ability to control the labour supply, but the capacity for collective organisation remained intact, that is, if measured by its means to wage industrial

warfare. Further strikes occurred in 1844.129 However, the bad publicity the trade union movement received as a result of the violent tactics of the spinners’ association, and the failure of the Lanarkshire miners to defend their ability to restrict output in the same year, despite being out on strike for four months,130 further weakened

Scottish trade unionism and it took many decades before it recovered. The economic depressions of 183 8—42 delivered the final blow to the remnants of worker organisation north of the border. National unions among spinners and miners broke up and the locality became the dominant locus of organisation. During the 1842 miners’ strike, Rob Duncan shows that there was little effort made to link up the struggles of the miners in Monklands with those in Ayrshire, the Lothians, Fife and Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire.131 Moreover, the association of industrial conflict with alcoholic excess led Scottish unions to meet in coffee houses as part of a new search for ‘respectability’.132 Even the Glasgow cotton spinners’ rule book in 1838 stated that its executive committee ‘must take a room not connected with a public house’.133 However, in the immediate term, the demise of trade unionism after the spinners’ strike of 1837 and the onset of economic depression led workers back in the direction of politics as they had done during the years 1815—20.

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Chapter 6

NATION v. CLASS: RADICAL STRUGGLES I N SCOTLAND, 1800—1850

The pillars of the political culture of the Scottish workers in the period from the 17905 to the Chartist movement of the late 1830s and early 18405 were democracy and social justice, which, in turn, rested on a value system which derived its strength from independence, temperance and religion. As we have seen, the first was the product of workplace notions regarding skill and status; the other two enhanced this by emphasising the respectability and social worth of the worker. As with trade unionism, worker politics in Scotland were dominated by the concerns and ideology of skilled, predominantly male, Protestant workers. Women, in spite of the fact that they played an active part in political reform movements throughout this period, found themselves increasingly excluded from the public sphere as even Chartists championed the ideal of domesticity for their wives in return for the badge of citizenship. This social ethos combined with the political principles to which skilled workers subscribed in this period were by no means exclusive. They were shared by other groups in Scottish society, particularly the petty bourgeoisie. This shared ethos, which drew its inspiration and strength from the Scottish Enlightenment, made class alliances possible and, indeed, were a noted feature of political development in this period. However, it has to be stressed that the interpretation of these principles was open to negotiation and re-negotiation. Thus, the meanings and understandings attached to them were never static and never universal, and because of this they were capable of being moulded to suit the aspirations and interests of any one social grouping. Moreover,

the cross-class ethos was fragile, particularly when threatened by the volatile culture of the unskilled and ethnic communities, as well as 56

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Radical Struggles in Scotland from declining occupations such as handloom weavers. The fragmentation of the working class along ethnic, material, status and sectarian lines also invited a number of contrasting and alternative responses to the pressures thrown up by industrial and urban development in this period. The engagement of the workers with the political system came in the various radical attempts to alter the character of the British state

dating from the 17803. The radical critique of politics based itself on the distinction made between the parasitic landowning class, which

ran the state in its own interests through a corrupt and venal electoral system, and the politically powerless, but useful and productive masses. Thus, the workers and middle classes as the ‘useful’ masses were to be united through radical leadership in an attempt to restruc— ture the basis of the unreformed state by gaining the franchise. The first serious challenge in the 17905 by this alliance of the ‘rough and refined’ to the state ended in failure. The governing classes were able to paralyse the reformers by labelling them unpatriotic and proFrench. Lord Cockburn brought out the essential weakness of the radicals when he said: The chief object at which our discontented aimed was parlia— mentary reform. But this and other home—bred ends were hid by

a cloud of foreign follies, which the Tories exhibited as demonstrations that the correction of domestic abuses was a pretence, and Jacobinism the truth. On this foundation they represented the whole lower orders as hostile to our institutions; from which the desired and comfortable inference was, that there was no salvation for the country except in the predominance of their own party.134

The cry of ‘King and country’ proved more capable of mobilising the masses than the democratic shibboleths of political radicalism in this period. State repression forced the radical movement underground in

the early 18005 and it took the economic depression after the defeat of Napoleon to kickstart the reform movement into political life. This new phase of radicalism increased the bitterness and hostility of the workers towards the government, particularly after the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. A Radical War ensued in Scotland and culminated in a call in the west of Scotland in 1820 to strike and to bear arms in order to establish a Scottish Republic. Sixty thousand workers, among them handloom weavers and colliers, heeded the call and an

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

armed insurrection ensued with a march on the Carron Ironworks. The march was intercepted by soldiers and the revolt put down and this phase of radicalism came to an end, only for the door to be pushed open once more in the early 18305. Workers united with the

middle classes were able to win a major political concession from the ruling classes in parliament in the form of the Reform Act of 1832, although not before mass demonstrations had taken place, and political threats and hints of revolution had been made. However, although the workers had campaigned with as much enthusiasm as the middle classes for the franchise they were disappointed as only the propertied were granted the vote. The narrative of political struggle in these decades of war and peace throws up a number of questions and issues concerning the

politics and language of class; the economic and the social; and the national and the transnational. There is little doubt that the radical movement of the years of the French Wars was inspired and led by the middle classes. However, these were the same people who were in the vanguard of the creation of free trade and the destruction of customary practices and other restraints on trade which seemed to attack the moral economy of the labouring classes. Yet there is evidence that groups of workers such as handloom weavers figured very prominently in radical organisations such as the Friends of the People and that many were converted to the ideas of Tom Paine.135 Indeed, it was groups such as the weavers that during the repression years of the 18005 kept the radical movement alive in their membership of a clandestine and insurrectionary organisation — the United Scotsmen.136 Why the degree of collaboration between two essentially antagonistic social classes? The alliance was viable because of the possibilities each group saw in reform of the British state. Workers had been used to petitioning the state for redress of economic grievances, and JPs as the embodiment of the local state had been appealed to on a regular basis to fix minimum wages and prices. Until the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century JPs were not unsympathetic to the demands of the workers. In 1799 high food prices saw JPs in Lanarkshire grant wage increases to wrights; in the same year Midlothian JPs granted Leith Shipwrights a 4d a day rise in wages; and after much petitioning the Edinburgh printers were granted a table of piece rates by the

Court of Session in 1805.137 However, with the growing popularity of the economic doctrines of Adam Smith and other classical economists among employers and politicians the state was increasingly moving 58

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Radical Struggles in Scotland in a less than even-handed way in dealing with disputes between masters and workers. In 1775 and 1799 legislation abolished serfdom in the mining industry, but not as a humanitarian act, more as an

attempt to ‘free the masters’ hands over wages and workrates without the interference of powerful combinations’.138 In the same year, the first Combination Acts were passed and a year later they were extended to cover every trade in England. Although the aim was to

prevent the growth of unions and political organisations, the success of the Acts in this direction was decidedly patchy.139 Moreover, their

legal status in Scotland was open to debate, and their interpretation was more or less left to the discretion of the judiciary, some of whom

were sympathetic to legal interference, and some who were decidedly against it. In spite of the ambiguity surrounding their interpretation, the leaders of the Glasgow weavers’ strike of 1812 were charged and

found guilty of the ‘crime of combination’.140 The aim of the strikers had been to establish minimum piece rates

through parliamentary legislation, but on being rebuffed twice by the authorities, who had been successfully counter petitioned by the employers, a seven week strike ensued in the west of Scotland; an event which led to the arrest and imprisonment of the leadership for two to eighteen months in February 1813.141 Four months after the defeat of the weavers, statutes allowing JPs to intervene in industrial disputes were abolished by parliament and the market was given the freedom to set the level of wages.142 The radical cry against ‘class legislation’ inspired weavers and other groups of workers to see the possibilities arising out of the reform of the state, and this made possible the construction of political alliances with middle class radicals. As a result petitioning the local JP gave way to the petitioning of the ‘nation’.

The economic depression and the mass unemployment which followed the end of the French Wars gave the workers little alternative but to turn to radical political practice. The high-handed attitude of the state, the massacre of Peterloo and the repression of political activity only intensified the agitation for franchise reform. A meeting

in Paisley in 1819 to condemn the ‘butchers’ of Peterloo led to five days of conflict between workers and the troops of the 80th Regiment and the 7th and 10th Hussars.143 The actions of the landowners’ gov-

ernment also alienated large numbers of people migrating to urban centres from the Scottish Highlands and Ireland. Their historical experiences of dealing with the landowning classes and the bitterness which that had induced in them were intensified by these displays of 59

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

aristocratic arrogance. Appeals to bridle the power of the aristocracy by radicals, therefore, touched a raw nerve in this section of Scottish society and brought a ready response from them.

Although some historians have interpreted these events from a nationalist perspective,144 nationalism was only one strand which comprised the ideology of political radicalism; the main aim of the reform movement was the democratisation of the British state, rather than establishing a Scottish republic. However, since that state was controlled primarily by the English landowning class, and given the history of active resistance in Scotland to the Union of 1707, oppo— sition to political tyranny was, at times, overlain with assertions of national identity. Fifteen thousand Scots came to Bannockburn in 1814 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the defeat of Edward II; and the popular Scottish song ‘Scots wa’hae’ was used as a rallying call against tyranny by the radicals north of the border in the years

1817—20.145 The republican aspirations of the abortive uprising of 1820 represented the apotheosis of the weaving of national identity with radical politics. The nationalism of the protestors was, however, half-hearted. At mass anti-government

demonstrations in Paisley in 1819 banners

referred to ‘Bruce’ and ‘Wallace’, but there were others which referred to the ‘Magna Carta’ and to the rights of ‘Britons’.146 As Christopher Smout points out, the symbolism of resistance to tyrants which was

the essence of the lyrics of ‘Scots wa’hae’ also appealed to cotton spinners in Lancashire.147 Furthermore, it was clear that in the period 1817—20 Scottish radicals looked to England for leadership. Indeed, the Radical insurrection of 1820 to establish a Scottish republic was timed to coincide with a rising in England; an event which did not happen, although there were uprisings in Lancashire and Yorkshire.148 There is also the patriotism of Scottish workers to take account of; something which was particularly evident on the monarch’s birthday. Twenty thousand people turned out on Glasgow Green in June 1795 to watch a review of the Glasgow Royal Volunteers” and four years later it was reported that 20 000 attended a review of the Renfrewshire Volunteer Association on 31 August.”0 In 1820 there were 50 000 ‘patriotic’ spectators at a military display on Glasgow Green.”1

Although the celebration of the monarch’s birthday was generally a drunkenly riotous affair, and the ‘mob’ used it as means of lampooning and jostling their social superiors, there was little attempt to politicise the event in the direction of radicalism; indeed, only in ‘Edinburgh in 1792, and perhaps Perth around the same time, is there any connection between the monarch’s birthday celebrations and 60

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Radical Struggles in Scotland

Radicalism’.152 Thus, nationalism in this context was contradictory

and dualistic and did not lead in Scotland, as it did in peripheral nations such as Norway and Portugal, to independence from a more

powerful neighbour. Scots were able to combine a sense of Scottish identity with an equally powerful and compelling sense of being North Britons.”3 The fact that in the reform agitation of the crisis years 1830—32, and again in the Chartist campaigns of the late 18308 and early 18408, Scottish republicanism played no part in mobilising workers tends to point to the essentially ephemeral nature of this political phenomenon.

The other outstanding feature of working—class radicalism at this time was the rejection of violence as a means of changing the political system. The shadowy United Scotsmen movement, although active in weaving communities in the 18005, was unable to mobilise mass support for its Jacobin-inspired insurrectionary form of poli— tics.”4 The fact that only forty to fifty men could be persuaded to march on the Carron ironworks during the 1820 Radical Warm also points to the inability of the idea of armed insurrection to capture the imagination and support of the workers in Scotland. Moreover, after 1820 political protest became peaceful and orderly, although riots, particularly those associated with the monarch’s birthday, continued to be a part of the rich, but rough and disruptive, culture of urban

life with serious outbursts occurring in 1819 and 1820 in Glasgow. The riots, on the whole, tended to be associated with the unskilled and poor than the politically organised skilled workers. Indeed, according to newspaper reports of these carnivals of the oppressed, the crowds were mainly comprised of young adult males and boys: the ‘veriest scum of the city’.”6 Although the prospect of violent revolution was remote, there were clear signs of a growing awareness among workers of their common or shared grievances and the need to organise collectively to alter the political status quo. This view is at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy among Scottish historians regarding the seriousness of the threat posed b y workers to property and the institutions of civil society during this period. Christopher Smout best sums u p this

view when he says ‘the unenfranchised masses . . . were so divided by income, life expectancy, culture and creed as to pose, on the face of it, little threat to property’.”7 Moreover, the organisations of collective self-defence — the trade unions — operated a sectional policy which promoted their interests at the expense of workers in general and were little involved in radical political activity.”8

By viewing the working class as essentially fragmented, orthodox 61

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

historiography seems to disregard the factors pulling against the forces of division. As we have seen, skilled workers were facing similar problems as regards issues of apprentice restriction and the labour supply. Periodic unemployment as a consequence of the operation of

the trade cycle also posed a threat to the security of skilled workers and their families. These uncertainties were duplicated across all trades and were articulated in the growing labour press of the period, which brought different groups of workers together. There were also signs of trades supporting each other in struggle. During the weavers’ struggles to limit the number of apprentices in 181 1, their petition to parliament had the support of ‘the whole of the trades of any consequence in the town of [Glasgow]’.159 Collaboration could take a political turn as in 1820 when 60 000 workers answered the call to strike. The involvement of trade unions in these political struggles was remarked upon by the prosecutor fiscal for Glasgow, when he

said to the crown agent that the leaders of the cotton spinners were ‘again, at least most of them, in jail as Radicals’.160 Christopher Whatley’s work on working-class communities also shows how ethnic and occupational divisions tended to crumble in moments of crisis. He found that within the Glasgow parish of Barony, where most of the weaving looms were concentrated, and where there was a considerable number of spinning mills, a calico print works, an iron works and a few coal mines, there was a high volume of political

activity prior to 1830. Most disturbances either took place here or ‘involved’ a disproportionate number of people from Barony. This was also an area which had a high concentration of Irish workers, both Catholic and Protestant, and their families; indeed, the most turbulent districts in Barony, that is, Anderston, Calton, St Johns and Shettleston, were those with the highest proportion of Irish-born

residents.”1 These finding should make us a little suspicious over accounts of the period which all too readily fall back on fragmentation and collaboration as elemental parts of political analysis. However, more research needs to be done on other parishes in Glas-

gow and in other large towns on these issues before the solidarities of class and community in Scotland in this period can be delineated. There is also the problem of reconciling the political and the eco— nomic. The experiences of change and tension in the social relations of the workplace were leading workers to develop a view of the economy, and their position within in it, which was in opposition to the

radical political ideology which they had accepted. In the workplace a political economy based on custom and regulation was articulated 62

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Radical Struggles in Scotland which put the trade unions at odds with the free market philosophy of the employing class. The labour theory of value became the bedrock of their economic analysis. As the Radical Reformer’s Gazette put it: ‘the land derives all its value from the labour and skill applied to it, and that there is no Capital in the Country but has sprung from the same source’.162 There was also a persistent demand for the economic

system to be based on co-operation rather than competition. However, artisanal conceptions of politics, as an organised conspiracy of the landowning class to maintain its privileges and power, led them

to adopt anti-landlord policies, which were antagonistic to their grow— ing interest in, and advocacy of, quasi-socialist plans of co—operation. Indeed, as Fiona Montgomery argues, championing free trade over protectionism came close to classical economic doctrine.163 The labour newspaper The Herald to the Trades Advocate, extravagantly claimed that free trade: gives a stimulus to exertion, encouragement to the noblest energies of scientific genius . . . diffuses liberal sentiments, and benevolent feelings . . . while monopoly produces sloth, violence and extravagance . . . in a few; poverty, wretchedness and servility in the many.164 Trade unionists continued to believe throughout this period that the Corn Laws and excessive taxation forced ‘honourable’ employers to press down on wages. Corruption in government was thus still viewed as the main cause of all economic ills, and for this reason workers in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain were still prepared to

accept the political leadership of middle-class radicals. Moreover, as the central ‘issues’ in the workplace remained ‘ones of control rather than ownership of the means of production’,165 the tensions referred to above did not obstruct the emergence of joint middle— and workingclass political campaigns for reform. Large crowds throughout Scotland demonstrated in favour of

parliamentary reform in the early 18303. In Glasgow, three distinct organisations emerged: the predominantly middle—class Reform Association; the National Political Union supported by the petty bourgeoisie and artisans; and factory operatives’ committees com—

posed of representatives from trade unions and workshops. They were, however, by no means exclusive and membership was fluid; additionally joint campaigns were organised and a common ideology was expressed on classical radical lines. However, working-class 63

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

radicals had a different set of priorities to that of middle-class

reformers. They stressed universal suffrage, annual parliaments and secret ballots, while manufacturers and merchants in Aberdeen and elsewhere demanded burgh reform and an end to self-elected councilsfl“ Thus, the question of priority provoked class tensions between those in the radical camp. However, as Fiona Montgomery notes, artisans in Glasgow were prepared to accept this arrangement as they ‘felt that more could be gained by co-operation and working through the system, than by outright hostility’.167 There were no riots in Scotland on the scale of Nottingham, Derby and Bristol during the reform crisis, although contemporary Alexander Somerville reported that, after the second reading of the Reform Bill in the Commons, in Edinburgh there was an orgy of window breaking by the ‘ten thousand headed mob’.168 In Glasgow, however, property was respected and, in spite of talk of revolution, political demonstrations were orderly and peaceful. As The Herald to the Trades Advocate put it: ‘they [the authorities] will strain their eye-sight before they see any movement in this quarter’.169 Any talk of ‘arming’ was interpreted

by Glasgow workers as defending the king and his ministers rather than promoting a revolution.170 With the failure of the Reform Act to enfranchise the workers and the disappointment this created, as well as the failure of the middle classes to support factory reform in the shape of Sadler’s Ten Hours Bill (manufacturers in Fife and Glasgow actively opposed it),171 the emphasis turned to trade unionism and Owenite socialism. Robert Owen offered a complete alternative to the capitalist system and a different analysis of labour’s oppression to that put forward by radicals. Owen argued that the root cause of workers’ oppression lay in the exploititive social relations of industrial capitalism rather

than corruption in government. To Owen and his followers changing the political system was irrelevant; the way forward was in building small communities of producers based on his principles of utopian socialism. Ideas of building a co—operative and harmonious alternative to competitive capitalism struck a chord with those workers who were experiencing displacement due to economic competition and technological change. Thus the Dundee and Lochee Weavers’ Union, 1000 strong, resolved in 1834 to ‘make an attempt at manufacturing for themselves’, and Aberdeen had 900 members established in eight branches of the co-operative movement.172 To spread the word the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists was formed in 1835 and by 1839 it had sixty—two branches in Britain, four of which

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Radical Struggles in Scotland

were in Scotland at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Paisley with a membership of around 300.173 In addition, there were also a number of co-operative stores established in the late 1830s at Hawick and Galashiels.174 Even during the Chartist period when attention was firmly fixed on political reform, there were several experiments in co-operation. Co-operative stores, inspired by Owenism, were established in places as far apart as Leith, Greenock, Tillicoutry, Dalkeith, Hawick, Forfar and Coupar Angus. By the end of 1840, there were

sixteen Chartist co-operative stores, in addition to those which were reputed to exist in ‘every Village’ in Fife, as well as an Aberdeen Association of Producers, which owned a store in the town’s Gallowgate and set up a savings bank for members in 1845.175 However, in spite of these ventures, Owenite socialism failed to

make a significant impact on Scottish workers. Owen’s GNCTU was an ephemeral success in 1834, but as a trade union, and not as a vehicle for ushering in a new moral world. The main ideological weakness was that Owenism failed to develop a theory of politics in general, and the state in particular. Moral regeneration rather than political change was seen by Owenites as the central goal of labour. Because that moral reforming spirit envisaged a rational society and an equal role for women it came up against the deeply held religious principles of skilled workers. Peter MacKenzie’s Scotch Reformers’ Gazette condemned Ownenite lectures on rational religion and appealed to the Glasgow authorities to prevent ‘the disgraceful proceedings of these infamous Socialists’.176 A godless society was anathema to workers in Scotland at this time: a point endorsed by an artisan journal when it reported that ‘there was strong hostility to Owen’s religious views among the Glasgow trades’, and to underline

this the The Herald to the Trades Advocate dropped the sub-title Co-operative Journal from its masthead.”7 John Hodge, in his contemporary study of Owenism, also pointed to the secularism of the movement in analysing the reasons for its collapse after 1845 .173 But a stronger reason was that the republics of petty producers, envisaged by Owen as the future social organisation of society, were backward looking and irrelevant solutions to the problems faced by trades such as cotton spinning, engineering, iron-making, and so on, which were

created by industrialisation. Traditionless, these trades could not look back to a ‘golden age’ of domestic production as starving hand— loom weavers could, and, thus, concentrated on making the best

bargain they could within the free market. A lacuna developed between the utopian social prescription of Owen and the direct 65

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

social experience of the developing proletariat. The co-operative societies continued to grow but, shorn of their millenarian role, they merely modified free market mechanisms rather than superseded them. The peripheralisation of quasi-socialist alternatives such as Owenism meant that the links forged with the middle classes during the suffrage campaigns of the early 18305 were never wholly severed. The split between the anti-working class Whigs and the radicals in the mid—18305 led to a new configuration of Scottish politics which held out hope for the emergence of a new reform movement. John Taylor and the ‘advanced’ radicals set up the Scottish Radical Association (SRA) in December 1836, which later became the Universal Suffrage Association. The SRA adopted four basic political principles — universal male suffrage, annual parliaments, vote by ballot and a voluntary church system. In Edinburgh, the Radical Association added repeal of the Corn Laws to its basic principles at a meeting in July 1837, as well as amending its demand for universal suffrage to

household suffrage, in order to attract wider support from the pro— gressive urban middle classes.179 There was also a certain amount of co-operation on the industrial front. During the cotton spinners’ strike, rioting occurred at the Oakbank Mills in May 1837. An

appeal from the Tory Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Archibald Alison, among propertied families for special constables to contain the riot led to only one man answering the call. In Glasgow, Liberal manufacturers obstructed Alison’s plan of extending police powers to curb the dispute in outlying areas.180 In Paisley, manufacturers supported Fielden’s Minimum Wage Bill in 1835, and agreed on a voluntary

basis to fix prices in order to stabilise weavers’ wages; additionally, a more liberal poor law operated with provision made for the able—bodied.181 These initiatives which maintained the distinction in working-class circles of the ‘honourable’ and ‘dishonourable’ employer, as well the attachment of the artisans to the doctrines of free trade, were important during the Chartist agitation of the late 18305 and early 18405 in ensuring a dialogue, and to some extent an alliance, continued between workers and the middle classes. The Chartist movement which emerged in 1838 demanded a wholesale reform of the British state and the incorporation of the working class in the constitution. Chartist demands were inscribed in

the Six Points of the People’s Charter drawn up by the London Working Men’s Association in 1 838. Although primarily political demands,

once achieved they were to establish a platform for a programme of 66

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Radical Struggles in Scotland

social and economic reform. A national petition was drawn up in

favour of the Six Points by the Birmingham Political Union (BPU) and speakers were sent out to other areas of Britain to stir up support. Indeed, Scotland’s political reawakening was largely the responsibil-

ity of the BPU and their ‘holy and peaceful’ campaign north of the border.182 The response to Chartism in Scotland was greatest, like elsewhere

in Britain, during the years 1839—42 when unemployment was high, bread was dear, and trade unions weak. However, support for the Charter cannot be seen simply as an economistic knee—jerk response to worsening economic conditions by poor and unemployed workers. Miners and factory workers were more prominent during times of severe economic distress such as in 1842, and again in the years 1847—48, but the backbone of the Chartist movement was radical artisans and weavers in alliance with disaffected members of the middle classes. Trade sections were established among coopers, masons and shoemakers in Glasgow, and among coachmakers and

tailors in Edinburgh.183 The artisanal and middle-class basis of the movement was, however, even more pronounced in the leadership.

The Central Committee in Scotland was made up of a powerloom weaver, Mathew Cullen, an engineering trade unionist, W C. Pattison, and an Edinburgh scavenger, but middle class members existed too in the shape of James Moir and George Ross, Glasgow shopkeepers, John McCrae, an Ayrshire teacher, and Dr Glover, of Edinburgh.184 In Aberdeen, there were no factory operatives among the leadership cadre and the principal activists came from the shoemaking and weaving trades;135 and in Paisley, the Rev. Patrick Brewster was the main advocate of Chartist reform. The social structure of the movement, particularly of the leadership cadre, infused a moral dimension into what was essentially a political movement. Most of the Chartist leaders in Glasgow, including Cranston, Fraser and MacFarlane, were involved with the temperance movement at an official level.186 Fraser initiated a nationwide campaign in 1838 ‘in which advocacy of . . . total abstinence held almost equal prominence with that of universal suffrage’.187 The TAS, as we have seen, not only preached temperance, but also supported the Six Points of the Charter.188 Temperance was not restricted to one class, it cut across all social groups and acted as a means of furthering social contacts between artisans and the middle classes in Scottish society. Religion performed a similar role to that of temperance. Most Chartists were said to be ‘devout, God-fearing men, whose scepticism 67

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

[about religion] was confined to the behaviour of false pastors’.189 Chartists were also prominent in the dissenting churches, particularly the United Secessional Church and the Relief Synod.190 However, the

refusal of the radical churches and their ministers to take up explicitly political demands led some Chartists, in order to unite Christianity with the message of social justice and political freedom, to set up their own ministries. The first Chartist Churches were established in May 1839 in Hamilton, Paisley and Bridgeton. Five months later regular services were being held on the Sabbath by the Glasgow, Bridgeton, Gorbals, Paisley and Hamilton Chartist Associations.191 By 1841 a delegate to a conference of Scottish Chartist Churches could claim that ‘a Chartist place of worship is now to be found on the Lord’s Day in almost every town of note from Aberdeen to Ayr’.192 These churches performed baptisms, marriages, funerals and communion, and held their own Easter, Christmas and New Year

celebrations with ‘tea drinking, concerts . . . and dancing’.193 In keeping with their democratic principles there was no minister but a rotational chairman and vice-chairman who between them conducted services and performed other ceremonies. The Church’s social gospel was summed up by Eileen Yeo: ‘their Christ was a

working man who had been crucified on the social rack like they; their mission [was] to Win back the rights God had given, but which the rich and powerful, the priesthood among them, had taken away’. Chartist Churches had their parallels in England, but only in the form of holding Sunday services in the numerous branch premises of the National Charter Association in the early 18405. Prior to this development the English Chartists were given to holding protest demonstrations at hostile Anglican and dissenting sect churches.”4 The more formal organisation of the Chartist Churches in Scotland, as we will see, demonstrated the manner in which the social basis of Chartism profoundly affected its politics and language. The moralism with which temperance and religion infused Scottish Chartism made the movement amenable to the idea of ‘moral force’ as against ‘physical force’ as a way of achieving political reform, and made it less hostile than its English equivalent to alliances with other social classes. However, at the same time, one could argue that there were two Chartist movements in Scotland: there was the moral and

peaceful movement of the period 1838—40, and there was the more aggressive and confrontational movement of the years 1841—42 and 1848. This difference was linked to condition of the economy and the social structure of the support for the Charter. Iain Hutchinson 68

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Radical Struggles in Scotland noted that in the agitation of 1848 the social composition of the movement was changing to include the Irish and young unskilled workers: ‘two categories which had not been so central to the earlier phase of Chartism’.195 It was these groups which were responsible for the rioting which accompanied the Chartist revival of 1848, although their centrality to the movement is debated below. In the first phase of Chartist agitation the movement had suffered severe splits over the issue of moral versus physical force. The former were moderates and associated with Chartists, such as William Lovett of the LWMA and Thomas Attwood of the BPU; the latter were supporters of Feargus O’Connor and believed in the use of nonconstitutional methods, including armed force and national strikes, to achieve their ends. The Scots supported the moral force delegates

at the May 1839 Convention in Birmingham which gave effect to the resolution passed earlier at the meeting on Calton Hill, Edinburgh. The delegates to Edinburgh had resolved that only peaceful means should be employed to obtain the Charter.196 Although the strategy of using moral force was adopted by most Chartist associations in Scotland, there were pockets of support for O’Connor’s position. Research by Tony Clarke has shown that in 1839 associations from parts of the north—east of Scotland, particularly Forfarshire, Clackmananshire, Dunfermline and from Renfrewshire favoured a

national strike supported by an armed people to obtain the Charter. However, in Ayrshire, Glasgow and Lanarkshire, Edinburgh and parts of the Lothians support was lukewarm for this kind of direct action,197 in spite of the fact that there were few Chartists in Scotland who could be found to endorse the Rev. Patrick Brewster’s position of obedience to constituted authority. Scottish artisans, with their strongly held belief in their independence, favoured the idea that ‘obedience to authority was conditional on the enjoyment of constitutional rights’.198 The rejection of the Chartist petition by the Commons in 1839 led to a decline in the influence of moderate moral force Chartism. In Aberdeen, the movement split and the Aberdeen Charter Union (ACU) replaced the Aberdeen Working Men’s Association as the focal point of Chartist organisation. The ACU had strong links with the trade unions and in 1841 proposals to organise a trades demon-

stration in support of O’Connor produced general hysteria in the magistracy and town council. Millowners were called upon to prevent their workers attending the demonstration. Five hundred special constables were sworn in and the military were given sixteen rounds 69

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SOCIAL C H A N G E AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

of ball cartridge.”9 In Glasgow, O’Connor’s attack on ‘the saints of the Glasgow Chartist synod’ moved the Association in favour of the physical force position. The shifting political strategy of the Chartists towards a more confrontational position with the state coincided in

1842 with the onset of severe economic distress. The rejection by parliament of the second Chartist petition initiated the call for the

‘Sacred Month’, that is, a month—long general strike. This brought a violent response in the north of England in the so-called ‘plug riots’.200 However, in Scotland the response was muted; something which has led historians to suggest that the moral basis of Scottish Chartism and its tenuous links with the trade unions precluded support for industrial action. Hassan argues that during the miners’ strike of 1842 there were no attempts by the Midlothian colliers to link their economic grievances with demands for political reform,201 and Rob Duncan points out that the strike itself was conducted as a series of discrete local actions. Moreover, Aberdeen Chartists opposed the ‘use of the strike weapon and condemned the violence in 1842’.202 But the evidence seems somewhat contradictory. Alan Campbell, in his study of the Lanarkshire miners, states that at a ‘great meeting’ of miners held near Coatbridge a resolution was passed in favour of Ashley’s Bill to

exclude women from the mines and also in support of the People’s Charter.203 Thus, the evidence here points to a more explicit linking

of politics with economic grievances by miners’ leaders. This was consistent with the far greater degree of proletarianisation of miners in Lanarkshire, particularly in the mines owned by the great ironmasters such as Bairds of Gartsherrie, compared to the semi-rural, paternalistic coalfields of Midlothian. Likewise in Dundee, in the summer of 1842, jobless workmen allied themselves with millworkers

to demand ‘The Charter and Nothing Less’. As the crisis deepened in autumn a public meeting attended by 8000 workers supported overwhelmingly a proposal to call a political strike for the implemen— tation of the Charter. Although the strike call was heeded by 4000

workers, a planned march on Forfar with the intention of arousing support in neighbouring towns ended in failure.204 Regardless of the success of these demands, the actions and lan— guage of the workers point to the weaknesses in Hassan’s and Duncan’s analyses. The strikes in the mining industry may have been concerned with economistic issues, such as wages and hours, and control of the labour process, but to confront the employers and the state on these matters involved a perception of the social order which 70

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Radical Struggles in Scotland

alluded to the presence of different and antagonistic sets of interests in society. Moreover, in searching for the, admittedly tenuous, links between trade unions and Chartism there is a tendency in Duncan’s and Hassan’s work to focus on formal organisations; an approach which obscures the fact that much union activity at this time was informal and based on immediate workgroup solidarities, rather than the trade. As Clive Behagg points out: There is a clear resonance between the workplace as a democratic forum, the ‘worst of democracies’ as critics would insist, and a political vision with an emphasis on participation and accountability brought about by universal suffrage and annual parliaments?“ However, the failure of the ‘Sacred Month’ and the return of better economic conditions in 1843 saw militancy dissipate and moderates resume leadership of the movement. In Glasgow, despite the fact that some 78 000 people had signed the National Petition in 1842, ‘with— in a year [Julian] Harney and others reported that the movement had all but gone except for the Chartist Churches’.206 The restoration of traditional radicals to prominence coincided with attempts to promote greater understanding with the middle classes, particularly those involved in the struggles against the Corn Laws. In the preceding

years tensions had run high between the Chartists and the Anti Corn Law League (ACLL). In 1840 the Glasgow Chartists decided to intervene at all public meetings of the League; indeed, at any meeting which diverted attention from the Charter.207 Relations were said to have deteriorated so badly that each class was consistently ‘abusing and opposing’ the other.208 In other places the situation was no more friendly. In Aberdeen, the ACU adopted a pronounced anti—middle class and ACLL position,” and in Scotland as a whole there was the feeling among Chartists that little was to be gained ‘by union with doubtful reformers’.210

However, in spite of these tensions, there never existed the enmity in Scotland between the workers and the middle classes as occurred

in England due to the implementation of New Poor Law in 1834. Chartists in Scotland were quite prepared to sign petitions in favour

of repeal of the Corn Laws, particularly those working in export industries for whom the ‘ideology of economic Liberalism had an apparently irrefutable logic’;211 and those, such as John Mitchell, leader of the moderate Aberdeen WMA, who saw in the campaign 71

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

an opportunity to ‘unmask the titled locust band’ of landowners.212 From 1842 onwards there was also manifested a closer collaboration between the League and the Chartists, and between the workers and the middle classes as evidence in the cross-class support for the Complete Suffrage Union established in 1841 by Joseph Sturge. Tensions, however, continued to exist on the question of priorities, with the Chartists arguing that reform should take precedence over repeal, and the ACLL taking the opposite view. When the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846 handloom weavers in Paisley staged a series of celebratory demonstrations.213 However, the blessings of free trade were little in evidence as the economy plunged once more into crisis in 1847; an event which coincided with the beginning of revolution in Europe. From this favourable platform the third and final phase of Chartism was launched, but, like the others, it ended in failure as the Commons rejected the third petition. However, the finale involved the construction of a new alliance between Irish Catholics and native Scots which prefigured later political

developments. Sectarianism and snobbery had driven a wedge between the two

communities which had been fatal to the prosecution of the political struggle for the franchise. After 1842 there were a series of social and political initiatives which encouraged the two communities to pull closer together. The assault by the Catholic hierarchy on drunkenness among the Irish did much to improve their image in Scotland. Thirty thousand Irish in Glasgow were led to establish a connection with the temperance movement as a result of a series of campaigns run by Father Theobald Mathew in 1843.214 The ties were further strengthened in protests against the operation of the Scottish Poor Laws which not only discriminated against the Irish, but also, under the Law of Settlement, against the rural migrants flooding into the cities. In February 1843 joint protests were made by the Chartists and the Irish in Edinburgh over this issue?” Politically, the adoption

by the Chartists of Irish demands for the repeal of the Union between Britain and Ireland made an alliance irresistible. There was, however,

one obstacle to a full blown rapprochement between the Irish and the Chartists: Daniel O’Connell. Since his condemnation of the Glasgow spinners’ strike of 1837, O’Connell had become a figure on which a great deal of indigenous radical and trade union hatred had coalesced. His death in 1847 removed any remaining barriers to closer co-operation between the Irish Democratic Convention (IDC) and the Chartist movement.216 72

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Radical Struggles in Scotland

Perhaps the presence of large numbers of Irish workers, with their historic association with violence, made the reaction to the rejection of the third petition all the more aggressive. The year had begun with

the moral force leadership in the ascendancy as electoral associations, or ‘People’s Leagues’, were formed having equal membership of Chartists and CSUers. Glasgow City Council passed a resolution supporting Hume’s motion in the Commons for an extension of the

franchise.217 However, by March 1848 the political initiative briefly passed to the riotous mobs of impoverished and starving workers. A riot broke out in Glasgow among the ‘unemployed operatives’ and the people marched through the streets crying ‘Bread or Revolution’. A confrontation with the military left five protestors dead.218 The ‘spirit of rebelliousness’ also spread among colliers and iron workers to the west of Glasgow and the authorities were said to have been ‘seriously alarmed’ at ‘midnight. . . secret meetings held near the pitheads, at which highly spiced, even seditious, speech-making was indulged in’.219 Following the rejection of the third petition a meeting of Chattists on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill passed a resolution calling for the ‘necessity of arming themselves and purchasing a musket or a pike’, and two weeks later in Adam Square Hall a further resolution advocating the formation of a National Guard 1600 strong was carried by a large majority; while in Aberdeen 3 ‘National Guard of around 1000 men had been formed’.220 The riotous events surrounding the Chartist revival in 1848 are the subject of some debate regarding the participants. Iain Hutchinson, as we have noted, saw the young, unskilled workers and the Irish as central to the movement in this period. Alexander Wilson, on the other hand, argues that while it is true that there was a great deal more involvement of the Irish in Chartist struggles in 1848, it would be incorrect to include the latter group. Also it would be misleading ‘to call the disturbances [of March 1848] Chartist riots’, as even the Tory Scotsman recognised, this ‘was a mistake unjust in itself’. John McCaffrey views the actions of the Glasgow mobs as less disorganised and criminal, and while the links were not formalised with Chartism, it is clear from the evidence that the crowds were inspired by Chartist denunciations of unemployment and social distress. A list of those arrested and tried for riotous behaviour showed that only 26 out of the 64 were unemployed, and their ranks included

skilled iron workers, a printer and a coppersmith. As McCaffrey concludes ‘this analysis hardly squares with a picture of the riot caused by a combination of the idle, the curious and the criminal’.221 73

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SOCIAL C H A N G E AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

The confrontational stance of the Chartists alienated the supporters of franchise extension in the middle classes.222 Perhaps this is because during 1848 the challenge to property had become more apparent as the numbers of disaffected young, unskilled operatives and Irish overwhelmed the respectable radical artisans. The fears of the middle

classes in granting the vote to this section of society were succinctly expressed by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh when he said:

Suppose [the working classes] get universal suffrage and suppose . . . that five-sixths of the community belonged to the working classes . . . it was clear . . . they would legislate for their own interest and make wages as high as possible.223 The challenge to capital was clear and the middle classes closed ranks with the rest of private property, including their traditional enemies in the landowning class. The alliance of property in 1848 reflected the way the divisions among ruling groups in Scottish and British society had been healed. Once the Corn Laws had been repealed there was little space between the two which radicals could exploit to create a crisis within the state. In the face of threats to property the aristocratically-controlled state was resolute, safe in the knowledge that it had the backing of the vast bulk of the middle classes. As one contemporary journalist put it when reflecting on the riots of 1848: ‘the prompt suppression of the Glasgow riots . . . [showed] the men that the arm of the law was still a power in the

land’.224 When examining the reasons why the Chartists failed to achieve

their goals the response of the state is of paramount importance. This does not mean that the divisions within the movement over the issues of moral versus physical force, of co-operation or opposition to the ACLL, as well as the personality clashes within the leadership, were not harmful to the effective mobilisation of the workers in pursuit of the Charter, but they were not decisive. Even the most resolute and united

leadership cadre would not have been able to defeat a solidaristic state. Moreover, the mobilisation of the Irish at an earlier date might have generated greater unity within the movement, but it would not have removed the issue of the state’s willingness to use its monopoly of coercion to frustrate and ultimately destroy the Chartist movement.

In these circumstances reciprocal violence was the only possible strategy open to the Chartists. However, this was a route which the skilled workers refused to travel. Scottish workers rejected the use of 74

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Radical Struggles in Scotland violence as a vehicle of political change. As the children of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, their’s was a political culture in which rational thought and peaceful persuasion were elemental. As Christopher Smout points out, artisans in Scotland held to the strong belief that ‘inequality could and would be overthrown by moral pressure and by reason’; a belief reinforced by their religious convictions?”

The pacifism of the skilled stratum was also a reflection of their material circumstances and position within the working classes. In Aberdeen most of the stalwart members of the Chartist movement

were independent craftsmen and small producers and because of this could not reconcile themselves to attacks on property.226 The leader— ship had a disproportionate representation from the petty bourgeoisie and many were involved in temperance and other self-improvement organisations. To a certain extent they all had a stake in the private property system, which is perhaps why schemes of ‘co-operation were relatively unimportant to the Chartists’.227 This was all the more apparent post-1848, when even the working-class members of the Central Committee joined the ranks of the Scottish petty bourgeoisie. William C. Pattison, the engineering trade unionist, became owner of a printing business; Matthew Cullen, the powerloom weaver, became a professional reformer and leading light in social reform movement in Glasgow?” The self—improving dimension of artisan ideology allowed for understandings with the propertied strata in Scottish society, particularly since they seemed to be operating within a common or shared value system. It was only the dispossessed industrial proletariat who had nothing to lose, but they were far from numerous and their interest in political reform was limited in most cases to

periods of economic distress. Moreover, the political economy of

radicalism had a fatal flaw for this section of the working class. As Gareth Stedman Jones argues, if the economic and social misery of the working class was due to its disenfranchisement, once the state began addressing these problems, for example, through the Ten Hours Act, and economic conditions improved, it was impossible to

convince the burgeoning proletariat that their grievances were linked to an unreformed political system. The critique of class legislation,

therefore, did not extend to the class divisions at the point of production; hostility to the bourgeoisie was based simply on the part they played in the political system. As Stedman Jones makes clear:

Once, therefore, the conviction of the totally evil character of the political system itself began to fade and distress became less

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

pervasive, there was no independent rationale within the radical

ideology for antagonism to the middle classes.229 Owenism with its critique of competitive capitalism might have filled that ideological lacuna, but the movement’s atheism, and advanced views on personal relationships, resulted in its alienation from the working people. Moreover, as Hamish Fraser points out, by the 1840s the Owenite movement had become very petty bourgeois in compo-

sition, rather than working class. The leadership included men of substantial means: James Nockles, the secretary, was a manufacturer; James Edminston, treasurer, was middle class; and John Cairns and Lloyd Jones were both wholesale tailors and Clothiers. The leader of the Paisley branch, James Motherwell, was a successful bookseller, of which there were quite few in the movement.230 As a result, Owenism developed into a kind of mystical, semi—religious movement divorced from the realities of working—class life.

In spite of the failure of Owenism to provide the programmatic basis of worker unity, there is clear evidence of the development of shared grievances and a more thorough understanding of the economic bases of inequality among, at least, the literate, skilled workers. It can be argued that the experiences of the 18305 and 1840s left workers with a greater awareness of themselves as a social class with interests and aspirations which set them apart from and, indeed, at

times, in opposition, to other social groups. As Michael Mann points out, in spite of occupational, ethnic and religious differences, because ‘the franchise was a class one, they had to organise as a class’.231 Although that awareness generally excluded workers in positions of dependency on their employers, such as those in agricultural or domestic service, workers at the cutting edge of economic and technological change saw the class basis of institutions more clearly. Chartists demanded a wholesale set of social and economic reforms which were inimical to the interests of the middle classes. As Ernest Jones put it at a meeting in the Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh, on 19 April 1848: ‘[The Chartists] were not merely political reformers but

social reformers’.232 In Aberdeen, during the depressions of 1842 and 1848, Chartist leaders demanded full maintenance and the right to work. Ten years earlier the Aberdeen operative masons criticised the ‘self—interested combinations of politicians, bankers, merchants,

manufacturers, corn dealers . . . and the Established clergy’, as did Edinburgh Chartists in 1838 when they stated that there were only two parties: ‘the rich oppressors and the poor oppressed’.233

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Radical Struggles in Scotland

However, at this stage, although the social and economic demands

made by the Chartists could be considered antagonistic to free market philosophy, they were not opposed to capitalism at a systemic level, and this is the crucial factor in analysing the question of class consciousness in this period. Chartists demanded that the rights of the subordinate classes to some form of social security be recognised by those in power. In that sense, it was not the class consciousness of

socialism which was being articulated, rather it was an endorsement of the levelling spirit which had permeated the consciousness of subordinate classes throughout history. This was brilliantly captured in J. R. Stephens’ speech to the Glasgow Chartists, when he demanded: ‘that every man shall by his labour find comfortable food and clothing — not only for himself, but for his wife and babes’.234 The levelling dimension of Chartist political philosophy was a necessary outcome of the fact that the uneven development of the Scottish economy was productive of a complex social structure. Thus, Chartism had to appeal to a socially diverse constituency of

workers and petty bourgeois elements. The result was unity on the Charter, but little else. As John Duncan, the pastor of the Dundee Chartist Church, pointed out, within the Chartist ranks there were: Repealers and anti—repealers, anti-Poor Law men and Malthu— sians, O’Connorites, O’Brienites, Cobbettites, Churchmen,

Dissenters, or no Church-at-all men and others . . . differing in their views of political economy, morals and religion, Wider as

the poles asunder?” Thus, the form of working-class political practice which characterised the 1830s and 18403 has to be understood in terms of an interaction between past cultural formations with present sets of structures, actions and attitudes.236 It is this relationship which provides the basis for opposing and contradictory linguistic interpretations centred around the leitmotif of the people versus class. If on investigation the historian of Chartism finds both tendencies embedded in the language of political activism in these turbulent years, then this was only to be expected given the different constituencies and interests Chartists were attempting to address. The period from the 17905 up to 1850 was a political learning curve for the working people of Scotland and their allies. The outcome

of struggle was understanding what was politically and socially pos— sible, and what was not. In terms of future political strategy there 77

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL RADICALISM, 1800—1850

was a general acceptance among workers of a framework of society based on liberal capitalism. Thus a political system which appeared for a number of decades as inherently unstable, a consequence of profound socio—economic changes which disrupted the traditional structures of family and working lives, as well as the landscape of settlement, became highly durable. The older traditions of protest by riot, and moral sentiments concerning fixed or fair prices and wages, declined as organisation became more recognisably modern and more attuned to working within the free market system. Trade unions and pressure groups, operating within the mainstream legal and political framework, became the accepted vehicles through which grievances were to be articulated. Labour politics in Scotland in the future would be democratic, evolutionary, independent and morally infused by the interaction of temperance, religion and

respectability. But they would be understood within a language and meaning system which recognised the validity of class as both an abstract ideological formulation and a lived experience. This was the political legacy of the Chartist years for the workers in Scotland and the rest of Britain. Therefore, the demise of Chartism did not bring an end to the process of class formation, or the desire of the workers for political equality and social security; it simply entered a new phase.

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PART II

Mid-Victorian Scotland and the Politics of Consensus, 1850—1880

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Chapter 7 INTERPRETATIONS

Coming as it does between the turbulent years of Chartism and the rise of socialism in Scotland, the period 1850—1880 has been viewed by some historians as a period of class collaboration and political consensus.1 The class antagonisms of the Chartist era, which threatened to undermine the political system, gave way to a more harmonious

and stable set of social relationships between capital and labour based on a shared commitment to the values and ethos of liberal capitalism. In this scenario of historical development stabilisation was closely identified with the emergence of an élite upper stratum of 10—15 per cent of the working class — the labour aristocracy — whose earnings, lifestyle, status and values isolated it from the rest of the working class and pushed into the welcoming arms of the middle class. Under bourgeois influence and patronage the labour aristocracy actively sought incorporation into the major institutions of civil society and the state, and accepted a framework of industrial relations founded on conciliation rather than conflict. Accommodation rather than confrontation characterised working-class political behaviour in this period. This reading of mid-Victorian social and political relationships has experienced ferocious attacks from historians in recent years in that it is inadequate and simplistic, and at least one of the original formulators of the labour aristocracy thesis has rejected it.2 Critics of the thesis propounded by Hobsbawm, Gray and others have drawn attention to both its socio-economic and political weaknesses. Generally,

the idea of periodising history in such an artificial manner is attacked since very little change is detected in the language or practice of working-class politics in this period. Periodisation, it is argued, is the

outcome of a misreading of Chartism. Only by viewing Chartism as a movement of the class consciousness industrial proletariat could the notion of a mid—Victorian lacuna in the political development of 81

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND T H E POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

the working class be entertained. As Biagini and Reid put it in a classic statement of the new revisionist history:

Our rethinking of post-chartist radicalism . . . begins from the assumption that popular politicking needs to be assessed in the first instance within its own political context, rather than in terms of what it ‘ought’ to have been, defined for example in terms of its consistency with external norms of revolutionary rhetoric or with teleogical models of historical development. . . . Once we place mid- and late—Victorian working—class Liberal and Labour activists back into their own political context in this way, enough continuity in popular radicalism can be demonstrated to make the social explanations of major changes unnecessary.3 Specific criticisms are also aimed at the fundamental props of the labour aristocracy thesis. The existence of a privileged stratum within the working class is considered to be more the product of the historical imagination than reality. Studies of earnings show that they were never regular as all skilled workmen suffered periodic bouts of

unemployment and the only workers who could be guaranteed employment during depressions were foremen and apprentices.4 Moreover, work on expenditure and savings patterns within the working class emphasises that most workers were able to put something by for life cycle events, such as funerals, after meeting their

own personal expenses.5 As to closer identification with the middle classes research on marriage registers in this period has shown that there was minimal mobility between working and middle class, and that workers viewed raising themselves solely within the context of the class they were a part of. Social aspirations operated round the idea of independence rather than acceptance of middle-class lifestyles.6 Trade unions may have spoken the language of conciliation, but they never exercised enough control over their members for this to have had any bearing on industrial relations. Contrary to the Webbs’ ‘new model’ unionism, centralised control was a myth and the workshop rather than the union was the focal point of collective bargaining in

the mid—Victorian period.7 Politically, the working class operated within the inherited framework of radical politics. Continuity rather than change then best sums up this period in the history of the

working class. Indeed, as David Nicholls succinctly puts it in a review of the new revisionist history: ‘According to the revisionist bible, eighteenth century radicalism begat Chartism, Chartism begat popular liberalism, popular liberalism begat New Liberalism, and 82

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Interpretations

New Liberalism begat the Labour Party’.8 The debate over the labour aristocracy was important as it created new understandings of working-class attitudes and behaviour over a wide range of socio-economic and political subjects, from employment patterns, to leisure pursuits and popular politics. But no matter how

telling the criticisms of the thesis were they did not in general provide a satisfactory alternative explanation as to how stabilisation and

political consensus were achieved.9 What we were left with was a picture of a fragmented and sectional working class whose lifestyles and behavioural patterns were so diverse across the country that to talk of class seemed a fruitless exercise. The stress on continuity further confirmed the impression of socio-economic and political stasis. But the historical project to correct the wilder explanatory excesses of the labour aristocracy tended to obscure significant qualitative and quantitative changes taking place both in the composition, and in the workplace and political culture, of the working class. In the middle decades of the century, formerly powerful alternatives

to industrial capitalism, such as the co-operative societies of the Owenites, the trade guilds of the builders’ union, the Chartist land banks, and so on, lost their appeal to the dispossessed. The legitimacy of private property and the permanency of the industrial system was accepted by Scottish and English workers alike. The precepts of the moral economy of the first half of the nineteenth century which had conditioned the political economy of the labour movement gave way to a recognition of labour as a commodity, whose worth was determined by the market rather than by custom and tradition.

There were also changes in the social relations of the workplace and in working-class cultural values. The middle classes mounted an impressive assault on the behaviourial patterns associated with the pre-industrial order, particularly drinking and riotious assembly. Although there had been attempts earlier to remould working-class culture, particularly its rougher aspects, the mid—Victorian period

witnessed an intensification of effort on the part of the middle classes. In the workplace, a more paternalist and welfare-orientated regime was introduced by employers to modify the bitter and hostile relations which had developed in the 18305 and 18405. These shifts in social relations were concomitant with improvements in the standard

of living as real wages increased and brought with them a more benign attitude among workers towards free market capitalism. Politically, important changes were discerned in the conduct and language of political struggle within the working class. Although the violence of Chartism is exaggerated in some accounts of the 18405,10 there is no 83

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MID~VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND T H E POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

doubt that after 1850 working-class politics were more strongly-based on prevailing ideology and working through mainstream institutional channels as a means of resolving continuing socio-economic grievances. John Hodge’s description of the 1866 franchise demonstration

in Glasgow brilliantly captures the respectable and sectional face of the newfound political practice of the workers. He recalled that: ‘I remember the tailors walking in this procession, all dressed with their white shirts and their evening suits, and the other trades all marching in the procession . . . carrying models of their craft, which . . . had been made by their own hand’.11 In the segmented political atmosphere of the decades after Chartism, the concern was less with The Rights of Man and more with the right of respectable working-class householders to share political power through the franchise. These factors are of equal relevance to British workers north and south of the border at this time, but there is also the specifically Scottish changes which need to be considered. Economic restructuring which began in the 18405 witnessed in these middle decades the establishment of a mature industrial economy based on the integration of coal, iron and shipbuilding. This transformation led to the demise of more traditional forms of employment, such as handloom weaving, and even newer occupations in textiles, such as cotton spinning, as well as to a continuous haemorrhaging of labour from agriculture. As the newer occupations were labour intensive, skilled, male and Protestant, a masculine culture operating round the concerns and values of the time-served man was emerging as the hegemonic force within the working class, particularly in the west of Scotland. As we shall see this led to the creation of a peculiarly Scottish political culture somewhat at odds and, at times, in opposition with that prevailing among the working class in England. These changes are in need of explanation as they represent altered

forms of industrial, social and political consciousness compared with those explicit in the radical and Chartist eras. However, in saying this, it is important to recognise that in the process of re—composition

there existed old and new forms of production in industrial Scotland and that led at times to contradictory patterns of political and

workplace behaviour. These contradictions allowed for the continuance of a ‘radical political tradition’ to speak to contemporary concerns regarding the distribution of power and wealth.12 But, in spite of this

duality, the changing nature of the Scottish working class is unmistakable and it is this which provides the key to the process of stabilisation in the mid—Victorian decades.

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Chapter 8

HEAVY INDUSTRY A N D SOCIAL CHANGE, 1850—1880

The obvious starting point for understanding these changes is an examination of the changing nature of the Scottish economy and its impact on the occupational profile of the country. As we have seen prior to 1850 the industrial structure was dependent on a narrow range of textile industries, particularly cotton. This had a retarding effect on the primary and secondary sectors of the economy, as did the frequent economic crises which resulted from overcommitment to a single group of industries. However, with the advent of the railways the heavy industries in the 18403 began to take off; a phenomenon assisted by the inventiveness of the Scots, as well as copious amounts of cheap labour, fuel and energy. Between 1 850 and 1880 these foundations were built on to create a broad industrially-based economy. These decades witnessed the mushroom growth of shipbuilding on the Clyde and the equally impressive growth of the coal and iron industries. The coal industry experienced an impressive surge of growth with output doubling from 7.4m tons to 14.9m tons between 1854 and 1870, and employment from 32 969 workers to 46 984 in the same period. Most of the production was at this time located in the west of Scotland and the region employed around 74 per cent of the workforce in 1870.13 Most of the mined coal was destined for nondomestic consumption with the export market and iron industry consuming between them 40 per cent of output in this period.14 Capitalising on Neilson’s invention of the hot blast furnace, Scottish ironmasters were producing the cheapest pig iron in the world. Output of pig iron increased from 797 000 tons in 1854 to a peak of 1206 000 in 1869—70.” These developments were crucial to the growth of the shipbuilding industry which saw the Clyde’s share of British shipbuilding employment grow from only 3 per cent in 1831 85

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND T H E POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

to 21 per cent (and that of Scotland to 26 per cent) by 1871. In that year the Clyde accounted for 48 per cent of the shipping tonnage launched from British yards.16 The growth of engineering complemented developments in shipbuilding and other transport industries, particularly the railways. The Springburn district of Glasgow became

the world’s leading manufacturer of locomotives. Textiles were still important as an employer of labour, particularly of women. By the 18505 the spread of power-loom weaving brought about the demise of handlooms in all but the fanciest aspects of the trade. The structural changes taking place in the west of Scotland have tended to dominate accounts of the country’s economic history. This has obscured the fact that other parts of Scotland were undergoing a

similar period of transition. Aberdeen’s transition to industrialisation was propelled like many parts of Scotland by the expansion of textiles; however, by 1850 cotton production had collapsed with ‘thousands of hands . . . thrown out of employment’ resulting in ‘an exodus . . . which was almost to nullify the natural increase of population for the next ten years’.17 Industrial collapse was only reversed by the growth of the herring and white fishing industries and granite production.18 By diversifying into new products the Aberdeen economy enjoyed a resurgence and greater prosperity. Dundee adopted the opposite course and as a result saw its economy develop a remarkably high dependence on coarse textiles, particularly flax and jute. Textile firms employed 41 550 workers in 1867, most of them women, which represented more than 25 per cent of the city’s total population.19 The massive surge in economic growth in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was in the main export led. TWO million tons of

mined coal was exported annually between 1865 and 1869. The development of the iron industry was even more determined by export markets. Between 1830 and 1870 Scotland, although only supplying

on average 25 per cent of British output of pig iron, was responsible for between 50 to 90 per cent of British pig iron exports.20 In the engineering industry recurring economic crisis was overcome by diversification of product line and by selling in overseas markets.21 Glasgow’s economy was more dependent on overseas trade than any other British region. The reliance on export markets had the disadvantage of making Scottish manufacturing industry sensitive to shifts in world demand. Shipbuilding suffered seven major cycles averaging seven to nine years between 1822 and 1879.22 Given the integrated

economic structure that had developed in the west of Scotland cyclical depressions in shipbuilding had serious knock—on effects on related 86

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Heavy Industry and Social Change industries. Burghs such as Dundee and Paisley which were reliant on a single industry suffered disproportionately in economic downswings. The collapse of the Paisley shawl trade devastated the town in 1857, as did the repeated cyclical depressions in Dundee.23 The relative success of Scottish industry at this time has overshadowed the fact that much of the manufacturing base was made up of small units of production. Rodger, in his study of mid-Victorian Scottish industry, shows that half the firms in urban areas in this

period employed fewer that five workers and three out of every four firms less than nine. Only 10 per cent of Scottish firms employed more than twenty workers. The largest firms were in textiles with a

mean workforce of 662. However, he also notes that 60 per cent of Scotland’s industrial workforce was concentrated in plants of a hundred or more workers.24 The duality of the industrial structure in Scotland in mid—century was, therefore, evident, and this had some bearing on the divisions between workers: a phenomenon we will examine later in the chapter. However, regardless of the size of enterprise, the rapid expansion of the Scottish economy increased the demand for labour, which became insatiable in times of economic boom. The number of metal workers in Scotland increased from 60 800 in 1851 to 210400 in 1901, an increase of 346 per cent, as did the number in mining from 48 100 to 127 900, an increase of 266 per cent, in the same period. There were similar gains in other branches of industry with the exception of textiles which lost 67 000 jobs over the second half of the nineteenth century.” The rise in industrial employment more than compensated for the decline in agriculture, which saw its share of the total workforce fall from around 30 per cent in 1851 to just over 19 per cent in 1881. The Strathclyde region showed the largest fall of those working in agriculture from just over 16 per cent of the total working population in 1851 to 7.4 per cent thirty years later. Agriculture was only significant as an employer of labour in the rural Borders, Grampian and Highland regions.26

Between the major cities there were contrasting patterns of employment, as there were for men and women. Industrial employ— ment during the period 1 851 to 1881 was the main source of income for Glasgow and Dundee workers with three-quarters in the case of Glasgow and astonishingly nearly nine—tenths in the case of Dundee located in these occupations. However, even in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, two cities with large service sectors, two-thirds of male workers were employed in industry, although only around a third of females.27 87

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MID—VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

Female workers in Scotland were predominantly found in four occupa— tional groups: agriculture, domestic service, clothing and textiles.28 Most of them tended to be young and single with few married women in employment. Although this discounts the number of married women employed in casual or home work, official participation rates in Scotland were some 4 per cent below that for England and Wales in 1871.29 The expansion of the economy and the labour market, as well as the changing character of occupations had important political and social implications. Much of the industrial and political protest prior to 1850 had centred on groups of workers deskilled and impoverished by industrial change such as handloom weavers. The widespread use of the power—loom in the 185 Os witnessed the destruction of handloom weaving as an occupation and the absorption of weavers in other forms of industrial employment. Male cotton spinners, who had formerly been at the frontier of technological change, found themselves outnumbered by women as employers increasingly met internal and external competition by cheapening labour costs. By the 18805 two-thirds of the workforce was female with the number of male workers having declined by 50 per cent between 1 871 and 188 1; a development which was replicated in the woollen industry of the

Scottish border counties.30 The former militancy of the cotton spinners was broken in this new sexual division of labour. Of those workers associated with pre-industrial modes of organisation only the colliers remained. As we will see, they continued to prove militant in times of rising prosperity, but the militancy tended to be confined to the large and integrated coal and iron combines such as the Dixon enter— prises of Lanarkshire. Most miners worked in small pits with the average figure for west Lanarkshire in 1873 being 136.9 men per pit, although in districts such as Old Monklands in 1864 it was as low as 45.6 men per pit. The paternalism of the coalowners in these small

enterprises proved a barrier to effective union mobilisation and it was not until the 18805 that a workforce of around 300 became common for a colliery in the west of Scotland.31 Therefore, as the labour force changed in composition the threats to the industrial order diminished. It assumed a permanency among the workers as they became attuned to bargaining using economic, rather than moral, criteria, indeed, by ‘playing the market’.32 The expansion of the labour market and the rising prosperity of the Scottish economy in this period provided important clues as to the forces promoting social and political stability. For consensus to develop there needs to be tangible evidence that society has the

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Heavy Industry and Social Change sustained ability to deliver an increasing amount of goods and services to a growing population. If the experience of the Soviet Union or Britain in the 19705 is anything to go by it is the provision of larger parcels of consumption, rather than broad and binding policy agreements between corporate powers, which generates the basis of stable social relationships. The first phase of industrialisation saw many workers experience a decline, or at least stagnation, in living standards,

a phenomenon which fuelled much of the industrial and political protest of the 18305 and 18405. The middle decades of the century saw things improve for the broad mass of Scottish workers and their families as ‘investment after 1850 was capital saving and labour using, resulting in a steady growth in employment incomes’.33

Although the data are somewhat fragmented and tend only to cover wage rates rather than actual earnings, as well as making no allowance for unemployment or broken time, which was thought to affect the wages of one in four Scottish workers, there seems to have been a substantial improvement across industry in money wages. During the 1848 depression colliers’ wages had reached a nadir of 105 weekly,34 but by 1863 wages averaged 4s to 45 9d per day in the

Glasgow area, and by 1880 hewers were receiving around 25s 3d per week at a time of falling prices.” In the more skilled trades wages were much higher than in mining. Keith Burgess notes that building wages in Scotland reached parity with England in the 185 Os; a factor which eroded the differential advantage Scottish employers had over English by as much as 15—25 per cent.36 Indeed, between 1843 and 1880 stonemasons in the Glasgow area saw their money wages increase by around 35 s, or 230 per cent, for a reduced working week of 43 hours.37 Engineering and shipbuilding workers also experienced rises in wages. According to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), average minimum wages increased on a much reduced working week from 18—34s in 1851 for 63—57 hours of work, to 22—363 in 1866 for 60—56 hours, and in 1880 to 24—365 for 54 hours.38 Data for the Glasgow area over the same period tend to confirm these estimates as weekly rates for fitters were said to be 288 9d in 1866 for 60 hours of work. Fourteen years later the respective figure was 315 9d for 54 hours, although workers on piece could earn more. Shipyard riveters on the Clyde were earning 253 10d in 1866 for a 60 hour week, but this rose sharply in 1880 to 40$ for those on piece, although the hours

of work were unspecified.” Even among certain sections of the unskilled money wages were rising. Pan men in the sugar refining industry were earning as much as skilled workers, with wages estimated

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

to be 30-408 per week in 1866; and machine men in paper manufacture in 1863 were getting 19—218, although in both cases official reports do not indicate the hours worked.40

Increased income afforded a lifestyle for many workers which allowed for greater variety in the consumption of food, entertainment and travel. A study of the expenditure patterns of a Dundee engineer in 1864—65, shows that his earnings were sufficient to fund a lifestyle which included luxuries such as fruit and sweets, refreshments, shows, newspapers, journals and books, and a fair amount of travel by cab and rail.41 That prosperity was shared by workers outside of the main cities. A Hawick tweed manufacturer, C. J. Wilson, in evidence to the Royal Commission on Labour in 1891, claimed that local

workpeople saved with local building societies, had shares in the co-operative societies of the area, and worked assidiously on their allotments.42 Perhaps, as a consequence of the rising standard of living and improved economic opportunities at home emigration slowed down in the early 18605 and late 18705.43 However, although earnings of a broad range of trades were increasing over the third quarter of the nineteenth century, there remained important vertical divisions among wage earners based on the nature of their economic activity, geographical location and gender. According to Dudley Baxter’s survey of national income in 1867, 70 per cent of working Scots, predominantly young, female and unskilled, earned less than £30 per annum.44 Differentials between the unskilled and skilled were higher in Scotland than in England. Labourers in the Glasgow building trades earned 57 per cent of the skilled rate, whereas in London they earned 66 per cent.“ These differentials were also found to exist between major urban centres. Many of the trades in Aberdeen, such as textiles and fishing, paid low wages in comparison to Clydeside metal trades, but they were

substantially above those in Dundee.46 Aberdeen carpenters and joiners averaged 27s 7d in the early 18905 compared to 36s 1.5d for Glasgow. Inter-city differentials mirrored national ones. Scottish workers were thought to earn 16—19 per cent less than English workers in the 18605.47 As a measure of improvement the first wage census of 1886 saw this narrow to 94.8 per cent of the English rate. However, it was still the case that in the cotton, shipbuilding, construction and printing trades Scottish employees earned substantially less than their English equivalents, while in engineering and carpet

manufacture there was little difference, but in coalmining and linen manufacture wages were a trifle higher.48 90

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Heavy Industry and Social Change

While things were improving, the Scottish economy was still characterised by low wages; a point noted by Edward Young, the US Consul in Edinburgh, who remarked that the world dominance of Clyde shipbuilders was due less to technical superiority and more to ‘the low rate of wages’.49 However, this point was made with even more force when the level of women’s pay is compared to men’s. As

women were seen as dependants rather than breadwinners, which was the case in many households, they were thought to need less to keep them than men. Women’s work was, thus, synonymous with low pay. By the end of the nineteenth century the average wage for a woman was still only 42 per cent of the male average. Even in skilled trades women earned less than men for doing the same job. The highest paid skilled women in the Edinburgh printing trades earned 205 a week, whereas the lowest paid unskilled men and warehouse hands earned between 15 s and 215.50 In spite of these generally low levels of pay there existed an income hierarchy in female occupations. Female cotton spinners earned on average 198 6d a week in 1861, while female jute spinners a paltry 7s 3d.51 In the Paisley thread trade a copwinder received 145 8d a week in 1878 compared to 125 6d for a spooler.52 These differentials were the source of social and work— place divisions. As a female spinner in the Dundee jute trade put it: ‘weavers thought themselves somethin’, aye and winders tae . . . they never looked at us . . . they thought they were somethin’ special. . . . They used to walk past you as if you were something low and they were “it”’.53 Therefore, not all Scots shared in the economic boom of the midVictorian decades and the system of hierarchically determined rewards created social divisions within the ranks of workers. Indeed, 27 per cent of Glasgwegians in gainful employment earned around a pound a week, and from this meagre sum they were expected to feed, clothe and house their families. This was less than it cost the City Poor House or Prison per week for an equivalent number of inmates in their care.54 Low wage levels obviously affected the type and condition of housing that was available for renting. The first reliable guide to this question was provided by the 1861 census. The data showed that one-room houses comprised 34 per cent of the housing stock of Scotland, and that a further 37 per cent consisted of two rooms. Thus, in 1861, 71 per cent of Scottish housing consisted of not more

than two rooms, and housed 64 per cent of the population.” The average size of a one-room house in Edinburgh was only 14 by 11.5 feet, but, in spite of this, 226 000 families inhabited single rooms.56 91

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

The amenities available to tenants were also poor. In 1861, with 91664 inhabitants, Dundee had only five WCS, and three of them were in hotels.57 All water in Dundee was drawn from wells of which the chief, the Lady Well, was heavily polluted by the local slaughter— house.58 The situation was not much better in Dundee’s more prosperous neighbour. As late as 1865 the city engineer, Robert Anderson, stated that two-thirds of Aberdeen had no sewers, and each water well in the city had to supply 400 families.59 Conditions in Scotland were summed up by one contemporary essayist, who wrote in 1866 that:

Sanitary arrangements [are] of the most defective description. . . . The absence of conveniences . . . is a great preventive of that thorough cleanliness and purity. . . as a consequence the atmosphere is foully tainted, and rendered almost unendurable by its loathsomeness at those periods when offal and nuisance require to be deposited on the streets.“ Not surprisingly, overcrowded and cramped low amenity housing

impacted itself on the health of the urban working class. Infant mortality rates were appallingly high in Scotland with 42 per cent of

all deaths in Glasgow in the age cohort 0—5 in 1861.61 Children born in one room houses were the most vulnerable. Of all children in Glasgow who died in 1861 before the age of five, 32 per cent were born or living in ‘single ends’, while only 2 per cent were in five roomed houses.62 The most common killer was gastric illnesses, but in truth the majority died because their mothers were too undernourished to feed them properly. This underlines the fact that epidemics and poor health were not simply the result of bad housing and defective drinking supplies. Part of the problem lay with food and

drink adulteration, but conditions in the workplace also had a major impact on health. A study of Tranent, near Edinburgh, in the 18408 found that mining, because of the dirt and dust, was an unhealthy

trade. Out of 35 colliers’ families, the average age of death for the male head of household was 34, while the average age of death for male factory workers was over 50.63 The poverty was made worse by the continuous flood of people looking for work in the cities and towns. The working or occupied population of Glasgow nearly doubled from 123 052 in 1841 to 233 982 in 1881; while in the same period Dundee grew even more spectacularly from 24 785 to 69 150, and Edinburgh from 57 626 to 104 985 .64 The influx showed a different pattern to that of the first 92

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Heavy Industry and Social Change half of the nineteenth century. Nearly half of all migrants to the west of Scotland in the decades 1851 to 1871 were from rural areas in lowland Scotland, but the most homogeneous group came from the Scottish Highlands. From 54 000 in 1851 the number grew to 79 000 twenty years later, of which over 70 per cent were settled in the

Glasgow district.“ The Irish continued to settle in Scotland in large numbers, but the tidal wave of the 18405 had began to slow, and there was a shift in the religious denomination of the incomers. By 1871 the number of Irish—born in Scotland stood at 207 700, of which 76 per cent were located in the west of Scotland. Although this represented only 13 per cent of the total population of Scotland, Anthony Slaven argues that ‘Somewhere between a quarter to a third of the inhabitants . . . must have been of Irish extraction’.66 Moreover, half of all Irish immigrants to Scotland in the period 1851 to 1881 were Protestant,67 although in the quinquenium 1876—81 the figmre was

much higher at 83.2 per cent. Of these incoming Irish Protestants, 58.7 per cent came from the four most staunch Ulster counties — Antrim, Armagh, Down and Tyrone.68 Reflecting the new pattern of Irish immigration was the establishment by 1878 of 100 Orange Lodges in Glasgow with a membership of 15 000 out of a total of 90 000 for England and Scotland.69 Irish Protestants, through patronage and the right of the foreman to hire and fire, found their way into skilled occupations in shipbuilding and engineering; however, the Catholic Irish remained confined to unskilled low paid employment. In 1851, 52 per cent of the unskilled

workers in Greenock were Irish—born and this was still the case forty years on; in Coatbridge in 1861 around 60 per cent of unskilled metal workers were Irish.70 Employers generally colluded in this practice or adopted a position of benign neglect. But in some enterprises an openly hostile attitude to Catholic Irish workers was displayed. The iron and coal magnate, William Baird, closed his Gartsherrie works in Lanarkshire on Sundays to allow workers to attend church and encouraged strong Orange sympathies among them.71 The third quarter of the nineteenth century provided rising living standards for many workers, although as we have seen the young, women and ethnic groups were by-passed in the distribution of rewards. Poverty and poor social conditions remained a way of life for far too many in Scotland, however, the rise in employment incomes put respectability within the grasp of increasing numbers of

workers and their families. This was to have an important impact on the cultural ethos of the Scottish working class.

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Chapter 9

RESPECTABILITY AND THE SCOTTISH WORKING CLASSES, 1850—1880

Respectability was based on a series of social and economic supports including regular earnings and employment, sobriety and thrift. While the fluctuating fortunes of the Scottish economy could not

always guarantee the former, there seems clear evidence that many skilled workers and their families subscribed to some negotiated form of the latter. Respectability can be said to have been negotiated because, although nurtured by the middle classes as part of a cultural and religious onslaught on the values of the working class, particularly those associated with the older, rougher culture of pre-industrial society, it was modified in the light of the realities of working-class life. The drive towards respectability arose out of middle-class fears over slum life and the integrity of the working-class family, as well as the desire to promote greater standards of public order, and this led to a barrage of initiatives designed to promote self-help and selfimprovement schemes. However, it also involved concessions ‘from the people above’, such as the building of libraries and public parks, and, more politically, the passing by the state of legislation designed to improve the economic and political position of the working class. Middle-class concerns were to some extent not surprising as the

depravity surrounding the culture of drink reached the point where on New Year’s Day in Aberdeen ‘old and middle aged men and women and boys and girls [were] falling about in a state of intoxication at

two o’clock in the day’.72 In Glasgow, a team of investigators working for the North British Mail estimated that in the old city centre there

were 200 brothels and 150 shebeens in operation in the early 18705. These were split into ‘respectable’ shebeens in which only the licens-

ing laws were violated, the ‘disreputable’ which were frequented by 94

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Respectabilz'ty and the Scottish Working Classes the criminal fraternity, and the ‘wee’ shebeens ‘on the stair head’.73

Moreover, the riotous behaviour surrounding the monarch’s birthday continued after 1850. An example of this was the riot which broke out in Dundee on Queen Victoria’s birthday in 1853 which led to the sacking of the town hall and the breaking of every window in the High Street. What, asked an editorial in the Dundee Advertiser, can you expect if ‘you coop up hordes of human beings in narrow pestilential closes, hemmed in on all sides by whisky shops, pawn shops’ without regard to their ‘social condition’.74 The response to this kind of social pandemonium was swift and within twelve years the journeyman engineer, John Sturrock, could enjoy a performance of the Artillery Band in Dundee’s Baxter Park on the monarch’s birthday without a ‘hint of the disorder that coloured earlier celebrations of this event’.75 The eradication of unruly

and riotous behaviour involved the middle classes in the promotion of acceptable and respectable behaviour and an obvious starting point in this process of remoulding working class culture was the reform of drinking habits. In this endeavour middle-class philanthropists and the state built on the foundations established in the 18305 and 18405 among skilled workers and Chartists. The labour movement in Scotland, unlike that in England, had introduced the practice of holding meetings in coffee shops rather than public houses at an early date.“ Coopers used the fines and footings collected from apprentices and strangers, previously for the purpose of financing alcoholic excess, for respectable ‘annual soirées, pleasure excursions, vocal and instrumental events’.77 This change also applied to the loosely organised trades councils which emerged in the post-1850 period. The Edinburgh Trades Council (ETC) met in a coffee shop from its inception until 1867 and, then for the next twenty years, in a temperance hotel.78 Trade union leaders railed against the demon drink as harmful to the interests of the trade and to the labour movement in general. The Boilermakers’ Society complained that ‘stopping off drinking is the greatest evil that our trade and society has to contend against’;79 a View underscored by the Ironfounders’ Society which claimed that all non-unionists were by definition, mostly corrupt, tending to be ‘drunkards, idlers and very often improvident men’.80 Employers, anxious to maintain production and reduce absenteeism, and the state, concerned over

questions of public order, were also enthusiastic supporters of temperance. By the 18605, temperance lodges were established at Calder, Gartsherrie and Calderbank ironworks, and legislation in the form

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MID—VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND T H E POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850-1880

of the Forbes Mackenzie Act of 1853 brought in Sunday closing of

pubs, though not of hotels.81 The rhetoric of union leaders was supplemented by initiatives from temperance societies. The Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT) formed in 1869 and the Independent Order of Rechabites (IOR) were the largest organisations of this kind in Scotland, with the former’s Airdrie branch being the largest temperance lodge in the world.82 However, as Callum Brown notes, by this time the leadership of the temperance movement had been ‘appropriated by the middle classes and the churches’83 and the links it enjoyed with radical politics were severed by the change of leaders. Nevertheless, the impact of the societies could be electric. The arrival in 1870 of the IOGT in Aberdeen brought a membership of 4000 and 23 lodges within a year.84 Bands of Hope, mixing religion and temperance, were set up in the 18705 to target children and young people. In Glasgow, the Abstainers’ Union established the highly popular Saturday night concerts from 1854 to 1914, which attracted the best professional performers from the British music hall and international opera stars, while the smaller societies, such as the Temperance Crusaders, ran their own successful amateur concerts.“ Outside of temperance reform, voluntary societies addressed them— selves to a wide range of social problems, but the integrity of the working-class family and, in particular, the position of women and young females was at the forefront of middle-class concerns. Domestic training for girls was written into the school curriculum after the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872, not only because of the middle class’s need for servants, but also, as Helen Corr points out, because it was ‘feared that the working class family in towns and cities was falling into a state of physical deterioration through

poor housing, bad health and moral decay’.86 Outside the classroom organisations like the Aberdeen Ladies Union (ALU), which had as

its object ‘the bringing together of all workers for the welfare of women and girls in Aberdeen’, worked among the half-timers in the textile mills. The ALU attempted to extend a form of social control over the behaviour of the mill girls by raising ‘the moral standard in all ways possible’. This was to be done through the establishment of ‘lily bands’, whose main social activities included reading circles, needlework and family worship. Within two years of its foundation

in 1883 the ALU had 300 mill girls enrolled in ‘lily bands’. For older females ‘lily band’ evening classes were established along the same lines and they had around 250 members in the late 18805.87 Eleanor 96

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Respectability and the Scottish Working Classes Gordon, in her study of the Dundee jute industry, noted that several middle-class voluntary associations developed in the city to instruct mill girls in ‘dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundry’, and so on.88 It would appear that as far as the middle class was concerned the crisis of the working-class family was to be resolved by strengthening

the Victorian association of women with the domestic sphere and men with the world of work, even in places such as Dundee where a high percentage of households were dependent on the earnings of women.89

Upon these social constructs a system of patriarchy emerged in both the workplace and the wider society. Although the role of patriarchy has not been fully explored in the context of Scottish workplace relations, its existence points to another source of cultural fragmentation within the working class, and, as Patrick Joyce suggests, to the creation of ‘all sorts of understandings with employers (a “boss” in his sphere as was the worker in his home and work functions)’.90 Women’s work, therefore, where it was not considered irrelevant, was unrespectable. The mixing of the sexes was considered undesirable

even by pro—labour publications. The Chartist Circular claimed that factory work ‘degraded and contaminated’ female workers; the Glasgow Sentinel declared in 1 860 that: ‘The employment of women at occupations where it is necessary they should be mixed up with men is not desirable’.91 Attempts to restructure the working-class family and to maintain

the subordination of women in and out of the workplace were linked to the need to provide healthy and ‘rational’ recreation, particularly as a counterweight to the public house. By refocusing working-class leisure pursuits round the family a more respectable and less rough culture might emerge. The public parks movement was one element in this strategy. Dundee’s Baxter Park, named after one of the city’s leading jute manufacturers, was constructed with the surface objective of providing ‘the working population [of Dundee] with a means of recreation and enjoyment after their hard labour and honest industry’; but also with the more discrete objective of dissolving class tensions by providing a ‘common ground, where all the inhabitants of that large and busy town may meet in mutual acknowledgement of their dependence of the one upon the other’?2 Cricket and rowing were

also promoted with similar social objectives as alternatives to the rough culture and enjoyed some popularity among workers. Neal Tranter’s research on the social origins of organised sport in and around Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire shows that in the years 97

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

1880—83 skilled workers and the middle classes made up just over 80 per cent of cricketers, whereas football, athletics and quoiting drew players from almost an exclusively skilled backgrounds.93 Interestingly,

the research shows that down to the 18805 active participants in organised sport were rarely drawn from the ranks of the unskilled or semi-skilled. Even among football players only one in ten was an

agricultural or semi-skilled worker, while at the level of club office— bearer public service and professional occupations dominated.94 The social purpose of these sporting ventures was fairly explicit. Wishaw Cricket Club was formed in 1856 with the express desire to ‘draw the young men away from the public houses and other evil devices’ and to promote more social harmony.” Their organisational structure also reflected the class basis of society and reinforced the

superior status of the middle classes in their capacity as office-bearers. Sharing this objective, Volunteer Companies, established during the French invasion threat of 1859, survived to bring different social

classes together.96 Far from blind to the opportunities the Volunteers provided for reinforcing employer authority, firms set up their own branches. In the integrated coal and iron firms of Lanarkshire, Volunteer Companies were set up in which the managers were the officers, the foremen the NCOs, and the colliers the privates; a hier-

archical structure which reproduced the authority relations of the workplace.” Regardless of origin, leisure pursuits had to be afforded and this necessitated a commitment to the virtues of thrift. The mid—Victorian decades witnessed the growth of savings banks and functional cooperative societies, divorced from the socially transforming role assigned to them by Owen, as institutions of working-class self-help. Savings banks had a preponderance of stonemasons, joiners and engineers among their depositors, although very few, according to Levitt and Smout, were ‘unskilled urban labourers either in Scotland or England’.98 However, female factory workers in Paisley were the main contributors to the assets of the Paisley Savings Bank, which saw its deposits grow from £60 000 in 1854 to upwards of £90 000 in 1871.99 Similarly, those workers involved in the co-operative

movement came from a wide—range of trades, although the artisan or ‘skilled class’ predominated.100 The Bannockburn society was composed mainly of ‘carpet weavers and pitmen’; the Kilmamock society set up in 1860 was the work of ‘handloom carpet weavers’ — a ‘class of men esteemed for their intelligence and thrift’ — and engineers; and the Paisley society was found on the initiative of groups of weavers.101 98

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Respectability and the Scottish Working Classes Religion was another arm in the weaponry of the culture of order; a process which had begun with Thomas Chalmers’ social work in Glasgow in the 18205. The skilled worker had always figured prominently in the congregations of the established church, but the Disruption of 1843 in the Church of Scotland over the question of

patronage had led many to leave the fold. However, this did not lead to a diminution in church attendance as the rivalry with the Free Church led to a furious church building programme. A study of eight Glasgow churches in the period 1845—65 showed that three—quarters of 1330 members of the Church of Scotland and over half the 2663 members of the dissenting churches were mainly skilled working class.102 The United Presbyterians and the Free Church increasingly drew their ministers from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie and skilled workers.103 For those outside the ranks of the skilled stratum — the ‘godless poor’ — a whole series, of admittedly partially successful, initiatives were promoted by the churches. The range of this cultural assault can be guaged from the activities of St Mary’s Free Church in the working-class district of Govan, Glasgow. By the end of the 18805 St Mary’s had 1137 children enrolled in its Sunday School, 493 in Bible class, 155 Sunday School teachers, a company of the Boys Brigade numbering 58, Gospel Temperance meetings with 420 members, a Penny Savings Bank, several branches of the YMCA, and 292 Home Mission workers.104 If that was not enough there were congregational district visitors, ‘Bible Women’, the Salvation Army from the late 18705, Mothers’ Kitchen Prayer Meetings, and Medical Missions. There were also missions to seamen, railwaymen, and shipyard workers, as well as evangelical ‘tents’ for the poor in major urban centres!“ Peter Taylor, an engineer, recalled in his autobiography, that the local minister, Dr Andrew Bonar, frequently addressed the workers of Barclay and Curle, Whiteinch, Glasgow, during their dinner hour.106 Callum Brown has also pointed to the ‘controlled’ religious revivals of the third quarter of the nineteenth century led by the Free and United Presbyterian Churches,1°7 which contrasted with the millenial rivalism occurring in Lanarkshire colliery villages, Perth factories and

Shotts ironworks of the 18305 and 1840s. One at Kilsyth in 1839 paralysed a whole community as ‘the web became nothing to a

weaver, nor the forge to the blacksmith, nor his bench to the carpenter, nor the furrow to the ploughman. They forsook all to crowd the churches and prayer meetings?“ Revivalism was, therefore, stripped of its class identity and spread under its more respectable cloak to

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the middle- and working—class families of Edinburgh and Glasgow

by the 18708; a high point of which was the Moody and Sankey revival of 1874. Quasi-religious organisations further enhanced con-

tacts between the skilled workers and other social groupings. By 1879 the Masonic Order in Scotland was estimated to have just over

69 000 members in lodges affiliated to the Grand Order and over a thousand dormant lodges. With its distinguished patrons, including members of the royal family, and high entry fees and annual subscriptions, the Order had strong artisan and middle class membership.109 However, perhaps, the main tool of middle-class social engineering was education. As we have seen industrialisation, with its demand for child labour, had a baneful effect on education. Attendance was intermittent and the peak years for boys seemed to have been between the ages of seven and ten. The 1872 Education Act was passed to address this problem by introducing compulsory schooling

for working-class children between the ages of five and thirteen, although those reaching the fifth grade before thirteen could gain exemption after the age of ten. The impact of the legislation was profound. While in 1857 only around half of Glasgow’s children attended school, and only a third of Catholics of school age, by the end of the century attendance was fairly universal and illiteracy had been virtually wiped out for both sexes.110 However, the schools were not only transmitters of literacy and numeracy skills, but also agents of discipline and order. School rules included the injunction that:

‘there should be sustained quietness and instantaneous obedience’.111 Should the injunction fail, the tawse was always on hand to enforce silence. The habits instilled in the children in the classroom were designed to make them amenable to the disciplines of the work rhythm of the factory and workshops, as well as to the authority of those above them. Increasingly imperial and military considerations

came to dominate the political agenda in schools. Military drill was taught by eX—soldiers, who were often employed as janitors, and it was added to in time by emphasis on musical drill and gymnastics, all thought by the Educational News to encourage in pupils:

The habit of acting in concert, of strict obedience to the word of command, of deference to authority, of military precision, all contribute to the formation of a character, in which sense of duty, esprit de corps, respect for authority, and affection for, and loyalty to, school, are conspicuous. . . . pupils imbued with such a spirit will go out into the world well prepared to play their part as good citizens.112

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Respectability and the Scottish Working Classes Education also reinforced, as we have noted above, the gender divi-

sions of the wider society with girls being educated in domestic skills, while the boys were fitted to take part in the world of work.

The cultural attack by the middle class on the disorderly habits of working—class life was complemented by the growing moderation

and restraint shown by workers and their families. If the response by the latter had not been positive, the overtures from ‘the people above’ would have come to nothing. By responding in such a sure

manner to values such as sobriety and thrift, the working class could have been said to have been embourgeoised. However, the values were sufficiently ambiguous to be open to a variety of interpretations. As R. Q. Gray points out, ‘these values and norms were reinterpreted within the upper working class’s social world: their meaning might change as they became embroidered in distinctive manual working class institutions’.113 The meaning skilled workers attached to these ‘values and norms’ derived from their social and economic concerns and fears; in that sense they could be described as functional. Temperance made sense in as much as marginal income and working time lost in drinking endangered the family as a viable social unit and one’s life chances. Indeed, the success of the temperance societies lay less in their promotion by employers, and more because they not only offered spiritual and moral guidance, but also a range of welfare

benefits and a form of recreation which was more family orientated than that provided by the public house. Under the impact of shorter hours, particularly from the 18708, and rising incomes there was a cultural shift towards the family and home life; a development encouraged by bargaining round the concept of the ‘family wage’. A thrifty worker made it possible for his wife to remain at home and to open avenues for improved education for his children. Savings also ensured survival during periods of distress and illness in a pre-welfare society, as well as allowing the worker to set aside some money for the buying and replacement of lost or worn out tools, and to pay the rent, which in Scotland was collected on a yearly or half—yearly

basis. Finally, thrift provided a measure of independence, which David Kirkwood, of ‘Red Clydeside’ fame, defined in the words of father, a skilled worker, as:

Not being starved, not being homeless, not being in debt. It meant, above all, not being thrown on the parish [which] . . . was to be cast into the bottomless pit. . . . The glorious privilege of being independent was no mere poet’s fancy. It was the very marrow of life.114 101

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND T H E POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

Following what Kirkwood has to say on the matter, the material basis of respectability should not be lost sight of. As Hamish Fraser points out, a ‘respectable’ man in an economy based on reputation and

trust had a much better chance of finding employment, obtaining credit, receiving a character reference, finding an apprenticeship for his son, and getting a decent house.“5 Although modified by the realities of working-class life and open to diverse and ambiguous meanings, there is little doubt that the

promotion of respectability by the middle classes and the subscription to its underlying values by workers went some way to encour— age greater understanding between the various social strata in Scottish society. As we have seen, temperance was from the outset an alliance between the petty bourgeoisie and the working class. Its basic premise was that working—class poverty was the result of drink, rather than the inadequacies of the free market economy, and these assumptions were shared by the politically conscious members of the working class, and, at a later date, by socialists such as Keir Hardie. Intellectualising poverty in this way individualised the problem and encouraged ideas of self-help or self-improvement. Although primarily associated with the voluntary institutions, such as Mechanics

Institutes, mutual self-improvement initiatives also took place at the segmented workplace level. Peter Taylor recalled, while working at Blackwood and Gordon, shipbuilders and engineers, Paisley, settingup a Mutual Improvement Association among the apprentices. The Association’s twenty members met in Taylor’s mother’s kitchen, where they discussed all sorts of issues and subjects, ranging from geology to trade unionism, before ‘closing with a prayer’.116 Other voluntary societies also helped to promote a shared consensus on social and political issues, particularly the debating and literary societies which young artisans clustered around. James Leatham, a printer and, later,

socialist agitator and writer, recalled that in his youth the Aberdeen Commercial Literary Society of which he was a member consisted of a ‘crowd of young lawyers, solicitors, medical students and skilled workers’.117 Affording the membership fees of clubs and societies was a hallmark

of respectability, as was membership of a church. Indeed, religion acted as a social cement bringing together and furthering under— standings between the different social classes in Scotland. Scottish Presbyterianism’s virulent brand of anti—Catholicism was used to define a sense of Scottish identity which excluded large sections of society, particularly the Catholic Irish. In much the same way as race 102

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Respectability and the Scottish Working Classes in the Southern states of America in the post-Reconstruction era created alliances between poor whites and their social superiors, sectarianism in Victorian Scotland performed a similar function, as hostility to Irish Catholics cut across all social groups. Helen Crawfurd, daughter of a small bakery owner in Glasgow, and, later, a leading suffragette and member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), recalled in her autobiography that she looked ‘upon the Fenian and Catholic Irish as sub—human’.118 David Kirkwood, speaking of his childhood in Glasgow, referred to the social distance between Catholic and Protestant, saying ‘it would be untrue to say we were one people. Religion and race . . . kept us apart’.“9 The response of the Irish was to withdraw into their own community which centred on the Church and a reactionary priesthood. As William Walker points out: ‘the Catholic Church created an entire way of life based upon the parish church, school and church hall’.120 Respectability was, thus, a culture of exclusion. It sought to repro-

duce the status hierarchies of the workplace in the wider society and shore up gender divisions by increasing the dependency of women on men. John Holley, in his study of working family economies in Victorian Scotland, showed that the level of female dependency on

men increased in proportion to the skill of the worker. In the Borders tweed mill of Ballantynes, Walkerburn, in 1881, 57 per cent of skilled workers’ families were dependent on the man’s wage, compared to only 31 per cent of unskilled workers’ families.121 Respectability

from whatever point of examination was, thus, ultimately divisive. However, these relationships and hierarchies were influenced to a large degree by the speed and scope of technological and organisational change taking place in the economy.

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Chapter 10

SKILL AND MANAGERIAL AUTHORITY, 1 850—1 8 8 0

In periods of intense change, such as that associated with the first half of the nineteenth century, the status of formerly respected occupations, such as handloom weaving, and the literate culture and way of life associated with them could be undermined and ultimately destroyed. William Thom, the poet weaver, was so impoverished that he could not purchase a copy of the Aberdeen [ournal in which his first poem was published.122 These insecurities did not disappear

after 1850, but in the third quarter of the nineteenth century tech— nological changes did not appear as threatening. The expansion of the economy brought with it not only more jobs and higher wages, but also new products, which called on an even greater demand for a variety of skills. Cotton was perhaps the most affected by technological innovation with the introduction of the self-acting spinning mule, which was gradually appropriated by female spinners, and the universalisation of power-loom weaving. Similarly, shipbuilding experienced profound redistribution of skill and a heightened division of labour with the change from wood to iron and, later, steel construction. As a result the shipwright was marginalised, but the change in material created a highly skilled class of metal workers, whose job it was to shape, bend and join hot iron plates. However, the new subdivision of

labour mean that no trade was capable of controlling the work process. As W C. Steadman put it: In the building of the hull of an iron ship, the work which in earlier times, and in wooden ships, would have been done by one man . . . is now divided up amongst men in several branches, such as platers, riveters, holders-up, putters—in, drillers. What

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Skill and Managerial Authority

have originally been branches of one trade, have now become distinct trades in themselves.123

The construction industry was also affected by significant changes in the distribution of skills, with some trades being subject to deskilling. According to Raymond Postgate, painting was by the 18605 open to unskilled labour and master painters ‘could and did put totally

unskilled labour, after perhaps a half-a—day’s instruction, onto slopping paint on their jobs’.124 In plumbing a rural/urban divide emerged

with the town plumber concerning himself with the erection and repair of WCs, while in the country he specialised in installation and maintenance of pipes.125 Supplementing the specialisation of labour was the shift to a rudimentary system of standardised parts. Much of

the preparatory work in the construction industry was being reduced through prefabrication. Saw mills took over from the carpenter the business of making doors, staircases, windows, and so on;126 prefab-

rication did away with the need for plumbers to make their own pipes.127

In other trades changes were confined to the reorganisation of production, which increased firm and product specialisation and intensified the division of labour. In engineering local specialisms began to emerge in the 185 Os and 18608. Bertrams in Edinburgh was already a noted manufacturer of paper-making machinery by the early 185 Os, and engineering firms in Leith specialised in marine engineering!” In the Glasgow area locomotives, textile machines and marine engineering were specialised product lines. As the president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers put it in 1874, ‘within the last few years . . . the business of mechanical engineering has divided itself into distinct branches so that the locomotive builder is little more than

locomotive builder’.129 The decline of the multi-product engineering workshop reduced the need for all round skills; indeed, it was rare after 1850 for apprentices in large works to be trained in all aspects of the engineer’s craft and they became specialised as either fitters or turners.13° In the coal industry the extensive use of blasting powder in the

18508 increased output and that in itself necessitated the introduction of labour saving haulage devices to speed up the transfer of coal

from the bottom of the pit to the top. Winding machines and endless chains and ropes were introduced in addition to steam-powered underground haulage engines which replaced the muscle power of

men and horses. As more coal could be transported to the surface the 105

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

traditional output restrictions of the collier, that is, the darg, were interfered with.131 Although they did much to improve productivity, these innovations did not make any serious inroads into the skill of the collier; indeed, the most important change in the position of the

coal-getter was the tightening of industrial discipline and the introduction of a new contract system in the 1 85 Os which made all agreements terminable on a day’s notice. In 1866 no notice at all was needed, which had a two-sided effect on relations between owners and colliers. The owners were empowered to regulate output more closely with demand, but, at the same time, allowed the colliers to leave a badly paid contract for a more lucrative one.132 Complementing contract changes was the increase in supervisory workers. By 1868 one in fifteen persons employed in the pits of Scotland was either a manager, deputy manager, or overlooker.133 Colliers were also forced to instruct labour chosen by management, which effectively challenged entry rules and the system of patrimony it was based on, and they were in the 185 Os forbidden to form trade unions or hold meetings underground.134 The technical improvements, however, were not in the main labour displacing. The element of ‘craft mystery’ was still in many trades a tangible factor giving the worker a measure of control over the planning and execution of his work, something which was enhanced by the marked unwillingness of Scottish employers to alter the capital] labour ratio due to recurring problems in world markets. In these circumstances deskilling was hardly a viable strategy in the pursuit of increased productivity and lower costs, and realisation of this led employers to experiment with a series of industrial strategies to address the question of the wage/effort bargain and to enhance their control over their workforce. This was achieved through direct (enhanced control and supervision) and indirect (internal subcontracting and incentive payments schemes) means. Paternalism was, perhaps, the most sophisticated method of establishing direct social control over the workforce. It had a long historical pedigree as a means of social control within the relatively closed parameters of landed society, and was traditionally used as a way of managing the tensions which arose from the existence of huge

inequalities in the distribution of power and wealth within this mode of production. The operation of the system was based on both parties

in landed society recognising the reciprocal rights and duties involved in the paternal relationship. In return for the acceptance of the unquestioned right of the landowner to exercise authority and power

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Skill and Managerial Authority in his sphere of ownership, the subordinate members of landed society expected to have work for life and to be protected against exigent problems, such as famine, and other pressures resulting from the growing commercialisation of agriculture in the eighteenth century. Recent historical research has applied this concept to the wider arena of class relations in capitalist society, as well as industrial enterprises,

most notably Patrick Joyce’s study of the Lancashire cotton towns.135 Joyce argues that the implementation of paternalism by employers was fundamental to understanding the stabilisation of class relations

in the mid—Victorian period. As employers moved away from a policy of confrontation and the intensive quest for accumulation, a civic ethos emerged which stressed the virtues of philanthropy and of awarding recognition to labour. Although this did not abolish conflict between capital and labour, it modified it and made it more manageable. At the micro level of individual enterprises, detailed studies by historians have shown how paternalism encouraged worker identification with the goals of management and assisted in the recruitment and retention of labour through establishing strong links with worker families and firms.136 Powerful and informative as these studies might be, one can argue that Joyce, in particular, has placed too much weight on the concept as a means of understanding the stabilisation mid-Victorian liberal capitalism. Paternalism has several limitations and weaknesses as a strategy for manufacturing consent in the workplace and the wider industrial/urban culture and an awareness of these will help in applying the concept in a more meaningful and insightful manner. Firstly, as Newby et al. have observed, paternalism in landed society was based on tradition, which legitimised the right of the person embodying it to control subordinate forms of labour. This enabled power relations to become moral ones as the subordinate classes accepted the dominant class’s definition of their social situation.137 However, the moral authority of the landowner was not easily transferable to a capitalist society, where social relationships were governed less by intimate personal bonds, and more by what Thomas Carlyle called the ‘cash nexus’. The authority of the capitalist was established through the wages system and worker dependence, rather

than by custom and tradition. Job security and protection from exigencies were seen as barriers to the free movement of capital and labour, and in a price conscious society the antithesis of the laws of supply and demand. Security of employment was, moreover, problematic in a society in which wealth was as much destroyed as it was created through the continuous cycle of boom and bust.

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND T H E POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

Secondly, the intimate nature of the class structure of landed society was missing in industrial capitalism after its pioneering phase. Social distance increased between the worker and the employer both

in the workplace and the community. The defection of the middle class from the disease-ridden and overcrowded inner-city areas to the

cleaner and healthier suburbs reconstructed residential patterns on explicitly class lines.138 The workers became alienated from other social classes and only came into contact with their superiors in the course of their work; but even here this was becoming rarer as industry grew in size and employers withdrew from the sphere of production, devoting their energies towards the sphere of distribution. As

plant size increased the construction of a bureaucracy was unavoid— able, and this development, as we will see, placed several tiers of authority between the owner and the worker. Thirdly, the impersonal nature of production in capitalist society made expectations of deferential behaviour unrealistic among urban

proletarians, particularly skilled workers, of which independence was one of the chief characteristics of their culture. As Joyce notes, the desire for self-respect among workers meant that the deferential aspect of the paternalistic relationship was missing in an industrial environment. He also noted that the desire for self-respect was also reciprocated by the employers, many of whom had risen from humble backgrounds. They disliked being called ‘Sir’, and were acutely aware of the need to combine the aloof with the familiar.139 Such factors as these restricted the operation of paternalism to specific locations and production sites. Glasgow, for instance, with its massive and continually shifting population, and its varied occupational structure, lacked the community stability needed to cement paternalistic relations. Although some of the larger textile firms in the city adopted a policy of company welfare, as did the Caledonian Railway Company through its company sponsored Friendly Society, the scope was limited and the rewards negligible.140 Shipbuilding

firms owned considerable amounts of housing, but this was used

either to overcome problems associated with fluctuating labour supplies, or to prevent supervisors from occupying the same tenements as journeymen.141 As Joe Melling argues, the provision of welfare in these cases was based on a rational cost/benefit basis or with an avertly strategic purpose behind it.142 It was, therefore, in the small towns and isolated industrial villages, where the employer(s) had a near monopoly in the labour market, controlled housing, and through acts of public benevolence was able to extend the workplace

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Skill and Managerial Authority authority beyond the walls of the factory, that paternalism was a realistic and highly beneficial employer strategy. Paternalism was used extensively in the thread mills of Paisley and the coalfields of Midlothian where the working community was more cohesive and stable and dependency on a specific employer was evident. Hassan’s study shows that in 1861, 94.9 per cent of all

Newtongrange miners had been born in the coalfield, with the Irish only accounting for 1.3 per cent of the total population of the area.

Participation rates in the mining industry among the males in the five villages studied varied from 70 to 100 per cent.143 In Paisley a similar pattern emerged. A study of heads of households having connection with the textile industry showed that in 1851, 77 per cent were natives of the burgh; while in Bridgeton, Glasgow, the figure was only 36 per cent.144

The stable communities were treated to a range of welfare provision designed to increase worker dependency on the employer, all of which, as we will see, helped stabilise industrial relations. The thread barons of Paisley not only provided a comprehensive system of welfare for their own employees, which included pensions, schooling and housing, they also donated hospitals, churches, schools and other civic amenities to the town.145 Their antennae reached beyond the factory gates to enmesh a whole community of workers in a social

matrix welded together by a mixture of material and ideological supports which were both obvious and, at the same time, discrete and subtle. Even those workers in Paisley not directly dependent on the thread firms for employment and wages felt able to identify with their commercial success and civic benevolence, as did the town’s smaller enterprises. The procession to mark the inauguration of the George A. Clark Town Hall in 1882 symbolised the economic and social power of the threadocracy. Every trade in Paisley was represented, from blacksmiths to joiners, from bricklayers to engineers, as well as friendly societies, public authorities and officials. The banners of the various trades included inscriptions such as ‘Wher’er the Town

Hall chimes do ring, the Donors to our minds they bring’ (threadworkers); ‘Long live the Brothers [Clark] one and all, the Donors of the new town hall’ (joiners); and ‘Combine to support, but not to injure’ (bakers).146 The celebrations surrounding the inauguration of the Town Hall were interpreted by the working class in terms of mutual dependency. This was also true of other industries and small towns. In the Mid— lothian coalfields, the owners donated libraries, schools, bowling 109

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

greens and parks to the mining communities, and also provided assistance for Widows of colliers killed in mining accidents and benefits for those men incapacitated through industrial injury.147 Housing was also provided at Dalkeith rent free and was found to be superior to that generally prevailing in Scottish mining districts. Moreover, housing was never seen as a weapon against militancy as it was in Coatbridge for instance. Evictions were not unknown, but they were

said to have been ‘rare’.148 These acts of benevolence had the effect of not only increasing worker identification with the firm, but also, depending on the scale of the civic philanthropy, of representing the industrial community in the persona of the employer. An example of this was the monument of the shipyard workers of Dumbarton to the memory of their employer, William Denny, shipbuilder. Another might be found in the workers of Coats, cotton thread manufacturers of Paisley, parading the streets of Edinburgh on an away day excursion with their company banners, or turning up in their ‘hundreds . . . late at night’ in 1857 to welcome James Coats and his American bride back from their honeymoon. The Paisley Herald described the scenes:

The deafening shout of the multitude when the first carriage came in sight, the music of the instrumental bands . . . there was also artillery to fire midnight salvoes, after which the carriage horses were unyoked, [and] a great army of Ferguslie workers pulled the first carriage up to Woodside House where his father lived.149 Where paternalism was not an option other forms of direct control were adopted. In industries where work was confined under one roof as in factories and workshops, close supervision by foremen was

favoured as a way of imposing more discipline and pushing the workforce to more effort. The foreman performed most of the tasks of management; he was an organiser, responsible for hiring and firing, distributing overtime, training, and ensuring the smooth running of the production process; and he was also a quality controller in the absence of such a workplace specialist. Enjoying relative economic security in times of depression, the foreman had a lifestyle which marked him out in the working community. As an authority figure, embodying the economic and social power of capital, his was the subject of deference from other workers. His power is well—illustrated in a letter to a building trade journal, which claimed that: 110

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Skill and Managerial Authority

In nine out of ten establishments, one man — the foreman — has supreme control, and can employ or discharge whomsoever he thinks fit. . . . By the present working system, a foreman who has supreme control over 50 or 60 men can add to his salary by receiving weekly pay from inferior hands, who are always ready to tender the bribe in return for being kept in constant work.”0 Peter Taylor recalled that in finding work in Glasgow he had to wait on the foreman of the works, who could ‘only be seen at meal—hours, or at six in the evening’. The fact that there were normally ‘a dozen [men] waiting on the same errand as yourself ’151 further demonstrated the power the foreman had over the journeymen. The system of foremanship was also used to enhance the subordination of women to men in the textile trades. In weaving, although male tenters performed similar functions to those of foremen in other trades, they were in charge of a mainly female workforce. As their

wages were dependent on the output of those under their direct control it was in their interest to drive the females to meet production targets. By only allowing women and young girls to work the looms, thus restricting the supply of labour and keeping out males, they enforced a strict sexual division of labour. This only reinforced stereotype images of women as dependants and incapable of exercising authority in the workplace.”2 Internal subcontracting was the major means of imposing indirect control over workers, particularly in those occupations, such as coalmining or shipbuilding, where close supervision was practically impossible given the dispersed nature of production. Under this system of labour organisation a leading craftsman or group of workers was offered a price for a job and if acceptable he or the ‘gang’, or ‘company’, would recruit labourers, discipline and pay them. The system had advantages for both employers and men: it offered the employers a ready-made substitute for inadequate managerial and cost accounting resources; for the men it provided avenues of mobility for key workers and through piece work, ensured individual and group self-discipline. Among Monklands, ironstone miners subcontractors were chosen by the employers on the basis of ‘loyalty and experience’ and were left to recruit and organise team workers.”3 In the ironworks

themselves, puddlers paid their underhands, as did the shinglers their assistants.”4 In coalmining and shipbuilding similar arrangements existed between skilled workers and their assistants or labourers. This created divisions between these different gradations of skill and

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authority. Platers in shipbuilding were paid by the piece while their assistants were paid time rates and this led to the former being paid ‘at least three times as much as the helper’.155 The relationship was essentially exploitative as platers were in the habit of taking days off and making up their losses by driving themselves and their helpers. This worked to the advantage of the plater who was working by the piece, but the helper on time rates could not make up for lost days. The arrangement meant that the helper had to work harder for less. Robert Smillie, the miners’ leader, recalled in his autobiography, that when working as a young man in the ‘plating squad as a labourer, helpers had to turn up every day, but returned home if the platers were not there’.”6 Complaints to management by

helpers over loss of earnings or short payment fell on deaf ears. As one commentator put it: ‘the shipbuilders will not move in favour of the helpers, and the platers will not voluntarily relinquish their

unjust privileges’.157 While divisive, the system of internal subcontracting had one major drawback for employers: its operation meant that key workers were effectively setting the intensity of the work rhythm, delimiting the areas of skill and, hence, reward. In some areas it was used in a democratic manner as in the case of the Burntisland Co-operative Coal Trimmers’ Association. The Association elected its own foreman and one man as leading hand in each of the five squads of twelve, who in turn formed an executive committee to run its affairs. The employers ‘do not attempt to exercise any sort of control over the association . . . nor are any labour superintendents employed by the company’.”8 To offset the worker power inherent in internal subcontracting, employers experimented with piece rate payments. This had the advantage of encouraging self-discipline among workers, as the harder they worked the more they earned, and also promoting ideas

of individuality as workers were all on different earnings. Moreover, as a worker under the piece rate system was responsible for his/her

own earnings there was little need for third party intervention. The effort/wage bargain was, thus, determined by an individual’s industry and skill, rather than the organised collective power of the workers. Piece rate systems, therefore, had an ideological, as well as an economic, dimension to them, but in spite of this they had two fatal weaknesses: they encouraged constant conflict over their interpretation and they involved complicated calculations. As an old woollen weaver put it, piece rate meant that: ‘The question of pay was a

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Skill and Managerial Authority constant source of wrangling and annoyance. . . . Few weeks wages were paid without some degree of feeling being shown’.”9

The outcome of these different methods of controlling labour was that the locus of authority in a number of occupations was not homogeneous. Authority was dispersed within the complexity of occupational structures and this, as Joyce points out, created within the worker ‘an indistinct notion of the capitalist employer. . . as a class, let alone the major class enemy’.160 The social and economic antagonisms of the workplace could be spread over a range of authority figures including the employer, foreman, piece master, sub— contractor and ganger, rather than focussed on an individual. The house on the hill was still there, but in the large urban workshops and factories the boss had removed himself from the sphere of

production to concentrate on the problems associated with the marketing of the product. By doing so he made himself an increasingly anonymous figure. Therefore, not only were workplace relations enmeshed in a complex web of group and personal loyalties and

antagonisms, the easing of the rate of technological advance, combined with changes in work organisation and the division of labour, meant that employers did not exercise total autonomy in the workplace. These factors, and the values and attitudes they engendered in workers, had an important impact on the development of trade unionism in Scotland in this period.

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Chapter 11

TRADE UNIONISM I N SCOTLAND, 1850—1880: A NEW MODEL?

As we have seen the defeat of the Glasgow cotton spinners in 1837 encouraged workers to seek a more acceptable and respectable form of conduct and organisation. This was reflected to some extent in the decline of the practice of holding union meetings in public houses. These apparent shifts in attitude and behaviour on labour’s part has allowed the third quarter of the nineteenth century to be seen by virtue of Sydney and Beatrice Webb’s monumental history of trade

unionism as the period of ‘new model’ unionism.161 The archetypal examples of this form of trade unionism were the ASE and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ). In contrast to the aggressive trade unionism of the 18305 and 18405, the new unions were seen by the Webbs as models of passive, bourgeois-minded behaviour, eschewing the strike weapon and seeking to conciliate rather than confront employers. The change of outlook was accompanied by the centralisation of organisation, the creation of sound financial structures and the payment of friendly society benefits rather than strike pay. The Webbs’ construct of new model unionism has been effectively rejected by leading English labour historians, who have demonstrated that the mode of organisation and concentration on day-to-day issues at the expense of wider socio—political concerns existed among

craft workers even during the Chartist era.162 The Scottish experience would also tend to contradict the views of the Webbs. Far from being models of centralisation, Scottish unions were highly localised and fiercely independent institutions. Although we have no reliable figures for union membership in the mid-Victorian period, R. H. Campbell, drawing on the work of the Webbs, estimates that of the 147000 trade unionists in Scotland in 1892 two-thirds were organised in exclusively Scottish unions.163 Even the archetypal ‘model’ unions 114

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Trade Um'om'sm in Scotland

such as the ASE exercised little control over the activities of their branches. In the case of the engineers’ society it is hardly surprising as it was not until 1892 that the executive was elected on a district basis. Previous to this it was composed of representatives of the Society’s London members. Branches openly contradicted executive rulings. Glasgow members enrolled piecemasters in the ASE, although this was against union policy and thus deemed ‘illegal’.“‘4 Scottish trade unionism in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was thus based on local associations exercising wide powers of autonomy on questions of pay and conditions in sharp contrast to the

bureaucratic centralised model of organisation articulated by the Webbs. The bureaucratic approach of the Webbs to the question of labour organisation also fails to recognise that it was the immediate work group rather than the union branch which was the primary unit of working-class self-defence in industry in this period. Richard Price

has calculated that around 50 per cent of restrictions imposed at the workplace in the engineering industry emerged out of ‘informal workgroup decisions rather than from shop steward or union policies’. In the building industry when employers spoke of ‘conspiracies’ they were more often than not, claims Price, referring to workgroup action rather than trade unionism.“ Joe Melling notes that even in

the late nineteenth century full-time union officials were ‘still trying to impose a coherent hierarchy of responsibility on their motley organisations’.166 Indeed, in a Scottish context, informal trade unionism with its flexibility was perhaps a more appropriate model of organisation than the highly bureaucratic and expensive official version given the volatility of the economy and the ineffectiveness of official unionism. Hamish Fraser claims that, of the 46 organisations listed in the first national Trade Union Directory of 1 860, ‘most were poor and ineffectual and frequently undermined by dishonest officials’.“7 Of course, for low paid women workplace organisation was perhaps the only viable model of trade unionism.“ However, it was a mode of organisation that was associated more with weakness than with strength. As the unions were largely unrepresentative of Scottish workers at this time, individual bargaining was also a feature of the relationship between capital and labour. With skill at a premium and piece rate payment growing in popularity workers could bargain on the basis of individual worth rather than by collective strength. Working men’s autobiographies point to the widespread nature of the system 115

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

of individual bargaining. Peter Taylor described the mechanics of the

process: After being ten months in the place, I thought I was worthy of more wages, but knew it was no use asking, for the manager, and he alone, had the power to grant a rise [and he did not like me]. I resolved to leave and told some of the men 80.169 Taylor’s bargaining strategy was in some ways forced on him as trade unionism in Scotland fluctuated in terms of influence and at times of economic depression underwent periods of severe retreat. Indeed, unionisation was so completely smashed in the Scottish coalfields in the 18605 that the miners formed the quasi-mystical Free Collier Movement [FCM]; and no person was admitted who did not ‘believe in a supreme being’.170 Until its decline in 1866, the FCM was firmly established in Lanarkshire, but also in the more passive coalfields of Midlothian, where it was said to have 1200 members in December 1864.171 Basing itself on the rituals and ceremonials, as well as the lodge organisation, of Freemasonry, the FCM alienated many Irish Catholic workers. The practice of naming FCM lodges after Scottish patriots, such as Bruce and Wallace, and singing ‘Scots wha hae’ at gatherings and meetings furthered the distance between the Scots and Irish miners.”2 It is little surprising that sectarian tensions were heightened and that this constituted a barrier to effective unionisation in the coalfields. Alan Campbell notes that sectarian incidents were most frequent in the period 185 0—75; a phenomenon which coincided

with the heaviest penetration of Irish immigrants into the Lanarkshire coalfields.173 In Airdrie Scots colliers went on strike ‘until all the Roman Catholics should be expelled’; an incident which was fairly typical of the antagonisms between the two ethnic communities.174 However, it was mainly community—inspired Violence and acts of hooliganism which constituted the mean side of Scottish/Irish relations in the coalfields.” Another problematic factor in maintaining stable trade unions in Scottish coalmining was the prevalence of temporary overseas emi— gration. As the steamship had cut journey times to around sixteen

days and reduced the cost of travel across the Atlantic to £6, younger miners took advantage of the higher wages to be had in America. Youngson Brown noted that between 1863 and 1872 some 59 000 miners and quarrymen left Scotland, mainly for the USA, returning in times of prosperity or during the winter months.”6 The key to 116

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Trade Unionism in Scotland

mobility was wage levels, as miners’ leader, Alexander MacDonald, said: ‘whenever the wages come to 4s or 58 or 65 a day they will not be found here but will be of ’.177 The correlation between union membership and wage levels in this period was strongly marked, as mining unions almost completely collapsed in the economic downswings of 1848, 1863 and 1879.178 Trade union organisation also proved fragile in other trades in the 18605. After the failure of the nine hour strike on the Clyde in 1866 union membership collapsed and two years later the Boilermakers’ Society was reduced to 156 members in Scotland, concentrated in nine branches, the largest being Glasgow No. 2 with 41 members, and the smallest Paisley with only two members. The weakness of the Boilermakers’ Society meant that 90 per cent of shipyard workers on the Clyde in the late 18605 were unorganised.” On the railways fewer than one in twenty workers held a union card, and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) set up in 1871—72 by a paternalistic shareholder was said to have had a ‘precarious’ existence.180 Even the so—called new model ASE could only claim 500 members in three branches in Glasgow in 1860.181 Unskilled workers understandably found the establishment of viable institutions more difficult to sustain. Labourers’ unions were established among railway carters and dockers in Glasgow in the 18503 and affiliated to the Glasgow Trades Council (GTC) when it was formed in 1858, but they were short-lived affairs.182 In the 18603 and 18705 attempts were made by the trades councils to assist unskilled workers to form organisations and some temporary success was achieved in Edinburgh in 1868 with the establishment of a Labourers’ Association. In Glasgow, in 1874, the Glasgow Causewaylayers’ Association affiliated to the GTC, and a year later the Marine Stokers’ Association joined. However, as Hamish Fraser points out, few ‘survived the [onset] of depression’ in the late 18705.183 The fragility of organisation, at times, saw workers experiment with alternatives to permanent association. A study of the Scottish woollen industry shows workers employing an ad boc strategy of organisation. Hawick dyers in 1 889 formed a union to achieve a pay rise and once achieved, dissolved it, as did the town’s ‘fast’ loom female weavers in a struggle over pay differentials two years earlier.184 Continuity of organisation, therefore, proved difficult for workers,

even those who were skilled, and this enhanced informal workgroup organisation. The question which emerges from the dominance of this mode of association is: did union weakness encourage a more

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conciliationist approach to industrial relations by workers and their organisations in mid-Victorian Scotland? On the face of it there does seem to be strong evidence to suggest

that craft and mining unions were actively conciliationist. Presidents of the branches of the Boilermakers’ Society informed new recruits that: ‘We are not united to set class against class but to teach one

another that men are all brothers. Our greatest desire being to cultivate a close and lasting relationship between those with whom we have to do with in undertaking our daily work’.185 The collaborationist nature of the statement was further underlined in a society song which included the following lines: Now ’tis true that Capital All the risk must run

Like a ship exposed to all Winds beneath the sun; Feel’s the first trade’s ebb and flow, Must keen competition know. So ’tis just and meet

Labour must co-operate, And help with all their might Master to compete.186 If further emphasis was needed the rule book of the Boilermakers’ Society allowed members who became small employers, publicans, or members of the managerial staff to remain in the union as honorary

members.187 This society’s attitude to capital was shared by other trades. Miners in the west of Scotland regarded strikes as a last resort and the union rule book ‘emphasised that strikes tended to fail and that collaboration was to be preferred’.188 Midlothian miners echoed this view and urged miners to adopted the ‘rules and regulations enforced by the Duke of Buccleugh at Dalkeith Colliery’. The union rule book of the United Association of Colliers included the astonishing statement that: ‘In former times it was usual to impure all our evils to our employers but whatever truth . . . in this, in most instances we are fully persuaded that they are attributable to ourselves’.189 As a reflection of the conciliationist mood miners and other trades consistently demanded a compulsory system of arbitration, which also contained an unstated demand for recognition. However, the degree of pacifism among union members at this time was somewhat exaggerated by the leadership. The rule book 118

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Trade Unionism in Scotland

was more a chimera than reality. Strikes took place in most trades, although more frequently in mining than in any other. Drawing on the work of Gordon Wilson on the west of Scotland coalfields, it would appear that major conflicts erupted on average every four or five years between 1850 and 1874. The longest strike took place in 1856 and involved twelve districts and 15 000 workers for fourteen weeks. There were 24 small-scale disputes in the period 1855—74. The cause of these strikes was almost always reductions in pay, although a few concerned the weighing of output.”0 Similarly, in

shipbuilding prolonged strikes, outside of the 1866 nine hours’ dispute, occurred in the depression years of 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1878. In the construction industry, wage demands were the source of

major conflicts between 1850 and 1880, although the issue of the labour supply also assumed an importance.191 Thus conflict was still written into the relationship between capital and labour, but the relationship itself had undergone a transformation.

From issues connected with the control of the labour process, unions increasingly concerned themselves with the price of labour and, in the main, abandoned attempts to exercise regulation of the

supply of it. The United Joiners of Glasgow argued in 1860 that ‘no restriction be imposed, rather than deprive our proportion of the rising generation of some handicraft’.192 The ETC found that of those trades represented in June 1873 only two of the twelve had any

policy of restriction.193 Market principles were recognised as determining the level of wages rather than custom or morality. The sliding scale in the mining industry was a good example of these changing attitudes. Making the best of the effort/wage bargain also signalled labour’s recognition of the permanency of the industrial order. Moreover, since much of the industrial conflict, whether conducted by the organised or unorganised, was sectional or, at the very best, occupationally—based, and involved only a minority of workers, class interests were subordinated to the concerns of the locality and the immediate workgroup. Indeed, the weakness of the unions during much of this period drove some workers to seek individual solu— tions to their economic problems. John Wilson, cotton spinner, was

so disillusioned with the struggle, which had cost the operatives ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’, to maintain list prices for spin— ning, that he resigned himself to a privatised solution. As he put it: ‘the question now is, what amount of wages can I make to take home to my family’.194 Faced with sectional and sectarian divisions within the working class, and confronted by a self-confident and 119

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well-organised industrial bourgeoisie, the unions of this period were, not surprisingly, weak and fragmented. Indeed, it is clear that many workers, particularly women, saw them as irrelevant to their social

situation. The high subscriptions in a low waged economy also made them seem exclusive even to the best paid workers, with those in the skilled trades not always able to afford union dues. Membership of the Boilermakers’ Society was held back in this period by the fact that shipyard workers earning 17—245 per week in the late 18605 found it difficult to pay 4s a month in subscriptions, and this led to mass disaffection.195 Similarly, gains made in one period could be swept away by the onset of depression or by an employer backlash. During the boom of

the early 18608 bakers in Glasgow and Greenock achieved a twelve hour day heralding an end to ‘the days of slavery’; however, in 1884 they were striking against an 80 hour week.196 Engineers in the recession of 1878 not only experienced wage reductions, but also lost the 51 hour week. Joiners also experienced a similar pattern of success followed by retreat. A strike in 1870 for a nine hour day was successful after fourteen weeks of struggle, but a downturn in the fortunes of the building trade just six years later saw these advances cancelled out and wages substantially reduced.197 Other trades experienced the

ebb and flow of fortune and with each setback membership declined proportionately. Only well-organised and cash-rich unions such as the Operative Masons could hope to maintain solidarity in times of distress. By 1870 the masons had established a nine hour day in forty towns in Scotland and there is little evidence to suggest that this gain was eroded in the depression of the late 18703.198 It must also be remembered that gains were sometimes made at the expense of other, less well-organised workers. This was true of the construction

industry, and applied with equal force in the case of the iron industry. Here the highly skilled moulders won a 51 hour week in 1872, ‘the only craft’, according to Tom Johnston, ‘in the industry to secure the concession’.199 However, these sectional advances were only reflective of the general weakness of trade unionism in Scotland during this period. But weakness was also a motivation for greater solidarity. The growth of trades councils in the 185 Os and 18605 drew workers from different trades together to discuss matters of common interest, including those of a political nature. Their activities in this respect cast doubt on the claim by Alaister Reid that workers accepted ‘the separation of their economic concerns and their political representa-

tions’.200 The councils were at the forefront of agitation for the 120

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Trade Unionism in Scotland

franchise and for the amendment of anti-trade union legislation. The ETC was a branch of the Scottish Reform League (SRL) and was

active in the municipal politics of Edinburgh. To this end it established the Municipal Election Committee, which later became a permanent body — the Scottish Reform Union. With the granting of the franchise to urban householders in 1867, the ETC supported nationalisation of the railways and a non-sectarian system of education, among the more usual trade union demands.201 Indeed, most trades councils at this time in Scotland recognised that a political solution was necessary to remove the legal impediments barring the effective waging of the economic struggle. However, the political role of the trades councils did not please some unions in the labour movement, such as the cotton spinners, who severed ties with the GTC for being ‘too political’.202 In spite of opposition of this kind, the

councils continued in their efforts to raise the political consciousness of workers, alerting them to the need to combine in greater numbers to combat organised capital. The Address of the GTC in April 1873 ‘To the Trade Unionists of Scotland’ called on the organised workers to combat ‘the arrogance of capital’ by organising on a much broader national front. As the Address put it: The trade societies that simply protected local interests will be found to be inadequate to meet the demands of the future. The disposition of the employers to unite for the purpose of frustrating the just demands of labour, the concentration of capital, coupled with the application of machinery . . . a general organisation of skilled labour becomes absolutely requisite. The primary object of this institution is to levy a small sum on each trade, according to its numerical strength, for the purpose of supplementing . . . those who have already a protective fund, and generally assisting trades in the throes of a lock-out, or a strike that could not be averted without loss or degradation, instead of at present depending partly on if not wholly on eleemosynary aid.

Although this attempt to build a confederation of unions in Scotland failed with the onset of depression the following year, the Address

presaged future developments, and, at the same time, explicitly recognised the opposing and antagonistic interests of labour and

capital. However, this realisation failed in these decades to translate itself into self-determined political action on the part of the workers.

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Chapter 12

A MID-VICTORIAN POLITICAL CONSENSUS? LABOUR POLITICS IN SCOTLAND, 1850—1880

The absence of a strong trade union movement made the emergence of an independent working-class party unlikely in this period. Experience shows that without the members and financial assistance provided by trade unions, parties of labour rarely succeed in attracting mass support or sustaining their organisations. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century the problem of class representation was further complicated as it was not until 1867 that the male urban working-

class householder was enfranchised. Exclusion from the system of parliamentary politics, thus made it difficult to conceptualise indepen— dent working-class representation. In spite of this political handicap, the struggle for democratic reform continued after the collapse of Chartism as a national movement in 1848; however, it was the ‘moral’ rather than the ‘physical’ aspect of the political practice of the movement which dominated the language and strategy of the campaign for Demos. Labour argued that the denial of the vote was wrong because it disregarded ‘the growing virtue and intelligence of the working class’.203 Franchise exclusion also allowed parliament to be

dominated by class interests which led to the passing ‘of unjust and tyrannical piece[s] of modern class legislation’.204 These were the arguments used in the GTC’s Address to the Working Men of the

United Kingdom in 1861. The Address itself articulated political demands within a language dominated by prevailing notions of respectability. It called on parliament to grant the vote on the basis of ‘Manhood Suffrage, with a residential qualification’. The demand for household rather than universal suffrage excluded slum dwellers

and other undesirable elements of working-class life. Articulating demands within a political language dominated by 122

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Labour Politics in Scotland

the vocabulary of respectability allowed links with the moderate

wing of labour to draw closer to the radical middle class. During the 18505 various societies with a cross-class membership were set up to champion the cause of Italian unification. The Society of the Friends of Italy (185 1—55 ), although London-based, had around a third of its members, mainly working class, living in Scotland. The Committee

for Aiding the Emancipation of Italy (1856—57) was even more pronouncedly cross-class in its membership. The Paisley Committee not

only included the former Chartist, the Rev. Patrick Brewster, but also the well-known thread manufacturer, Thomas Coats. In Glasgow, the central core of the organisation was made up of old radicals and

Chartist parties on the one side, and Whigs on the other. However, the membership was overwhelmingly working class.205 This increased after 1 860 when John McAdam, a former leading Chartist, set up the Glasgow Working Men’s Fund for Garibaldi at a meeting in Bell’s

Coffee House. Indeed, enthusiasm for Garibaldi was greater in central Scotland than anywhere else in Britain. Glasgow and Edinburgh contributed more than a quarter of the total amount of the Garibaldi Italian Fund, and 250 volunteers, fully kitted out in tartan shirts and bonnets with Scottish thistles, left Glasgow to join the Garibaldi Redshirts.206 The Italian struggle for unification, as well as the documented support by Scottish workers for Polish independence and anti-slavery

movements in America, naturally raised the question of the distribution of political power at home. Revolution overseas had once again

raised the question of reform at home, specifically the working class’s position within the political system. The death of the reactionary

prime minister Palmerston in the autumn of 1865 further boosted the campaign for reform and the SRL emerged to orchestrate peaceful demonstrations for reform of the state. Within a year or so the League could boast a membership of 350 in Aberdeen. Eventually the Tory government granted the franchise to the respectable male urban working class householder in 1867. Once enfranchised, however, the skilled workers threw their support behind the figure of William Gladstone and his version of popular Liberalism. Support for the loosely structured Liberal Party should not be construed as acceptance by the enfranchised workers of middle—class political leadership. Moreover, neither can it be viewed, as proponents of the labour aristocracy thesis have, as simple incorporation with all the connotations of conspiracy, or sell-out, which that implies. As John Foster puts it: 123

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MID-VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

If one turns to the process of restabilization itself. . . one can hardly fail to notice the degree to which its social resolution was worked out in terms of industrial organization. Its key component was the creation of a privileged grade within the labour force — the labour aristocracy.207 The politics of the working class were the outcome of their own experiences in the workplace and the wider society. They were not simply attempts to imitate the middle classes; indeed, if anything, they can best be described as independent and hostile to any attempts by the middle classes to patronise them. The independence was born, as we have seen, out of the place of the worker in the system of production and in the occupational hierarchy. The emphasis on individual effort through the payments system, the transferability of his skills, his ownership of tools, as well as the authority he exercised over other less skilled workers, created a strong sense of independence

among skilled workers. These feelings transferred themselves to the field of politics and shaped the political practice of the skilled workers. The ETC in 1873 led the opposition to Duncan McLaren, the local hero of the Edinburgh middle classes, describing him as ‘a traitor to the working class interest’, because of his part in the Criminal Law Amendment Act which had restricted picketing.208 Workers in Glasgow set up the Glasgow Liberal Working Men’s Electoral Union (GLWEU) because of the GTC’s distrust of middle—class Liberal politics in the city. When the latter formed the Glasgow Liberal Association in 1878, the GLWEU refused to participate as it saw the organisation as a front for middle-class domination of the Liberal Party in Glasgow.209 Another source of tension was the failure of the Liberals to appoint working men as parliamentary candidates at election times, which led to Keir Hardie contesting the Mid-Lanark by—election in 1888 in opposition to the Liberal candidate. Direct labour representation was, indeed, one of the demands of the trade councils of Scotland since the extension of the franchise in 1867.210

However, while the ideology and political language may have been borrowed from older radical traditions and popular Liberalism, the interpretation was open, like bourgeois values, to negotiation. Some— times the demands of the workers were articulated within the dominant value system, as with the vote; on other occasions, as with trade

union legislation, it would be articulated within a more class—based language of conflict. The Master and Servant Act of 1823 was seen as a typical example of ‘unjust and tyrannical modern class legislation’ 124

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Labour Politics in Scotland

and the unions fought tooth-and-nail for its repeal. A list of political demands drawn up by the ETC in 1868, and mentioned above, hit at the interests and pockets of the middle classes. However, when asked in 1884 to list the causes of industrial depression, a sub-com-

mittee of the ETC placed the land laws and the drinks traffic higher than foreign tariffs and over-production.211 Thus, the demons of

older radical traditions were still prominent in the way politically conscious artisans analysed society. The ambiguity at the core of organised workers’ political practice and ideology was also seen in their attitude towards state intervention. Demands for nationalisation were combined with fears that intervention in the economy might erode free collective bargaining. Henry Tait, of the ASRS, captured the concern of the unions over such a prospect when he argued that state intervention was unnecessary to solve the problem of overwork on the railways, arguing that ‘self—action is best suited to the case’.212 The manifest faith enfranchised workers had in free trade as the best guarantee of rising living standards strengthened such convictions. However, for those outside of the political system — the unskilled and the lumpen poor — experience of the oppressive side of the state via the police and the poor laws made any extension of state power unwelcome. What motivated the organised workers politically was the desire to have equal rights with capital. Once enfranchised the British state showed a willingness to deal with outstanding working—class grievances in this respect. The major impediments to the legal status of the trade unions were formally abolished under the Trade Union Acts of 1871 and 1 876, and the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Master and Servant Laws four years later. Moreover, in addition to reforms by the local state concerning issues of public health, the Disraeli government introduced a number of important social reforms, not least being the Cross Act of 1875 which empowered local authorities to acquire and clear large tracts of slum housing. Although these reforms did not encourage workers in Scotland to vote Tory, it proved to them that the political system was responsive to their needs. Resolution of conflict could be achieved within a plural democratic framework in which the state could maintain the appear— ance of being class neutral. The consensus of the mid-Victorian epoch cannot be explained

with reference to activities of a so-called privileged stratum of the working class — the labour aristocracy. The transition from an unstable to a stable political order was the result of a combination of factors 125

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MID—VICTORIAN SCOTLAND AND THE POLITICS O F CONSENSUS, 1850—1880

sometimes of an ambiguous and contradictory nature. From this the Liberal Party under Gladstone, with its emphasis on free trade, selfhelp, respectability and morality, emerged and resonated most clearly with working-class aspirations and interests. The utopias of Owenite associations of free producers, the various experiments in guild

socialism and other mutualist enterprises crumbled under the weight of rising living standards and occupational change. Respectability was within the grasp of the skilled workers, at least, and leisure patterns, which stressed the private sphere and family at the expense of the older public culture, reflected this. Industrial capitalism acquired a permanency which was recognised by the Scottish workers, many of whom owed their livelihood to the new industries created by it. In

recognition of this acceptance, the state enfranchised the respectable male worker and showed itself, through various reforms, to be responsive to his needs. However, the transition had been made on

the upswing in the trade cycle and rising prosperity, and as long as this was sustainable the politico—economic system acquired an unassailable logic of rationality which created little space for critics of the system to work within. But in life and politics things rarely remain the same and the onset of the so-called ‘Great Depression’ in 1873 began a longer process of disenchantment with Liberalism and the free market among workers and encouraged the search for alternative ideologies.

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PART III

The Challenge of Labour,

1880—1914

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Chapter 13

INTERPRETATIONS

The last few decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decade of the twentieth have been seen as marking the inevitable and predictable rise of the Labour Party, and concomitantly the decline of the Liberal Party. The key factors in this process were the growth of class consciousness, particularly among the unskilled, due to mass

strikes in the last decades of the nineteenth century; adverse legal decisions which drove the unions into politics; changes in the franchise which brought more workers into the electoral system; and, finally, the activities of socialists and the ideology of Marxism. The way we thought about the origin and rise of the Labour Party was dominated

by the writings of Eric Hobsbawm and Henry Pelling, and their influence was evident even in the works of Tory historians such as Robert Rhodes James.1 Since then labour and social historians under the influence of Harry

Braverman’s seminal work — Labour and Monopoly Capitalism (1976) — have sought also to include changes in the labour process that blurred the distinctive characteristics between skilled and unskilled workers by narrowing wage differentials and opening up skilled work to greater encroachment from the latter. The threat of technological displacement acted to radicalise the skilled workers in the direction of independent labour representation and the politics of class struggle, thus breaking their allegiance to the liberal/capitalist framework of British society. As one of the foremost labour process

historians, Richard Price, put it recently: In general terms socialism emerged as a response to the re— structuring of the labour process. For both the skilled and semiskilled, socialism provided a vocabulary which enabled the tensions, conflicts and promise of restructing to be understood

and interpreted. . . . Socialism attained a new-found significance in the 18905 as restructuring began to impact on the skilled and 129

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

semi-skilled; equally, by 1900, as the evidence mounted of a growing complexity of the problems of industrial and political

power, the syndicalist spirit made its appearance.2 Price’s views marked a shift in the explanatory balance concerning the rise of Labour away from the sphere of politics to the sphere of production. Thus, the exploitation of the working class at the point of production becomes the fundamental basis of Price’s understanding of political change and the growth of class consciousness in this period. Workerist views such as these have not gone unchallenged. Historians from both the left and right of the political spectrum have argued that, in these accounts of political development, the weakness

of the Liberals in the face of the growing level of class consciousness has been seriously overstated, and that the level of deskilling has been much exaggerated. Building on P. F. Clarke’s important study of New Liberalism in Lancashire in the late nineteenth century,3 newer political histories have highlighted the continuing appeal of Liberalism to the working class. Alistair Reid summed up the new revisionism when he claimed that:

Right up to the outbreak of the First World War there were few signs of any widespread popularity of socialist ideas, and recent attempts to relate the emergence of an embryonic Labour Party from the 18803 to a major change in political consciousness, as a result either of the erosion of the position of the ‘labour aristocracy’, or of an escalation in industrial conflict are seriously misguided. . . . The organised and enfranchised working class . . . continued to vote Liberal even when on strike, and there is no reason to assume that a mere increase in strike activity would . . . result in a change in political consciousness.4 In this revisionist scenario, instead of being asked to ‘Account for the rise of the Labour Party before 1914’, historians ought to be asked ‘Why popular Liberalism continued to exercise such a hold on the political allegiance of workers both north and south of the border’. When examining the political situation in the north the question is of particular significance as Scotland had been solidly Liberal throughout the nineteenth century. A report of the Labour Party in Scotland to its conference in 1914 glumly stated that: ‘Unfortunately Scotland was so imbued with Liberal principles that it was a harder fight there than in any other part of the country’.5 130

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Interpretations

The diametrically opposed views cited above lead once more into the question of continuity and change, and whether, as Reid contends, it is correct to periodise the mid-Victorian and Edwardian years into decades of quiescence and radicalism. While the evidence for Scotland tends to suggest that Liberalism was still the major beneficiary of working-class political loyalty until the outbreak of war in August 1914, it would be a distortion of the period to suggest that there existed some sort of political paralysis, and that the increasing tempo

of industrial conflict and changes in the labour process did not affect the consciousness of the working class in Scotland and elsewhere.

However, why this did not translate itself into mass support for the emerging Labour Party involves an analysis not simply of the language of politics, but also of the economic and workplace restructuring which occurred during the period, the impact that this had on industrial relations and trade unionism, as well as the major changes which were taking place in the social world outside the workplace and at the level of the state. As Michael Savage’s study of Preston shows, one-dimensional accounts of political change based almost

entirely, as Price does, on workplace developments, or language pace Reid, fail to understand the dynamics of political transformation, which are as much rooted in community concerns as those emanating from the site of production, or national political systems.6 Thus, the partial accounts of political change offered by both schools of history

are in need of revision in order that a more rounded analysis of the dynamics of politics in the period 1880—1914 may emerge.

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Chapter 14

RELATIVE ECONOMIC DECLINE AND THE PROBLEM O F POVERTY, 1880—1914

The structure of the modern Scottish economy had been predeter-

mined in the mid—Victorian decades. The period up to the First World War simply entrenched and expanded that structure. The numbers employed in coalmining increased from 46 900 in 1870 to 147 500 in 1913, with just over half the workforce concentrated in the coalmines of the west of Scotland. Output grew almost threefold in these decades from 14900000 tons to 42400000 tons.7 Shipbuilding, however, was the jewel in the Scottish economy’s crown, as from the 1870s to 1914 it constituted the ‘chief growth point’, accounting for 756 976 launched tonnage in Britain in 1913; more than the combined total output of the German and American shipbuilding industries.8 As Scotland’s premier industry shipbuilding’s growth initiated similar expansion in related industries. The steel industry in Scotland in 1873 was only capable of producing 1119 tons of steel, but due to the increasing preference for steel over iron by Scottish shipbuilders, output reached 485 000 tons by 1890.9 Complementing the impressive growth of industry were the equally important new developments in the service sector, particularly transport. By 1901 it was estimated that one in seven adult males were employed in transport activities on Clydeside.10 Economic growth was encouraged by the expansion of the export

market. This was, perhaps, inevitable since the Scottish population was becoming increasingly static, with a loss of 41 per cent of natural increase, or 218 274 persons, in the 18805 alone. Census returns show

that between 1861 and 1901 around half-a-million Scots emigrated

to other countries, including England, and this trend continued into the twentieth century.11 Thus, low levels of domestic demand and the 132

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Economic Decline and the Problem of Poverty product mix of Scottish industry combined to focus production on overseas, particularly imperial, markets. Some 38 per cent of the

total output of the Scottish coalfields in 1913 went abroad.12 Export dependency was also true of Scottish shipbuilding and certain branches of engineering, particularly locomotive production. Overall, between 1870 and 1900, Scottish capital exports amounted to

approximately 10 per cent of the net national product; a figure much higher than that for England over this period.13 In spite of these impressive economic achievements weaknesses had began to surface in the late nineteenth century which heralded future disaster. The industrial economy’s buoyancy was ever more

dependent on the condition of world trade, which made it increas— ingly subject to cyclical fluctuations. Scottish industry stuttered in the period of the ‘Great Depression’ and suffered serious depressions in 1904—05 and 1908—09. Industrial performance was also beginning to falter, in spite of appearances to the contrary. Most of the steel producers were former malleable iron manufacturers, for as steel grew iron production declined. Consequently, the iron industry never again reached its peak of 1870 as falling supplies of indigenous iron ore forced ironmasters to rely on imported ores which increased costs and lowered competitiveness in a market increasingly dominated by Wales and Cleveland.14 Even the steel industry began to run into difficulties. The smallness of steel mills north of the border, the additional transport costs, and the relatively high price of coal, saw Scottish producers compared to their English rivals disadvantaged by 5—7 per cent in costs in the 18805. After 1900 ‘the position deteriorated’ further and the Scottish share of British steel output fell from 20 per cent in 1900 to 18 per cent in 1913.15 Textiles too were declining rapidly in terms of output and employment, particularly in Glasgow where the cotton spinning and weaving sectors collapsed in the 18905. It was only the jute industry of Dundee, the manufacture of thread at Paisley and wool in the Borders which held out any promise of sustained growth.“ Shipbuilding experienced falling profit margins and Denny’s shipyard on the Clyde between 1909 and

1913 made a loss of 28 per cent on its contracts.17 Failing competitiveness in the commercial sector saw Clyde shipyards turn more frequently to the state to provide warship orders to maintain the buoyancy of the industry; a trend which grew after 1918.

Early responses to these economic trends from Scottish employers saw a greater move towards amalgamation. As a result, industry began to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, thus reaping

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THE CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

the benefits of economies of scale. Arthur McIvor’s study of west of Scotland employers shows the degree to which heavy industry had become the subject of high levels of interlocking directorships. In textile printing and dyeing a monopoly had been established with the formation of the United Turkey Red Dye Company and the Calico Printers Association; and in thread manufacture the amalgamation of the firms of Coats and Clarks of Paisley in 1896 created the fifth largest company in the world. Similarly, Tennants of Glasgow was the largest chemical works in Europe and the North British Locomotive Company in Springburn, Glasgow, was the largest locomotive producer in the world. Other major companies on Clydeside included the multi-national Singer corporation, Weirs in Cathcart, and the big shipyards of the Upper Clyde such as Browns, Fairfields and Yarrows.18 Increasingly capital was nationalising itself, although most of the firms remained family-owned and there remained a multitude of small businesses. However, generally speaking, economic domination was becoming the preserve of a charmed circle of large companies. Although the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth brought mixed fortunes for the indus— trial economy, it would appear that on the whole real wages were improving and the differentials between Scottish and English workers were narrowing. The first UK wages census in 1886 provides the most reliable guide to comparison between English and Scottish wages. The data generated by the census has led, however, to conflicting interpretations. For R. H. Campbell it proved without a shadow of doubt that Scotland was a low wage economy,19 although E. H. Hunt was more optimistic, viewing wages in the central belt as near the UK average.20 In reality, both were right. In certain occupa— tions, such as cotton, shipbuilding, construction and printing, Scots’

earnings, as Christopher Smout has shown, were significantly below the national average; however, in engineering, carpet manufacture

and distilling there was little difference, while in coalmining and linen there was a slight advantage over England.21

The next wage census was in 1906 and there was, with the exception of the cotton industry, little or no difference between English

and Scottish wages. Scotland had gone from being a low wage region to a high wage one in twenty years. This implied a remarkable increase in real wages way above the 80 per cent figure for the UK as a whole in the second half of the nineteenth century. The magnitude of the increase, however, has been treated with some sceptism by 134

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Economic Decline and the Problem of Poverty certain historians. Christopher Smout suggests that other factors have to be taken into account before drawing optimistic conclusions that Scottish workers before the outbreak of war in 1914 were enjoying hitherto unknown prosperity. These include the fact that there were substantial numbers of unskilled workers, such as shipbuilding labourers and girls in textiles, who were badly paid by any standard. Moreover, employers in the supposedly high-waged shipbuilding industry also deliberately inflated average earnings of riveters by 25 per cent in their evidence to the wage census.22 Research into engi— neering workers’ pay on Clydeside bears this out with 75 per cent of fitters only averaging 303 a week, or about the same as the middle grades of semi-skilled machine men.23 It should also be borne in mind that the cost of living and rents were higher in Scotland than in England. Richard Rodger points out that for an identical basket of

food in 1912 Dundonians paid 10.2 per cent and Glaswegians 5.7 per cent more than Mancunians.24 Again there is the question of regional and gender differences to take into account. Wages tended to be higher in the industrial counties of

Scotland than in rural or semi-rural areas. Glasgow carpenters and joiners averaged 368 1.5d a week in the early 18905 compared to only 275 7.5d in Aberdeen for a 51 hour week. This also applied to unskilled earnings, with building labourers in Aberdeen earning only 215 3d a week compared to 253 6d in Paisley.“ Homeworkers, mainly women, endured the worst conditions and pay. In Edinburgh, needlewomen were thought to earn 4-5s a week in the early 18403.

By 1906 little had changed with shirtmakers in Glasgow enduring a gross income of 8s a week in exceptional cases, but more normally 4—5s; it was not said for nothing that homeworkers ‘slaved in the summer and starved in the winter’.26 Poverty was endemic throughout Scotland and large numbers of workers and their children were caught in its web. John Paton recalled in his autobiography, that at the turn of the century in the poorer areas of Aberdeen the people lived largely on ‘tick’, that is, credit.27 In these areas new or even second hand clothes were a luxury. Older women remembered that ‘lots of clothes were made out of flour bags’, and one even remembered ‘sewing flour bags together to make bed sheets’.28 V7omen and children suffered most from poverty. A study undertaken in 1906 by the Royal Commission

on the Poor Laws found that in Scotland 83 per cent of paupers claiming relief were women and children.” Large and enduring pockets of poverty in Scotland had as one 135

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

might expect a determining influence on the type and level of housing

for renting. In spite of improving wages in some trades, renting was the preferred option even for skilled workers. The boom and bust cycle of much industrial employment in Scotland meant that the regular payments which house purchase involved were beyond the reach of the best paid workers. On the eve of the First World War, half of Scotland’s population still lived in one or two rooms.30 In Glasgow, the situation was even worse with 62 per cent of the population crammed into this type of accommodation.31 As a result the infant mortality rate (IMR) was exceptionally high in Glasgow, particularly in the poorest areas. In 1898, the IMR in Glasgow Gorbals

was 200 per 1000 live births.32 The high concentrations of population in urban areas contributed to this situation. Sydney Checkland esti— mated that by 1914 no fewer than 700 000 Glaswegians were living in three square miles, ‘thus creating the most heavily populated central area of Europe’.33 Thus, the problem of ‘starving in the midst of plenty’ was still a prominent feature of working-class life in Scotland and one which not only conditioned the cultural experience of many workers, but also had important impact on political developments in this period.

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Chapter 15

DRINK, FOOTBALL AND SECTARIANISM: WORKING-CLASS CULTURE IN SCOTLAND, 1880—1914

Tenement living created solidarities among workers, regardless of ethnic origin, religious persuasion or position in the occupational hierarchy, which contributed to those formed in the workplace. There were few areas of residence in urban Scotland which were

ethnically pure, although certain districts might be more associated with one ethnic group than another. Daily contact with neighbours,

petitions and complaints to factors, evasion of ticketing enforcement, and other contested areas of the housing market, all brought workers together. Employers, as we have seen, recognised the potential solidarities of tenement living at an early stage and built housing to

separate foremen from ordinary workers. Indeed, they went as far as to reproduce the status hierarchies of the workplace in the wider society. Railway workers in Springburn, Glasgow, were housed by their employer — the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company — on Springburn Hill. The houses at the top of the hill were ‘of a better standard and were for the top drivers, engineers and supervisors, while the lower blocks were for other drivers and lower grades’.34 The solidarities of tenement living were also cemented by changing marriage patterns. R. Q. Gray noted that in Edinburgh, in the period 1880—1900, unskilled males were marrying females from higher social strata, promoting a trend towards greater social homogeneity.” Ewan Knox’s work on the marriage patterns of the petite bourgeoisie of Victorian Edinburgh showed that ‘contact with the established middle class in 1890 was negligible?”6 However, in contrast, ‘close contact with the petite bourgeoisie and the skilled working class’ was growing as ‘significant numbers of grooms who were small masters found their brides from families in the labour aristocracy’.37 The 137

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

experience of unemployment also brought skilled and unskilled together, particularly in the depressions of 1904—05 and 1908—09. Bob Stewart, joiner, recalled that during recessions in his trade, he took up various dead—end jobs, such as labouring in a bridge building works, selling lottery tickets, and so on.38 His experience could prob-

ably be duplicated many thousands of times over. This suggests that contact between the skilled and the unskilled was greater than might be expected, and that social exclusiveness was fragmenting in the late nineteenth century; something which may have been assisted by changing patterns of consumption, in particular the growth of the Co-operative movement after 1880. Membership for the whole of Scotland nearly doubled between 1895 and 1914, increasing from 238 248 to 467 270.39 However, in some regions the Co—operative movement grew even more spectacularly. In Lanarkshire, for example,

membership grew more than five-fold from 8525 in 1886 to 43 270 in 1913.“0 Developments in the provision of leisure services was another, albeit less conscious, force making for greater social solidarity. The rise of mass sporting pursuits, particularly football, made leisure ‘less closely linked to a pattern of stratification within the working class’.41 By the 1880s football had a massive following in the west of Scotland. One in four of all Scottish males aged between 14 and 29 were members of a football club, prompting a contemporary writer on the game to remark that ‘the enthusiasm of the Scot for the Association game is without parallel in any race for any particular sport or pastime’.42 The first Hampden Park international between Scotland and England in 1878 was watched by 20 000 spectators; in 1902, 102000 attended.“ Very few analyses exist of the social composition of the football crowd, but the death toll in the Ibrox Park disaster of 1902 provides some clues. Two-thirds of the dead

came from the ranks of skilled workers.44 Horse racing was also highly popular and off course betting was, as Paton notes, ‘an obsession of nearly everyone’; a View confirmed by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Samuel Chisholm, and the Chief Constable of Glasgow, John Orr, in their evidence to the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Betting in 1902. According to them, the ‘locus’ of betting ‘is the streets and the classes are the industrial classes’; the ‘riveters and smiths’ and the ‘labourers and dockers’.45 Counteracting the unrespectable nature of these pursuits was education. As we have noted, the Education Act of 1872 provided a

universal educational experience for working-class children in Scotland. 138

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Working-Class Culture in Scotland Gradually escapist clauses in the legislation permitting children to work half-time in industry, or gain exemption form schooling at an earlier age than thirteen, were eradicated. By 1901 the school leaving age had been raised to fourteen and the system of exemptions except in necessitous cases was abolished. The stress on Empire and the Union became even more intense in this period as the new school boards elected to run the system were dominated by church and business. In spite of the fact that working-class candidates were successful later in the century, Labour, as late as 1918, still had only 120 school board members in Scotland. The first chairman of the

Glasgow School Board was Alexander Whitelaw, leading partner in Bairds of Gartsherrie, and the iron company also dominated the Coatbridge Board.46 Reflecting these interests the Education Code in 1895 made drill compulsory and after the outbreak of the Boer War the Scottish Education Department (SED) issued a circular on the importance of physical exercise in schools, saying that exercises: Indirectly, bring the individual into contact with the principles

which lie at the foundation of national defence, and they bring home to him his duties and responsibilities as a citizen of the Empire/‘7 As part of the stress on Empire Scottish children were denied a past. As Robert Anderson remarks, Scottish history was generally depicted

in schools as a squalid and wretched tale with little evidence of progress or development, or as the businessman chairman of the Govan School Board put it: Scottish history and geography begat ‘provincialism’f"8 As part of this process of imperial reeducation Empire days and flagwaving became part of the socialising experience of the working—class child. In Edinburgh in 1908 a gathering of 1500 schoolchildren witnessed each school being presented with a flag by the Victoria League, and harangued by Lord Rosebery on imperial unity and citizenship.49 However, while it was evident that these educational and leisure developments generated a greater sense of homogeneity among the working class, particularly the skilled stratum, and drew them, if marriage patterns are to be used, closer to the petite bourgeoisie, the possibilities for division were as great. A contemporary study of the Glasgow skilled working class at the turn of the century pointed to the continued existence of two competing cultures; one, respectable, the other, turbulent and rough. The respectable worker, it was 139

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THE CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

claimed, cared not for ‘football or whisky’, but for discussions of a ‘political or theological’ nature, and hobbies, such as model shipmaking. He was, indeed, ‘the backbone of the working classes’.50 However, parallelling this world was the rougher masculine culture based on drink and football, which ‘works, together with over-

crowded tenement houses, to make family life rather an impossible thing’.51 The sexism of this culture was brought out by John Paton

when he says of Aberdeen bakers that when ‘the gossip of the bakehouse was exhausted’, there was one topic which ‘seemed inexhaustible — women and sex’.52 Among the respectable Protestant skilled working class religion was still an essential part of their consciousness. Some 65 per cent of Glasgow children between 5 and 15 were said to attend Protestant Sunday Schools in 1890. Among adults oral-history testimony from all over Britain shows that church attendance in Scotland at over 50 per cent between 1872 and 1906 was, with the exception of Wales, the highest in the UK.53 The high attendance rates were partly due to the increasing stress placed by the Protestant churches in reaching the working class, which was mentioned in the previous chapter. However, the later nineteenth century also witnessed a new sensitivity by the Church towards the social problems of the working class. The mid-Victorian church had been fiercely anti-trade union and had adopted whole—heartedly the doctrine of laissez—faire, which saw poverty as the consequence of moral failure. In nine out of ten cases, remarked the Church of Scotland’s Commission on Intempenmce (1867), poverty was the result of the ‘sins’ of the poor. The reactionary views of the Scottish churches alienated large sections of the working class and such sentiments forty years later led to the foundation of the Labour Church movement, with branches throughout Scotland. The movement was set up ‘in protest against the social failure and middle class bias and assumptions of the regular churches’.54 These protests also resonated in the formation of the Socialist Sunday Schools in Glasgow in the 1890s, which later spread to other parts of Scotland.”

However, as middle-Class assumptions regarding state intervention, poverty and political democracy came under increasing attack in the later nineteenth century a greater willingness to accommodate working-class social grievances became evident. A sign of this was the increasing influence among churchmen of social witness and building the kingdom of God on earth. Practically, this led to social inquiries into living conditions, such as the Glasgow Presbytery’s 140

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Working-Class Culture in Scotland

investigation of housing conditions in the 1 8905, the setting up of the Christian Social Union in the early 1900s, and recommendations for material improvement. This shift in the theology of the church did much to attract workers to it, but as we will see later, it also did much to affect the ethos of the burgeoning labour movement in this period. Linked to religion were the numerous temperance organisations. As we have observed, temperance was an essential element in the culture of respectability and its various organisations had a large subscribing working—class element. But it was also important in the late nineteenth century in shaping the ethos and in providing social analysis for the emerging movement for independent labour representation. This was recognised by the president of the Scottish Trades Union Congress in

1897 when he claimed that in building a reformed society the ‘Trade Unions have no better confederate than that of temperance’.56 The division between the two strands of working-class culture was less impressionistically seen in the housing market, where from the 18808 its distribution among workers was more visibly stratified. According to the Royal Commission on Housing (1884— 85), families in Edinburgh occupying one room only were ‘labourers and people of the poorest class’, while at the upper end of the artisanal stratum there was reported a ‘growing demand’ for self—contained flats, built on two storeys with outside stairs and separate street doors.57 Consumption of leisure also produced ethnic and local rivalries, which were highly evident in football, and often led to clashes between rival supporters. The Hampden Riot of 1909 was, according to Bert Moorhouse, ‘one of the most spectacular instances of violence around a British football match — with arson, baton charges . . . fourteen hospitalised policemen, slashed fire hoses, stonings, fights, knives, [and] damage of £15 125 6d to street lamps’.58 Although this was more the case in Glasgow, where the sectarian rivalries between Celtic and Rangers continue to exist, other cities had their own scaleddown version of this religious melodrama. In Edinburgh, the rivalry between Catholic Hibernian and Protestant Heart of Midlothian is well documented. Lesser known is that in Dundee between Catholic Dundee United and Protestant Dundee FC. Aberdeen escaped the worst excesses of sectarian rivalry as the Irish population there was minuscule and there was only one football club — Aberdeen FC. As is apparent divisions within the working class based on consumption were compounded by ethnicity and religion, and also less visibly by gender; a situation reinforced by employment practices. 141

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880-1914

The right of the foremen to hire and fire allowed religious affiliation to be used to police the boundaries of skill. Among ironworkers in Lanarkshire, the Protestants tended to dominate the skilled positions, while the Catholics were more often than not employed as unskilled labourers.59 In the higher skilled trades the situation was little different. In the engineering trades of Coatbridge the skilled occupations were the preserve of the Scots and Irish Protestants. The local branch of the ASE met in the Orange Hall and there was not one Catholic member of the Society until 1931.60 This situation was replicated throughout the west of Scotland. Harry McShane recalled, in his autobiography, that it was rare for a Catholic to become apprenticed

to the engineering trade in Glasgow.61 Similarly, John Foster and Charles Woolfson have shown that some shipyards on the Clyde

operated a policy of ethnic discrimination and that core yard workers tended to be Freemasons or members of the Orange Order.62 In the Springburn and Partick districts of Glasgow there existed the ‘most intensely Orange section’ of the city’s proletariatfi3 Indeed, religion determined one’s life chances to such an extent that there was little mobility experienced by Irish Catholics in the nineteenth century labour market in the west of Scotland. The pattern of employment of the Glasgow Catholic Irish which marked the post-famine years was maintained until before the First World War — that is, clockwork, labouring, lower grades of tailoring, and casual work in the boot and shoe trade.64 The only exception to this form of discrimination in the labour market was Dundee, where, in spite of high concentrations of Irish Catholics, sectarian tensions were, on the whole, quite muted. This was put down by W A. Walker to three factors; firstly, the absence of a dominant culture; secondly, the absence of an effective Orange opposition; and, thirdly, the fact that the Irish Catholics in Dundee tended to be mainly women.“ Thus, it would appear that sectarianism was at its most divisive in places with a high degree of association with the Orange Order. The Order had been growing since

the emigration of Ulster Protestants in the 18705 and its membership stood at 25 000 in Scotland in 1900, of which 8000 were in Glasgow alone.66 By 1913—14, over a quarter of the Order’s 400 branches in Britain were located in Glasgow.67 The high and continuing levels of discrimination and prejudice against Irish Catholics saw them retreat into their own communities, which were naturally centred on the Catholic Church. Indeed, the social value of the Church to ordinary Catholics cannot be underestimated. Walker has itemised the range of social services provided by 142

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Working-Class Culture in Scotland

the Catholic Church in Dundee in 1915, although as Bernard Aspinwall’s research shows they were also duplicated in the west of Scotland.68 The services included churches and schools, voluntary societies, such as the Catholic Young Men’s Society, a St Vincent’s Hostel for respectable working girls, a Catholic day nursery, a work-

ing mothers’ restaurant, a school club for girls, a home for Catholic Working Boys, and through the St Vincent de Paul society a scheme for administering rent books, an insurance and probation service. As

Walker concluded, ‘Irish Catholic parochial life became a way of life in which religious, political, economic, educational and recreational elements were so fused as to form a culture from which total withdrawal was unlikely’.69 These links were strengthened by the emergence of professional football. The original Celtic supporters’ clubs, the Celtic brake clubs, required that members were also ‘fully fledged

members of the League of the Cross’.70 Even the overtly political aspects of Catholic culture were bound up with the social. The United Irish League (UIL) was concerned not simply with Home Rule, but also with the relief of hardship among Scottish Catholics and, as a result, membership often overlapped with that of Catholic friendly societies.71 The political implications of creating an enclosed culture will be considered later. Like the Irish, women were also treated as second—class citizens. Their work was by definition low paid and unskilled and this rein-

forced wider societal notions concerning the inferiority of women. In Victorian and Edwardian society the pervasiveness of the ideology of ‘separate spheres’ meant that ‘work was defined as something which men did, and, indeed, the working class was generally defined as working men’.72 Margaret Irwin, trade unionist and women’s campaigner, beautifully summed up the these masculine attitudes when she recalled that the manager of a powerloom factory in Glasgow told her that he had once introduced male labour into his weaving department; however, the experiment was short—lived as the ‘men gave it up, being unable to stand the ridicule to which they were daily exposed to for taking up “women’s work’”.73 The object of society

was to keep women out of the workplace and in the home and, indeed, a measure of masculinity, as well as respectability, in this period was a non-working wife.74 Female inactivity in the labour market after marriage served to justify capital in its failings to equip women with skills. Work was seen as an interlude between school and marriage. It also, as we will see, justified trade unions in ignoring women workers’ concerns, or in actively discriminating against 143

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

them. As one trade unionist in Dunfermline put it in the early 18908: ‘the women are . .. quite content with their conditions of work, which

the bulk of them consider as terminable probation between them and marriage’.75 Unfortunately many women and, as James Treble points out, almost all working men, acquiesced in these assumptions

regarding the economic and social role of women.76 However, the economic and social realities of working-class life in Scotland in this period conflicted with the domestic ideal of a patriarchal society. Women did much paid work which went unrecorded in the occupational census, particularly washing, child-minding, homework in sweated trades, and so on.77 Moreover, given the number of spinsters and single parents, many women had to work out of necessity. Treble’s figures for Glasgow in the period 1891—1911 show that around one—third of the female population of Glasgow above the age of ten years were recorded as active in the labour market.78 Furthermore, in places such as Dundee women were the dominant wage-earning section of the working class and their social behaviour had all the hallmarks of a rougher masculine culture; a matter, as one might guess, of grave concern to the Dundee middle classes.79 Thus working-class culture reflected the dualism between the

respectable and unrespectable which had run through it from 1850 onwards. However, the move towards a greater cohesion of social experience was also evident and that was partly the outcome of important changes which were occurring in the late nineteenthcentury labour process.

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1. A half-time school in Arbroath, 1887. Note the class size, and age range. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

2. Female jute workers in Dundee, c.1900. Note the ages of the workers and the presence of the supervisor in the background.

(Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

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3. Paisley mill girl strike, 1907. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

4. The Lady Victoria Pit bottom, Newtongrange, c. 1900. A comparatively early example of a Scottish pit using the longwall method and machinery to mine coal. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

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5 Steelworkers m Beardmore’s Parkhead

Forge, Glasgow, 1910. Craft pride on display! (Glasgow Umversnty Archive and Business Records Centre)

4

L11I

6. A cartoon showing the links between the worker in factory and yard and those at the battle Records Centre)

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.

.

7. Miners’ leader, A. ]. Cook, addressing a mass meeting in Fife during the General Strike of 1926. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

8. Harp Athletic PC c.1921—2. The name was chosen by the team’s trainer; Patrick Drummond, but the sectarian overtones are clear. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh) EBSCOhost - printed on 6/8/2020 8:09 PM via UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

ERCIAL Dfl l‘l h. avg. . A ‘ V

9. Unemployed men, Edinburgh, c.1930. Hanging around the streets was one of the few free leisure pursuits open to the unemployed. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

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10. An elderly couple living in the Ouergate, Dundee, in wretched conditions in the 19205. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

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11. A woman gathering sea coal in Fife in the 19305. One of a number of casual jobs women did which went unrecorded in the occupational census. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

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12. Female cop winders in the Dundee jute industry 5.19305. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

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13. Fife miners using hand—got methods of coalmining c.1930. Note the very cramped conditions. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

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14. A Clydeside riveter using a pneumatic rivet machine, c.1930. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

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ION EWWLH

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15. The Youth Guild of the Independent Labour Party, Glasgow, c.1930. Note the presence of James Maxton in the middle of the second row. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

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Tut «I 414'!" hrmld In Sir [WIN-AI M m . 50:.

Co Sir I'DilIiammfiearbmore, Iariu w IL. AJMII. Mal-tn Ih- Saul Ind -l u n . Pukhnd.

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16. A programme not only showing the range of Beardmore’s business activities, but also containing an interesting address from staff and workers, c.1942. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

employer "4 u n..- who“ .(

M u n - m m u g — d lolly

merpriu. lag-1hr with on M y midnliu-d ” m m yuan

17 . Clyde welders at work, c.1942. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

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1 8 . A woman welder on

Clydeside at work during the Second World War, c.1942. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records C e n t r e )

‘

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1 9 . An engineering workshop, c.1942. Note the presence of women in the fitting shop; a

sight calculated to reduce a craftsman to tears! (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh) EBSCOhost - printed on 6/8/2020 8:09 PM via UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

20. Women assembly workers in a television and radio factory in Crail, Fife, 1952. The growing electric and electronics industries relied heavily on the nimble fingers of increasing numbers of female workers. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library)

21. A sugar beet factory outing in Fife in February 1952. The male smoker not only bonded workers, but also was a means of identifying with the firm. (Cowie Collection, University of St Andrews Library) EBSCOhost - printed on 6/8/2020 8:09 PM via UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

22. An orange parade in Glasgow 6.1959. (Glasgow University Archive and Business Records Centre)

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linking arms with James Airlie and jimmy Reid, leaders of the UCS Work-In. (Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh)

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Chapter 16

SKILL UNDER PRESSURE: CHANGES I N THE WORKPLACE, 1880—1914

The cumulative changes in the workplace in the period 1880 to 1914

have led Michael Mann among others to talk of the dawning of a ‘second industrial revolution’.80 In Scotland, these changes were trig— gered by rising labour costs, falling productivity, high interest rates, the increase in foreign competition and the decline in overseas demand. This placed pressure on employers to rationalise production and intensify the exploitation of labour.81 Economic expansion was, therefore, linked to improvements in technology and labour management, and the magnitude and profoundness these changes inspired created a fundamental rift in the social relations and structure of Scottish industry, which had important knock-on effects for the growth of trade unions and the tempo of industrial relations. The chief characteristics of this ‘second industrial revolution’ were: firstly, the introduction of new semi-automatic machinery in coalmining, shipbuilding and engineering; secondly, the increasing use of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in trades hitherto the preserve of skilled workers; thirdly, the adoption of a rudimentary system of standardised and interchangeable parts; fourthly, the predominance of factory over the workshop as the primary unit of production; and lastly, the introduction of aspects of Taylorism, particularly, the premium bonus system (PBS), and new specialist categories of labour concerned with the design and planning and supervision of produc-

tion. These changes also impacted themselves on the social relationships of production and on the various methods of manufacturing consent in the workplace for the imperatives of capital. But it is

important to note that it was not simply heavy industry that was affected by changes in this period; smaller scale trades such as granite 145

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

polishing, trawling, and so on, were equally affected, although perhaps

not as profoundly as, say, coalmining. In engineering, the introduction of the capstan or turret lathe and the specialised boring and grinding machines reduced most of the work of skilled workers to that of preparation. Turners found that the new lathe reduced their work to fixing the precise rotation of the cutting edges; thereafter, the machine was operated by semi-skilled handymen. Ancillary tasks such as ‘marking out’, the determination of ‘speeds and feeds’, and the grinding of cutting tools, were also taken from the turner and parcelled out to a range of specialised workmen.82 The ASE claimed that as a result of these new machine tools there were only ‘seven’ out of 46 federated districts employing the turret lathe which were not ‘manned by handymen’.83 One contemporary went so far as to claim that: When set up by a mechanic a capstan or turret lathe ‘can be operated by a boy or girl’, and that as ‘an inexperienced boy of fifteen’, he produced ‘more bolts in a day than two turners could make in a week’.84

Even the fitters, whose work of rectifying inaccurate workmanship was less affected by the new machinery, found themselves under pressure. The systematic growth of interchangeable parts made for greater tolerances, hence, there was a reduced need for precise and lasting fits. Semi-skilled assemblers and erectors usurped the assembly work previously the remit of the fitters, and, as a result, there was a multiplication in the number of fitters’ assistants and boys in the engineering trade.“ As Harry McShane, referring to his time in Weirs’ engineering works in Glasgow, put it: ‘every morning each man knew the job he was going to do during the day. The jobs were so ridiculously simple that anyone could do them’.86 In these circumstances apprenticeship degenerated into a form of cheap labour as the number of apprentices rose and the content of training declined.87 The lack of job satisfaction led to not ‘more than 50 to 55 per cent [of Glasgow apprentices] completing their time and obtaining first or second class lines’.88 While the restructuring of the engineering trade allowed employers the luxury of dreaming of the transition from workshop to assembly line production, shipbuilding offered less scope for innovative methods of rationalisation. Trade fluctuations made employers reluctant to invest in new and expensive machinery and tools and this led to a 146

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Changes in the Workplace continued emphasis on labour-intensive production methods. However, in the larger yards, the increasing size of ocean-going liners made the construction of the hull by handwork extremely difficult and expensive. These problems were in large measure overcome by the introduction of pneumatic rivet machines and electrically-powered drills. The impact of the machines was felt most keenly by the least skilled handworkers — the riveters and the caulkers. There was, as Keith McLelland and Alastair Reid point out, ‘no reason why [the] operator should have been a skilled worker’.89 The new machinery allowed employers to make greater use of apprentice labour in caulking and riveting.90 Noting this change, a Glasgow factory inspector remarked that ‘Jobs formerly done by journeymen can now with [pneumatic] tools be undertaken by apprentices’.91 This view was underscored by John Hill, leader of the Boilermakers’ Union, in a speech to the unemployed of Glasgow in 1908, when he said that:

Only a few years ago unemployment had no terrors for wellorganized skilled trades. . . . Now the tables are turned. With

improved machinery our craft is at a discount, and a boy from school now tends a machine which does the work of three men. . . . It is mostly machine-minders who are wanted.92 The change from iron to steel shipbuilding also led to ‘a significant

decrease in the level of skill of both platers and their helpers’ as the manipulation of cold steel plates proved easier than dealing with the heated iron plates.93 Similar encroachments into skilled work were experienced in other trades. Coalmining was increasingly subject to mechanisation, with 22 per cent of coal in Scotland by 1913 cut by machine; a figure higher than that in any other mining district in Britain.94 In addition, there was the installation of conveying machinery and the abolition in many areas of the ‘pillar and stoop’ method of coal-getting in favour of the longwall method, which allowed for increased supervision of

the work group and led to the erosion of the independence of the traditional bred collier.95 John McArthur, Fife miners’ leader, summed up the nature of the older collier’s skills and the manner in which the new mining methods had led to the degeneration of them, when he said: Old miners like my father were carefully trained men that performed the complete operation of a miner. They undercut the

147

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

coal. . . . Then they would use a hand-boring machine, bore holes, make up their own explosives and blow the coal down, then form a roadway, help fill off the coal, secure the roof. Every part of the process of mining was performed by the picksman who was a face man. For a face man my father used a variety of tools. He used light . . . picks. . . . He had heavier picks for cutting the coal and breaking it up, heavier picks still to deal with stone work. For coal that was easy to bore he had a fast borer, for difficult or hard coal he had a slow borer. He also had

a cleaner for cleaning borings out of a hole, a stemmer for stemming the short hole, a heavy hammer or mash, a mash—axe, wedges, splinters, and so on. He had almost a batchful of tools. In contrast, all that a stripper — a miner working on a machine-cut face — needed was a shovel, a pick with a mash end, and a mash. Unlike the picksman . . . the strippers were careless about the condition they left the coal face since it was not their sole responsibility.96

The lesser populated trades also experienced a large degree of deskilling. The woodworking trades of the construction industry

witnessed the extension of the use of prefabricated fitments and the increased use of ferro-concrete in the building of floors and beams; developments which threatened to abolish the ‘rougher carcase work’ of the carpenters.” The mass production of manufactured earthen— ware sanitary products decreased the skills demanded of plumbers by removing the need for lead fittings and making ‘easier and very much simpler the task of putting the work together’.98 In stonework, the practice of dressing stone at the quarry, the arrival of the pneumatic chisel and other cutting devices undermined the work of the mason by no small degree.99 Coopers also found themselves ‘not so skilled’ as the ‘Division of labour has come in’.100 Similarly, the invention of

the linotype composing machine in the newspaper trade removed from the compositor the skill of producing justified lines of type and replaced it with the less demanding skill of keyboard operation. Monotype had the same affect in the book trade.101 Outside of the centres of industry and population the cold draught of technological change was also being felt. The white fishing industry of Aberdeen underwent a transition in social relations with the introduction of the steam trawler. Prior to this the boats and tackle belonged to the fishermen, but steam technology put the cost of ownership beyond the reach of the small enterprise. The larger 148

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Changes in the Workplace

trawlers needed to encroach into the rich fishing grounds of the northerly waters added to the time at sea and the cost of fuel, which

further reinforced the trend towards capitalist ownership of the industry. Fishing, therefore, became a huge commercial operation

requiring a high level of finance which had the effect of proletarianising large numbers of previously independent fishermen.102 The reorganisation of production and the encroachments by machinery into the realm of skilled handwork can be seen as part of a general process of intensifying the exploitation of labour by capital. This was facilitated by the introduction of electrical lighting which made shift work more common and, as a result, excessive overtime working became a problem for trade unions in this period. According to Thomas Ballantyne, assistant secretary of the ASRS, workers in the employ of the Glasgow and South Western Railway worked on average in the winter months of 1890 four hours and forty—eight minutes in excess of the normal ten hour day.103 It was a common saying among railway workers that ‘in the winter months a guard never gets the chance of speaking to his children’.104

Tighter work discipline also followed. On the railways a new system of control was introduced in 1900 which related the movement of rolling stock to the availability and need for labour. To operate the new system a ‘strictly enforced hierarchy of obedience and accountability’ on the part of the workforce was necessary!“ In engineering,

the lock-out of 1897 won for management the right not only to control the labour process, but also to ‘introduce new systems of supervision?“ However, it was the extension of the new incentive

payments systems which was the most effective in raising the work effort and intensifying industrial discipline. By 1914, 46 per cent of fitters and 37 per cent of turners in the British engineering trade were on piece-rate payment, compared to only 5 per cent of all engineering and boilermaking workers in 1886.107 Added to this was the introduction of PBS, which involved the measuring and recording of job times by stopwatch. W F. Watson, in his autobiography, highlights the degrading aspects of such a system for time-served men, when he recalled that:

The plant started up before time, and one had to get down to the job immediately the hooter ceased; feed and speed bosses were employed to see that this was done. Fixed to each machine was a chart indicating the speeds to be employed, and the feed and speed men, armed with feedmeters, perambulated the shop

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

to ensure both men and machine were working to their utmost capacity. We were not allowed to grind our own tools, all emery wheels were removed from the shop. When starting a man was given six standardized tools, ground to theoretic angles on

special machines, which were changed for new ones when worn. Notices were posted forbidding any man to leave his machine or vice — labourers were to be sent to the stores for tools and tackle. We were not supposed to leave the job under any pretext . . . except when nature demanded — even then the toilets were without doors for easy inspection.108

Although only 10 per cent of all engineering workers in Britain were thought to be working under the PBS in 1909,109 the threat of its extension put a question mark over the survival of the independence of the time-served man. As Watson’s observation makes clear, under PBS many workers experienced a loss of control over their methods of work. Tighter work discipline and more intensive effort combined with greater specialisation of skill led to changes in the habits and customs of the workplace. The ceremonials and rituals which were an integral

part of workplace culture and the social supports of artisanal solidarity disappeared in the larger works towards the end of the nineteenth century. The journeymen tied to piecework and responsible for more expensive and sophisticated machinery had less time to indulge in the elaborate initiation ceremonies with their equally lavish amounts of drink. Moreover, such was the degree of specialisation of skill there was arguably less of an achievement to celebrate. Alfred Williams, in his study of life in a railway factory, illuminatingly describes how these changes induced a very different, and more regimented workshop atmosphere, from the one he had experienced twenty years previously:

Many pranks are played upon one another by the workmen, though it is significant of the times that sky—larking and horseplay are not nearly as common and frequent as they used to be; there is not now the time and opportunity to indulge in practical jokes. Under the new discipline the men are generally more sober and silent, though they are none the happier nevertheless. The increased work efforts they are bound to make at work and the higher speed of the machinery has caused them to become gloomy and unnatural, and, very often, peevish and irritable.110

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Changes in the Workplace Even in the smaller workshops the old forms of apprentice socialisation were being stripped of their intrinsic value. The washing of the mason’s apron, an important event in the rites de passage of the apprentice, was abandoned and the ‘more modern masons were

satisfied by taking the youth to a public house and making him drink a pint of beer’.111 True the ritual smearing of the genitals with grease, oil or ink depending on the trade continued. John Paton talks of one of his fellow apprentices in a newspaper composing room being seized, ‘despite his struggles, and his clothing torn open while his genitals were liberally smeared with printer’s ink’.112 These actions, however, were more the product of a closed male environment than the surviving remnants of a once powerful artisan culture of rituals, signs and ceremonials. As such they had their parallels in public

schools, sea-going vessels and other exclusively male institutions.113 The agent of socialisation was more and more the trade union, and the unions responded by opening youth sections to ensure the transmission of trade practices and traditions to apprentices.114 The changing state of social relations in the workplace also

impacted itself on managerial agencies for maintaining control of the workforce. As we have stated in the previous chapter, employers experimented with direct and indirect forms of control, which had both advantages and disadvantages for the former and the workers. The rationalisation of production methods and the introduction of new technologies increased the desire of the employers to assume total

control of the labour process. As a result internal sub-contracting began to disappear gradually in shipbuilding and other trades,“5 which had the effect of lifting the wage/effort ratio out of the realm ‘of personal disputes between a driving contractor and his men, into a more generalised struggle between employers and workers’.116 The direct control of the foreman was also being reduced in the larger engineering works with the introduction of PBS and other forms of payment. The complexity involved in the constant calculation and re-calculation of piece rates led to the creation of wages departments and workers began to receive payment through the office rather than

the local pub. Time measurement of jobs also meant that the all-round authority and competence of the foreman was eroded as increasingly

planning became separated from the execution of work. In the new regime, planning became more a part of the strategic concerns of work management, rather than something which was left to the ‘tactical discretion of individual foremen’.“7 Recruitment of labour was another function of the foreman which was disappearing as the

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

larger employers established personnel departments.118 The gradual

weakening of personal ties to individual foremen and squad leaders as the size of the private bureaucracy grew acted to simplify the hierarchy of authority in the workplace. More and more workers were being confronted directly by capital or, at least, its managerial functionaries,

rather than by a host of authority figures as was the case in the mid— Victorian decades. However, shipbuilding, with its dispersed work

sites, found dispensing with the all—round supervisory functions of the foremen less easy than other trades.119 The harder edge to workplace relations also manifested itself in the decline of employer paternalism. Hassan has argued that under the weight of rising labour costs and erratic price fluctuations aristocratic families, such as the Buccleughs and Lothians, found themselves unable to cope and their inability brought a shift in ownership in the Mid-Lothian coal industry to more entrepreneurial-minded employers. By 1890 the Lothian Coal Company had taken over the Mid-Lothian coalfields and its dominance ended the system of paternalist man— agement built up over the nineteenth century by the landowners.120 Similarly, on the railways by 1912 the ‘system of [paternalism] had been gutted of any meaningful reciprocity’, and petitioning of employers for wage increases or other improvements in working conditions was being rejected by the rank-and-file as ‘degrading’; as a result solidarity shifted to the union.121 Although few Glasgow industrialists favoured paternalism over other forms of workplace control, the family-based structure of ownership very often led to close relations between master and men. Issac Beardmore, steelworks owner, thought nothing of drinking with his workers in public houses.‘22 But, as Tom Bell, engineer, recalled in his autobiography: With the expansion of imperialism, its shipbuilding, its armaments, etc., Beardmore’s grew like a mushroom. By the war of 1914, the old puddling process had died out. Electric furnaces, cranes, automatic conveyors and up-to-date methods had wiped

out the old patriarchal conditions.123 As the chairman of John Brown’s remarked to a government committee on shipping and shipbuilding in 1916, the construction of company housing ‘was not all philanthropy, but hard headed business to separate the foremen from the men’.124 Paternalistic initiatives 152

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Changes in the Workplace

had, under the impact of changes in the nature of production, been reduced to cost benefit analysis, thus stripping it of any notion of reciprocity. In the thread manufacturing industry of Paisley paternalism also began to show signs of wear and tear as changes in the labour process and the geography of recruitment began to spawn a more oppositional mill culture. The stable organic industrial community of the mid-Victorian period fragmented as the need to recruit more female labour led to an influx of outsiders. Matthew Blair, in The Paisley Thread Industry (1907), highlighted the role of immigrants not only in boosting the native population, but also the way in which ‘The incomers brought many new ideas and practices, which have materially changed the homely style of life that previously existed’.125 Their experience of a different process of socialisation made the

incomers amenable to alternative definitions of their social position beyond that provided by the employer. Moreover, the demand for labour also witnessed an influx of day workers from the more cos— mopolitan culture of Glasgow. Corning mainly from skilled working—

class households, these female workers saw labour organisation as both legitimate and natural expressions of working-class interests. The end of the half-time education system in the early 19005 furthered this process and denied Coats a hand in the socialisation of its future workforce. Thus, the employers’ View of the personal relationship they had with their workforce was becoming increasingly anachronistic, a

point reinforced by the intensification of industrial strife in the Paisley mills after 1897, and in the move towards setting up a trade union for female workers.126 Although the picture so far is one of increasingly real subordination of labour to capital, as Bryn Jones points out, ‘management cannot construct, de novo, the conditions under which labour is to function’, as there is always a bargained context, which is fluid and dependent on the balance of power in the workplace.127 Additionally, the ability of management to control the labour process is constrained by the particularisms of the product and the market. As Pollard and Robertson, as well as Reid, have shown for shipbuilding,128 and Harley

for engineering,129 the product market for British goods was highly differentiated. This made it difficult for employers to implement techniques of mass production: ships, machines, railway engines, boilers, and so on, all had to be constructed according to the needs of the purchaser. In the consumer—orientated trades, such as the build— ing industry and jobbing printing, the one—off nature of much of the 153

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THE CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

work also imposed limitations on the use of labour-saving technology and, as a result, workers retained a measure of craft control.

The subordination of labour to capital was, thus, never complete during this phase of rapid technological and organisational change in industry. The incompleteness of subordination and the continued control exercised by workers over some aspects of their working lives has, however, led to a tendency among social historians to dismiss

the impact of these changes on workers’, particularly the skilled, consciousness, as well as to play down the level of conflict emanating from them. As Patrick Joyce puts it: Employers were motivated neither by a desire to deskill or subordinate the worker, nor to introduce the most advanced technologies . . . the nature of labour and product markets, the operation of inter-capitalist competition, and the resulting reliance on workers, together always with the very important

matter of the cultural representations capital and labour had of themselves and each other, often led to the adoption of a modus Uivendi between the two sides, to areas of compromise

and co-operation in which capital often ceded to labour the ‘control’ [Richard] Price so persistently sees as grounds for conflict.130 Although industry cannot be depicted as a system of social relations based on permanent internecine struggle, and compromise as much as conflict was written into the relationship between capital and labour, the period of the late 18805 to 1914 stands out because of the scale and velocity of change, which ‘moved the question of intensified work to a general level of experience’.131 The threats implicit in the restructuring of workplace technology and social relations to the status of the skilled worker were acute since any downgrading not only affected income, but also his standing in the community. As Alain Touraine, et al., have argued:

Protection of occupational autonomy is a defence both of an occupation culture and of the communal way of experiencing

work. Workers . . . [oppose] output norms not only to avoid excessive speeds of work, but also because pace destroys the pride of craftsmanship in a ‘good job’.132

The trend towards specialisation was lamented by craftsmen writers, 154

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Changes in the Workplace such as Williams and Watson, because it struck at their notions of craft pride, and held out the unenviable prospect of the end of a traditional artisanal culture. It made resistance to the imperatives of capital inevitable; a phenomenon which acts as perhaps the most important barrier to employer control of the labour process. It also did much to increase membership of trade unions.

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Chapter 1 7

TRADE UNIONISM O N THE MARCH, 1880—1914

As has already been noted, resistance to the imperatives of capital accumulation and managerial strategies designed to increase the flow of profit could be expressed informally, through the workgroup, and/or formally, through membership of a trade union. Indeed, the workgroup in the years up to 1900 continued to be an important, if ad hoc, form of resistance. The main reason for this was the weakness of trade unionism in Scotland. There were only 147 000 trade unionists in Scotland, according to the Webbs, in 1 892; a figure which only amounted to 3.7 per cent of total population,133 compared to 4.9 per cent of the population for England and Wales. Regional studies of union density have shown that Scotland’s level as a per— centage of the employed population was half that of South Wales and Humberside, and only a quarter of the north-east coast of England.”4 National or regional statistics, of course, masked the higher densities found in the capital goods sector. The heavy industries accounted for a third of total union membership in Scotland in 1892, but, in spite of this, only a quarter of the workforce in this sector was organised.“ The Webbs found the Clyde to be ‘the home of piece work and contract work, of poverty, drunkeness, cupidity and competition’. Only the Boilermakers, according to the Webbs, had ‘a really efficient union’, while the ASE was ‘regarded, both by

employers and other unions, as a benefit society’.136 A micro study of trade unionism in Dunfermline in 1892 shows only three wellorganised trades: engine keepers, iron moulders and powerloom tenters.137 As far as the Webbs were concerned the ‘Scottish working-

men are . . . only thrashed into Trade Unionism by severe depressions or tempted into it by strikes’.”8 While things improved to such an extent in the 19005 and, especially in the period of industrial unrest in 156

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Trade Unionism on the March

1910—14, to contradict the jaundiced Views of the Webbs, membership levels were still subject to continuous fluctuation. Low union densities necessitated the continuance of informal workshop organisation if traditional attitudes to rates of pay, workloads and access to employment were to be maintained. Lanarkshire colliers, without regard to the strength of trade unionism in the

country, as late as the 18903, were said to adhere to the fixed ‘darg’ and, according to William Small, union leader, ‘to come up at any time; provided the bottomer can get an empty cage’.139 The Webbs noted that in the Lothians, miners ‘seldom worked ten [days] in a fortnight and will stay away without the least notice to go to the races, etc’.“‘0 During industrial disputes unionist and non—unionists

alike could be found on the picket line. Much of the strength of workgroup organisation and the weakness of official unionism

resulted from the social realities of coalmining. As Alan Campbell explains, the contract system in mining encouraged labour mobility and roots were rarely laid down by colliers long enough to establish strong county unions. Instability was also encouraged by the movement of workers in and out of the industry. Slumps in other industries, or

exceptionally high wages in mining, brought influxes of new recruits, but as trade picked up or wages fell most of them left. Thus, the fluidity of employment and settlement made it difficult to sustain organisation and collect subscriptions, hence, the emphasis in Lanarkshire at this time on workgroup organisation;141 a fact reinforced during the 1894 miners’ dispute When of the 70 000 miners on strike only 30 000 were union members.142 The failure of the dispute saw membership of the Scottish Miners’ Federation (SMF) fall back to 15 700 in 1897, once more putting the emphasis on informal modes of organisation.143 Employer hostility and trade depressions, thus remained imposing barriers to effective organisation among miners in Scotland. Unofficial resistance also flourished in unskilled trades, particularly those employing large numbers of females; sometimes using ingenious

methods of struggle. During a dispute in 1900 at the woollen mills of P 86 R Sanderson of Galashiels over manning levels, workers won their demands by refusing to urinate in receptacles provided by management, thus denying the scouring department its principle sup— ply of ammonia!144 In Dundee, jute workers, who were predomi— nantly female, regularly struck work ‘with the appearance’, it was said, ‘of the spring sun’.145 Indeed, between 1889 and 1906 there were 82 recorded strikes in the industry involving women.146 As

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

Eleanor Gordon points out, lack of formal organisation did not stop women organising, rather it affected the way they organised.147 Women especially found ad hoc organisation more in keeping with their dual workplace and domestic roles than formal associations. Their low wages also generally militated against the establishment of permanent organisations. Spontaneous action suited a largely

unskilled workforce with nothing much to bargain with outside of their unpredictable ability to disrupt production.148 Thus much of the organisation was done on an improvised ‘off the cuff’ basis; however, in spite of this, Gordon estimates that women workers in Scotland were involved in over 300 industrial disputes between 1850 and 1914, most of them taking place in the textile industry.149 Thus, the exigencies of local conditions, the inappropriateness of national bargaining structures and the general weakness of trade

unionism in Scotland ensured the survival of workshop organisation. One of the by-products of this was the creation of a space for the emergence of the shop steward, who was to play such a crucial role in the industrial disputes on Clydeside during the First World War. However, the strength of unofficial forms of resistance was in con— trast to the weak hold union central office had on the rank-and—file members.

Trade unions were continually beset by conflicts emanating from the rank-and-file’s desire for local autonomy and the determination of the executive to enhance centralised control over the bargaining process. Given the strong sense of national identity north of the border, this conflict was more acute and damaging to the overall interests of trade unionism in Britain at this time. Scottish workers were said by the Webbs to be ‘anti-English’ which prevented ‘amalgamation’, and that this ‘international jealousy [was] supplemented by a scarcely concealed rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow’.150 Although there is little evidence to substantiate the impressionistic second

charge of the Webbs, there exists documented opposition among Scottish unions to joining with English ones. The founding of the STUC in 1897 was primarily due to the feeling among Scottish delegates that not enough attention was being paid to matters concerning Scotland in the British Trades Union Congress (TUC). There was also a conflict over the affiliation of trades councils to Congress, something which the Scots favoured and the English unions did not.”1 The desire for independence was also expressed within individual unions. Refusal of the executive of the Boilermakers’ Society to pay strike benefit to their Clydeside members in the 18605, 158

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Trade Unionism on the March

18805 and 18908 built up a tradition of enmity between the two which eventually led to a failed attempt to form a Scottish breakaway union in 1897.152 The refusal of the Liverpool—based executive of the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) to support a strike by Glasgow dockers in 1910 caused mass defections there.153 Among Scottish miners only the Stirling association was affiliated to the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB).154 The strength of segregation can be gauged by the fact that in 1892 two-thirds of trade unionists in Scotland were organised in exclusively Scottish organisations. They included most of the craft—based unions, with the exception of engineering and shipbuilding workers.155 Localism led to the growth of a multitude of small and insular trades unions. On the Clyde alone it was estimated that there were a hundred unions active in the early years of the twentieth century. Of those affiliated to the GTC, only 21 of them could claim 500 or more members locally; 37 claimed less than a hundred.”6 Even in the fast growing centres of trade unionism such as coalmining local autonomy was the rule rather than the exception. Scottish miners’ unions were based on counties, although nominally linked through the SME157 The existence of a large number of small unions inevitably led to numerous sectional disputes surrounding the distribution of work. Demarcation disputes were rife in the shipbuilding and metal trades.”8 The Webbs noted that ‘blacklegging each other’s disputes is a very frequent feature of all the minor societies, whilst the ASE is universally regarded as, in this respect, the common enemy’.”9

Demarcation disputes were also a feature of the building trades, particularly between bricklayers and masons.160 Sectionalism of this kind was also fuelled by sectarian rivalry in engineering and shipbuilding, as well as coalmining. It was said of the Lanarkshire coalfields that among Catholic Irish miners ‘Protestantism was more obnoxious than low wages’.161 This point was underscored by miners’ leader, William Small, when he claimed that the weakness of trade unionism among Lanarkshire miners was due to ‘feelings of jealousy among certain sections of the miners’ owing to ‘religious differences and racial differences’.162 The arrival of Lithuanian and Polish immi-

grants in the Scottish coal fields after 1890 further compounded the ethnic situation and created further divisions among the miners.163 The sectionalism and division which characterised the trade union

movement for much of this period contrasted sharply with the growing strength of federation among Scottish employers. Scottish industrialists were raised on the virtues of self-help and individualism

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

and these values instilled in them a steel-like attitude to challenges to their authority. The Webbs described the engineering and shipbuilding employers of the west of Scotland as ‘able and independent captains of industry, [whose] attitude with regard to all trades questions is one of “do what they like with their own” ’.‘64 Recent research has shown Clydeside employers to be more fiercely anti-union, more willing to

use force to break strikes, and more ready to import replacement labour, than their counterparts elsewhere in Britain.“ For example,

it was not until the late 18808 that Clydeside employers (reluctantly) recognised the Boilermakers’ Society.166 Subscription by employers to the ethos of individualism and self-help, however, did not prevent them combining against organised labour. The East of Scotland Association of Engineers, the North West Engineering Trades Employers’ Associ— ation, the Shipbuilding Employers’ Federation, and the National Association of Master Builders, were some of the most important and active employers’ associations. Arthur McIvor’s research shows that by 1914 on Clydeside an extensive matrix of 25 national employers’ organisations and over 80 local associations dealing with labour matters existed. Most of them grew after 1900; indeed, a third of them were not listed in the Board of Trades’ Directories of Industrial Associations in 1900.167 The organisation of workers and the successful prosecution of industrial

disputes, therefore,

had to contend with

formidable

impediments. However, as even Patrick Joyce points out, tendencies within the social relations of production ‘to conflict, compromise and co-operation . . . [are] fairly evenly balanced; outcomes being dependent on the particular balance of forces at play in different historical contexts’.168 It could be argued, that in the period 1900—14, with the exception of the economic depressions of 1904—05 and 1908—09, the tendency was towards conflict; that was mirrored in the rise in trade union membership, particularly among the unskilled, and the increase in the tempo of industrial conflict. Carters formed themselves into a Scottish association in the 1890s;169 dockers organ— ised themselves into the NUDL in 1889; farm labourers, with the assistance of the Aberdeen Trades Council, formed the Scottish Farm Servants Union in 1912;170 council workers in Glasgow joined the Municipal Employees’ Association in 1904 and by 1914 were around 10 000 strong;171 female jute workers joined the Dundee Mill and Factory Operative Union in 1906; and the National Federation of Women Workers was active in organising textile workers in the west of Scotland from the 18905.172 The more established unions also witnessed an expansion in membership in the years 1900—14. The 160

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Trade Unionism on the March

Lanarkshire miners’ union grew from 30 000 in 1900 to 40 000 in 1914,173 while the SMF membership stood at 167 000 in 1910, an increase of 36 000 over 1900; the Scottish Typographical Association increased from 3800 to 4500 over the same period; the ASRS increased from 3750 to 4832;174 and similar increases were recorded in

engineering and shipbuilding.“ A measure of the progress of unionisation can also be seen in the rise in affiliations to the GTC, which stood at 45—85 in the years 1888—1890 and grew to 104 in 1894.176

Membership, of course, was subject to wide fluctuations in the event of a downturn in the trade cycle, or the success of a lock-out, and so on. The established craft unions, with their greater resources, were understandably better able to withstand these shocks than the industrial unions of the unskilled. This organisational difference has led some labour historians, primarily the Webbs, to characterise the unions of the unskilled by the generic term of ‘new unionism’. By this they meant that they were more prone to strike to achieve their ends, and, because they were under the leadership of socialists such as Will

Thorne and Tom Mann, more political than the old Lib/ Lab unions. However, the unskilled unions adopted more militant tactics because they faced a greater problem of recognition and had, like the female jute workers mentioned earlier, little or nothing to bargain with except their ability to disrupt production. The noted emphasis on political activity was due less to socialist leaders and more to do with indus-

trial weakness. The new unions had to be political as only the state could act on their part to force employers to recognise them. However, after the first wave of successful strike action in the years 1889—91, and facing adverse economic conditions and intense employer hostility, the so-called more militant unions pursued, as Hobsbawm says, a ‘cautious, limited, conservative and sectional’ industrial strategy, which included avoiding disputes, accepting arbitration and conciliation procedures, and so on — the hallmarks of craft unionism.177 Even during the peak period of industrial struggle in 1889—90, the traditional unionised trades of construction, coalmining, metals and textiles accounted for two-thirds of all recorded stoppages.178 Moreover, as

if to underline the continuity of this pattern of industrial conflict, during the mass strike wave in Scotland prior to the First World War nearly 65 per cent of the disputes were located in these three occupational categories.179 Thus, there was little difference in strategy and tactics between skilled and unskilled unions after 1891, perhaps because, as Keith Burgess argues in the case of the engineers, trade unionists in the west of Scotland ‘conformed most closely to the outlook of New

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THE CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

Unionism’.‘30 In such circumstances there was a general weakening

of the exclusiveness which normally existed between skilled and unskilled. This was certainly the View of J. C. Thompson, president of the Aberdeen Trades Council, When introducing a deputation from the shore labourers, then on strike. Thompson said that he:

Trusted that the members . . . would forget that they were masons, joiners, and so many different sections of tradesmen, but that they would keep in mind that they were all workmen and therefore had an interest in the general cause of labour, and in whatever tended to the advancement and elevation of the workingman.181 Richard Price’s view of a generalised reaction across all areas of

industry to an intensification of exploitation seems to be borne out by the experience of Scottish workers.182 Indeed, Arthur McIvor and William Kenefick argue that changing work regimes ‘were a major causal factor in the strike wave on Clydeside over 1910—14’.183 The intensification of exploitation through the implementation of new technology and stricter codes of industrial discipline fractured the reciprocity between capital and labour, which historians, such as Patrick Joyce, had seen as a distinguishing feature of mid—Victorian industrial relations,184 and elicited a more class—orientated response from labour. An important example of heightening class antagonisms in industry was the reaction of apprentices to changes in the labour process. From the 1890s onwards apprentices were confronting grievances at work by withdrawing their labour. Allied to this was the high turnover rate which indicated a lack of job satisfaction and a growing awareness of exploitation.” In this climate workers’ values and concerns underwent a transformation, and this resulted in an

improvement in the mechanisms of collective self-defence. Previously, the workgroup had been the unit of socialisation and organisation, but as capital became more organised this was increasingly seen as

inadequate. Trade unionism was seen as the only viable form resis— tance could take, and this realisation saw numbers increase sharply, particularly among the unskilled. However, although objectively this situation of rising trade union membership and intensifying class conflict might have been thought to have radicalised the workers politically by opening them to alternative definitions of their experi— ence, as we will see, the relationship between economic and political change was by no means unproblematic.

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Chapter 1 8

THE CHALLENGE O F SOCIALISM, 1880—1914

The emergence of socialist groups and parties in the 18808 in the form of H. M. Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and William Morris’s breakaway Socialist League (SL) — known as the Scottish Land and Labour League (SLLL) in Scotland — initially did

not represent large discontinuities with previous decades of political activism. The initial spur came not so much from the socio-economic concerns of the urban workers, but from problems associated with the land. Henry George, the American land reformer, in this respect

was a key intellectual influence. It was the publication of his book Progress and Poverty (1880) and his lecture tour of Scotland in 1881

and again in 1884 which provided the stimulus for the interest in socialist ideas. George’s View that poverty was the inevitable result of the private monopoly of the land resonated with the anti-landlord tradition of Scottish radicalism and drew a hugely sympathetic response from the Irish and Highland communities in central Scotland,

particularly as the promulgation of them coincided with the crofters’ struggles in the Highlands and the renewed troubles in Ireland. Although George’s idea of taxing land values to fund the assault on poverty was later dropped by socialists in favour of land nationalisation, the fact that it was the historical language of anti-landlordism which allowed activists to mobilise workers demonstrated how powerful the ‘radical tradition’ was fixed in the popular consciousness at this time. It was this political tradition and its links to Liberalism

that socialists had to confront to restructure the nature of party politics in Scotland and elsewhere. But that goal was problematical since many socialists were brought up in this political culture; a

phenomenon which was reflected in the social profile of the leadership of the early socialist societies. The leadership cadre remained essentially a product of an alliance 163

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

between the petty bourgeoisie and the skilled working class, with the odd disaffected member of the upper middle class and the unskilled thrown in. The Glasgow branch of the SL had as its founding secretary James Mavor, professor of political economy at St Mungo’s Technical College and, later, at Toronto University, Canada. Among the branch’s first members were R. F. Muirhead, assistant professor of Greek at Glasgow University, and Robert Ferguson, the great grandson of Robert Burns. ‘Prominent’ among the sympathisers were Sir Donald M. Stevenson, later, Lord Provost of Glasgow, professor Henry Dyer, of Glasgow Technical College, McCaulay Stevenson, a well knownartist, and James Cherrie, cashier at Beardmore and Company. Mavor stated in his autobiography that the ‘original membership of the branch consisted of [only] a few workingmen’.186 A report of the Edinburgh branch of the SL gave a membership of fifty-two, of whom twenty—six were artisans, nine were students, and the rest clerks, warehousmen and artists, including a few foreign émigrés, such as the French Communard Leo Millet and the Austrian socialist Andreas Scheu, and one woman.187 The influence of European socialists in the SL was quite considerable. J. B. Glasier, referring to a party held in Glasgow with William Morris present, said that, although fairly small, it was ‘noteworthily international in voice as in sentiment. Leo

Millet . . . sang “Carmagnole” . . . a German comrade, one of a small group of German glass—blowers . . . sang a German worker’s song, and a Russian Jew, a cigar-maker, sang a Yiddish revolutionary song’.188 The only exception to this social pattern of membership was Aberdeen, where the early socialists were ‘Working men and trade unionists . . . the great majority being skilled workers . . . only three could be considered middle class’.189 However, unlike the radicals of the 18405 and beyond, the early

socialists rejected inclusion into the constitution as the desideratum of political activity. Members of the SLLL, like Morris, tended to View parliamentary democracy as a ‘sham’, and looked towards a

more revolutionary solution to the contradictions of wealth and poverty.190 However, although revolutionary, these views were not

inspired by Marx. Glasier claimed that workingmen in Scotland made their ‘own way to Socialism without even being in contact . . . with foreign revolutionary influences’. The reading material of the Glasgow branch of the SL, which was in ‘most instances Burns and Shelley, Carlyle and Ruskin’, supported Glasier’s opinion. Indeed, when Morris visited Glasgow in 1884 he ‘expressed some surprise’, says Glasier, that: 164

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The Challenge of Socialism None of us appeared to have read More’s Utopia, or any of the writings of the more definite pre-Marxian socialist thinkers — Robert Owen, St Simon, Fourier, Loius Blanc, and the like. As for Marx his writings were . . . largely unknown in this country.191

Further north the situation does not appear to have been much dif-

ferent. James Leatham, journalist and early socialist, says that his left-wing sympathies developed from his membership of debating clubs and literary societies in Aberdeen in the 18805, where he lis— tened to debates on all manner of political subjects. This exposure led him into deeper study and, as a result, he became familiar with the seminal works on social problems such as ‘George’s Poverty and Progress . . . Spencer’s Study of Sociology, and Darwin’.192 The eclectic influences and the largely auto—didactic character of

early socialist activists provided them with a critique of the social relations of capitalist society, but with little else. There was no theory of politics articulated or any theoretical appreciation of the role of the state. Thomas Carlyle, the Tory paternalist, figured as highly as an intellectual influence as romantic idealists such as Percy Shelley. Although Glasier recognised the need to ‘enlist the sympathy of the miners in our movement and ally them with our propaganda’,193 little was achieved in this direction. On the Whole, trade unionists found the political programme of these organisations ‘too wide and

revolutionary in nature’.194 The avant-garde lifestyle and dress of the more middle-class members also alienated the working class. John L. Mahon, ironworker and SLLL organiser, derided Glasier as ‘a poetic and cranky . . . man. Wants to be a wandering and roving John Ball and is devoted to Morris’s fads and queer ways’.195 The atheism of the SLLL also constituted a barrier, as Robert Owen had found many decades earlier, to attracting members. Andreas Scheu said that ‘people would not circulate’ Commonweal ‘on account of the last sentence in the manifesto’, which claimed ‘the religion of Socialism [is] the only religion which the Socialist League professes’.196

Political isolation from the working class led to faction and feud, as well as to petty rivalries within the early socialist societies, and

this did much to bring about their demise. The experience of the Edinburgh branch of the SLLL is fairly typical of the demoralisation

of the membership as a whole. Within a few months of its establishment the membership was around fifty, but, as one critical member pointed out:

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

This soon fell to nearer twenty, of that number half were office bearers who have either left Edinburgh or separated themselves from the Society. The University members who remain no longer give us any assistance in fact . . . the members of the Edinburgh University Socialist Society made the discovery a few days ago that they were not Socialists [and] . . . changed the name of their Society to . .. the Edinburgh University Social Reform Club.197 Lack of interest in the meetings of the SLLL by the Edinburgh workers, except when prominent members such as Morris were speaking, the

paucity of able propagandists, and poor sales of the Commonweal, all contributed to the collapse of the early socialist movement north of the border.198 Failure and the demoralisation that went with it saw the socialists turn their venom on the working class. An Edinburgh member, Alex Howie, moaned that ‘All things considered . .. what an awful duffer the British working man is . . . his thick—headedness is awe-inspiring’.199 Even Glasier could write disparagingly that: Working men as fathers, brothers, sons, friends, are right enough. But in relation to their masters and one another in their workshops, and in relation to their own class interests, they are — or, at least, most of them are — sneaks, flunkeys, cowards, slaves, traitors and nincompoops.200 These sentiments could not but have alienated skilled workers with their well-developed sense of independence and craft pride. But regardless of this, Glasier and other socialists at this time were fight— ing an uphill political battle in Scotland as the working class was still heavily imbued with Liberal principles. The strength of such sentiments can be guaged from the Glasgow demonstration in favour of

the Third Reform Bill of 1884 and against the Tory-dominated House of Lords which was trying to obstruct its passage through parliament. Around 64 000 people marched in the procession and another 200 000 gathered on Glasgow Green to greet the marchers. As Christopher Smout says: ‘They carried countless pictures of Gladstone and many of [John] Bright . . . banners from 1832 and from Chartist days. . . . The basic message was clear — the “class” obstructed reform, the “masses” were here to demand it’.201 Liberalism appealed to Scots workers, particularly the skilled stratum, because it emphasised free trade, self-help, a dislike of 166

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The Challenge of Socialism

hereditary privilege, and mild identification with patriotic Scottish or nationalist sentiments within a federal UK state.202 One might add

that Scottish Liberalism was overwhelmingly Gladstonian and Radical in its political sympathies. Because of this many Scottish Liberals supported advanced social legislation. Glasgow Liberals made the city, according to the Times, ‘the centre of the experiment in municipal socialism’.203 Public ownership was gradually established in a wide range of utilities, including gas, water, tramways and telephones. However, as many MPs and prominent supporters in Scotland were also employers, they were either silent or actively opposed to labour legislation, such as the eight hour day. There were also tensions within the Scottish Liberal Association (SLA) over the question of working—class representation in parliament. The lack of workingmen as Liberal candidates at elections embittered relations between the middle class leadership and its working class supporters, as did the party’s failure to support the miners in the 1884 strike. This led to the revolt by Keir Hardie and others at the Mid-Lanark by-election

in 1888. Hardie’s political intervention although unsuccessful, with even miners and the Irish in the constituency voting for the recognised

Liberal candidate,”4 was, perhaps, the most important and defining moment in the history of Labour in the west of Scotland until the

1930s. It led to the formation of the short-lived Scottish Labour Party (SLP), the first organised independent working-class political party

in Scotland. The SLP’s political programme, however, with some exceptions, bore a striking resemblance to that of the radical wing of the Liberal Party. It included, among other demands, nationalisation of the land, minerals, railways and banking systems, an eight hour bill, second ballot, abolition of the House of Lords, home rule for each country in the British Empire, free education, disestablishment of the Church of Scotland, prohibition of the liquor traffic and adult suffrage?“ These demands simply reflected the equally disparate political and social character of the founders, who included miners’ leader, Robert Smillie, Crofters’ MP, Dr G. B. Clark, SLLL representative, J. B. Glasier, eccentric landowner and Lib/Lab MP, R. B. Cunninghame-Graham, and John Ferguson of the United Irish League (UIL).206

Unfortunately, the new party failed to achieve much success among Scottish trade unions. The GTC in May 1888 refused an invitation of representation on the council of the SLP, and a year later opposed a motion urging the trades council to affiliate.207 In spite of his being 167

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

a miner by occupation, Hardie’s organisation only received mild support from Scottish colliers, with only William Small and Robert Smillie, among the leadership, being sympathetic. The Scottish railway strike of 1890—91 also brought no lasting benefits to the SLP as the secretary of the ASRS in Scotland was opposed to independent labour politics. The SLP also suffered from the pronounced rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Socialists in Edinburgh found the refusal of the SLP’s inaugural meeting to adopt as one of its political aims the nationalisation of the means of production as reason enough to keep their distance, and instead the SDF and SLLL branches combined to form the Scottish Socialist Federation (SSF). It was not until November 1892 that a branch of the SLP was established in the capital.208

The general election of 1892 saw the collapse of the SLP as a credible political party — its seven candidates all performed disastrously. In any case, the difference between the SLP and the Liberal Party

was to many workers minute, especially since some of the former’s candidates offered themselves as ‘True Liberals’ instead of Labour candidates. In spite of this, the SLP’s political legacy was important in shaping the ethos and to a large extent the political programme of future Labour parties. The British-wide Independent Labour Party (ILP) was formed in the wake of the SLP’s failure in Bradford in January 1893 with the leading lights of the Scottish organisation taking an important role in its founding. As the ILP was to dominate labour politics in Scotland for the next forty years an understanding of its ideology, ethos and values is important. The attitudes and values of the ILP in Scotland were those of the respectable skilled worker and were epitomised in the persona of Keir Hardie. Socially, Hardie was teetotal; religiously, he was evangelical; and politically, he was anti—landlord, nationalist, republican and pacifist.2°9 Of these values temperance played an important role in shaping the outlook of Labour and providing practical experience in pressure group politics. Membership of temperance societies gave working men the opportunity to address and conduct meetings and to develop administrative skills. The numerous campaigns against the liquor traffic introduced them to political activity. Moreover, the pressure group politics of temperance was not without success. In 1890 Glasgow Town Council was forced to ban the sale of drink on council-owned

property. The important ideological spin off from these campaigns was that it encouraged ‘a belief in the larger case for social reform by the

state’, for it was only through legislation that alcohol consumption could be reduced and, ultimately, abolished.210 168

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The Challenge of Socialism Ideologically, temperance provided the early socialist movement with an invaluable critique of industrial society, which linked poverty and alcohol abuse with economic exploitation. Prominent temperance reformers such as Professor J. Kirk and David Lewis, editor of

the Reformer journal published by ETC, argued that although alcohol was the main cause of working-class misery — a view shared by Keir Hardie among others — the working man ‘was more sinned against than sinning’. The worker was the ‘helpless victim of exploitation’, whose wretched condition was the responsibility of the ‘socially influential’.211 Although much temperance philosophy was wrapped up in the rhetoric of self-help and popular Liberalism, it served to indict industrial capitalism on both moral and economic

grounds. At the same time, it held out the prospect of solving the problem of working—class poverty and this made it attractive to the early leadership of the ILP. Hardie himself was of the opinion that poverty was the result of workers’ income being poured down ‘their throats in intoxicating drink’.212

The impact temperance had on the activists within the ILP cannot be minimised. The main mouthpiece of the party in Scotland — Forward — refused to accept adverts from the drinks trade and constantly preached abolition. Harry McShane said of the local Kingston branch of the ILP that ‘It was as much a temperance body as a socialist one; only one man in it drank’.213 McShane’s observation was underscored by John Paton, ILP organiser, who stated that in

the Aberdeen ILP it was uncommon ‘to find drunkards; the great majority were total abstainers’.214 The Scottish Co-operative move— ment also took a hostile attitude to drinking among its members and as a result ‘Co-operation and Temperance became synonymous?” In Dundee, the Prohibition Party of Edwin Scrymgeour had the support of the Jute and Flax workers union and was represented on the latter’s executive.216 However, anti-drink did not only apply to the more moderate socialist organisations, parties further to the left also abhorred alcohol. Tom Bell, of the SDF and, later, Communist Party, believed that ‘there were few greater curses to the workers’ movement’ than ‘drunkenness’, which was a ‘disgusting bourgeois method of corruption . . . and ought to be crushed wherever it shows’. Speaking of the Glasgow branch of the SDF in the 18905, Bell said that they ‘didn’t hesitate to clear out . . . habitual drinkers’, which was in marked contrast to the ‘beer swilling’ leading London members, such as H. W Lee and Harry Quelch.217 Opposition to drink was also shared by the inter— national socialist movement and was a fundamental part of the 169

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

programme of socialist groups in Germany. Individual members made a personal commitment to temperance.218

Anti-drink was only one part of the socialist strategy of moral improvement in order that workers could be made into the kind of people the new society was thought to need. Various organisations were formed to offer wholesome entertainment and healthy pursuits for young workers. Rambling clubs, ILP cycle scouts, vocational courses, art circles, musical societies and choirs were additional aspects of the respectable culture of the early ILP. These initiatives were in line with artisan traditions of self-improvement which also affected Marxist parties. The SDF ran its own version of the ILP’s educational and vocational classes. For children, Socialist Sunday Schools were introduced in the mid-18905 in Glasgow on an initiative of Caroline Martyn, university student and former school teacher with a high church upbringing, and were attended in the main by the

better of .219 The slum dweller, the unskilled and the poor were ignored as they were viewed as incapable of attaining the status of respectability. As Keir Hardie explained: ‘It is the intelligent fairly well-off artisan . . . who responds most readily to the Socialist appeal and it is the slum vote which the Socialist candidate fears most’.220 George Carson, secretary of the GTC and an ILPer, in evidence to the Glasgow Municipal Housing Commission on the Housing of the Poor (1904), stated that the council was opposed to ‘the suggestion that the Corporation should be restricted to the providing of housing . . . for the criminal and vicious classes only. If the Corporation is to build houses at all, it must be for the thrifty, industrious and sober working

classes?” To underline the dominant respectable ethos of the ILP, Forward praised itself for not being read in the slums of Glasgow.222 Ian Jack, writing of the nature of his father’s socialist beliefs, although in the inter-war years, captures the skilled worker’s fusion of respectability with politics, remarking that: For all his socialist convictions I don’t think my father ever saw social division in purely political or economic terms. . . . it was an older moral force which generated the most genuine heat in him, and the class conflict . . . was not so much between classes as internal to each of them; it was ‘decent folk’ versus the rest. . . . A strict application of socialist theory would mean that we were bound to the Davidsons (crash, thump; ‘Where’s ma fuckin’ tea’) and that we would be bound to them for life.223

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The Challenge of Socialism The idea of a socialist society being inhabited by beer-swilling wife beaters, using expletives in place of decent language, was anathema to politically conscious workers and, as a result, they sought to distance themselves from the lumpen poor. However, while the poor were being ignored, in the early 19008, ILP candidates went out of their way to appeal to the petty bourgeoisie, particularly the ‘small shopkeepers who have to keep up upon a small income a decent appearance?24 Thus, through the operation of a shared concern for respectability and moral improvement social contacts were forged between skilled workers and the petty bourgeoisie. And this was reflected through membership of organisations such as the Scottish Temperance Association.

Religion also performed an important role in this respect. Most of the socialist pioneers were advocates of ethical socialism and defined ‘Socialism [as] . . . an attempt to apply Christian principles to practi— cal life?” Hardie himself claimed that he first learnt his ‘Socialism in the New Testament, where I still find my chief inspiration?26 David Lowe, in his Souvenirs of Scottish Labour (1919), emphasised the influence of Jesus and the New Testament on the emerging labour movement. When speaking of the reaction of socialists to a conference on ‘Why Working Men did not attend places of Worship’, Lowe remarked that ‘The most striking feature of the meeting is the eagerness with which the Socialists who were present in force applauded any illusion to Christ as a social reformer’.227 The early Edinburgh ILP journal — the Labour Chronicle — endorsed this view, describing Jesus as ‘a great example of perfect altruism’.228 The emphasis of the early socialists on the social ethos of Christianity was in tune with the increasing promulgation of the social gospel in the Church mentioned earlier. This answered the charges of earlier generations of radical workers that ministers were in alliance with the employers. It also prepared the way for a rapprochement with the churches and Labour, once the former had come to realise that British socialism was not as atheistic as its continental

counterpart. In 1891, John Wellwood, of the Elgin Presbytery, played a leading part in ‘helping to organise the fishermen of the Moray coast on trade union lines in the Northern Seas Fisheries Association?29 During the Scottish railway strike of 1890—91, Professor Robert Rainy, of New College and the most famous churchman of

his day, spoke on behalf of the strikers at several meetings in which he criticised the railway directors and approved the ten hour day. In 1889, the Church of Scotland gave its backing to bakery workers in 171

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

their struggle against Sunday working and this gave rise to concern over the conditions other workers were labouring under. The Scottish Shopkeepers and Assistants’ Union was welcomed at meetings of the Glasgow Presbytery, as they were at the Free Church Presbytery.230 Social concern was given a political touch when middle-class Glasgow

Christian socialists provided the capital to launch Keir Hardie’s Labour Leader in 1893;231 and again when the United Presbyterian Magazine came out against the Boer War, the only religious journal

to do so in Scotland. Several leading ministers such as the Rev. John Glasse, of Edinburgh, and the Rev. Alex Webster, of Aberdeen, were key figures in the emergence of socialism in these cities. In March

1908, and in the midst of economic depression, the UFC formed a committee on unemployment and discussions were begun with the ILP with a View to helping those out of work. By December of that year 170 of the UFC’s 194 churches in Glasgow were providing unem— ployment relief; something wholeheartedly opposed by evangelical presbyterians in 1894.232 The Protestant churches were beginning to embrace the idea that social problems needed collectivist solutions and, as a result, supported a series of social reforms, including old age pensions, labour exchanges, free school meals, abolition of sweat shops, and so on.233 As Henry Dyer in his book, The Foundations of Social Politics (1899), put it: ‘The middle and upper classes . . . must make up their

minds to the fact that if a revolution . . . is to be avoided, they must prevent the catastrophe by anticipating the demands of the age, and be prepared to lead public opinion on social questions’.234 Labour reciprocated the overture of the Churches when in 1910 Forward published five articles issued by the United Free Church (UFC) on the ‘Church and Social Problems’. In October 1911, the UFC organised ‘Labour Weeks’ at which prominent Labour leaders spoke, including William Adamson, John Hodge, James Brown and J. R. Clynes, on

social and economic issues from a Christian standpoint?” This, of course, does not mean to say that the Scottish churches had been converted to socialism. On the contrary, many of the clergy and especially the laity were strongly critical of socialism. J. M. Lang, of the Barony Church, Aberdeen, and principal of Aberdeen University (1900—09), who was sympathetic to the trade union movement, argued that socialism was ‘too materialistic, earthy, and

selfish’, and warned that ‘socialist schemes for expropriation [that is, nationalisation] came very close to violating the commandment against stealing?“ However, in spite of these qualifications, the 172

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The Challenge of Socialism

critique the Scottish churches, particularly the non-established, had developed against unrestricted competition and exploitation allowed socialists to remain in the church and for Christian principles to infuse in an important way the social ethos of the ILP. Knowing God was on their side may have given moral conviction to the political demands of the organised working class, but the influence of religion, like temperance, was not always positive. The social framework implicit in Christian scriptures stressed the importance of the family and the subordination of women. No changes were envisaged in the traditional role of women in society by workingclass radicals. Socialists condemned capitalism because it could not provide the family wage. As a member of the SDF put it at a meeting in Dundee in March 1889:

A home ought to be the holiest of holies. The man who performed his duties ought to be able to say — here is my altar of love, here I shall rest, here I shall withstand the vile temptations . . . of the world. . . . But what did they do — went home and gave the baby a bottle — went home and let the wife go out and earn the dollars.237 Not surprisingly women were seen as helpmates rather than as equals in the political struggle. As Harry McShane recalled, ‘women’s activity . . . was confined to the social side of the movement. A lot of women worked around the Socialist Sunday School; and in the Clarion Scouts they did more of the social type of work than the propaganda. They often looked after the soup kitchens’.“8 Even in the Co-operative movement, where female members predominated,

they were expected to play a complimentary role to men. Patrick Dollan said that it was ‘not considered good form for women to appear on the platform at Co-operative or other working class meetings’.239 Perhaps because of the marginalising of women it took until 1912 before the labour movement agreed to oppose any extension of the franchise which did not include them.240 The failure to address the issue of gender within the labour movement or to mobilise women beyond the social, because of the influence of the ideology of domesticity, therefore, fragmented and fatally weakened the political challenge of Labour in this period. Religion also produced sectarianism which more than any other factor divided the Scottish workers. Religious bigotry saw the Irish Catholics retreat from the embrace of the Scottish labour movement 173

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

and into the arms of a reactionary priesthood, which channelled Irish political energies into the struggle for Home Rule. However, alienation from the concerns of mainstream political life was perhaps inevitable for many Irishmen as, prior to the passing of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, franchise conditions effectively debarred

some 50 per cent of adult males from exercising their voting rights in Glasgow in the late nineteenth century.241 This situation only rein-

forced traditional interest in Home Rule, religion and community. Sometimes, as in the Blackfriars and Hutchesontown (later Glasgow Gorbals) constituency in the 1906 general election, Irish Catholics might disobey their priests and the UIL and vote Labour; however, it was a rare occurrence, and was almost certainly never repeated in local elections. As the Glasgow Observer said Home Rule came first on the political agenda, but ‘once Home Rule were out of the way, the Labour cause would be our own’.242 Notwithstanding the political priorities of the Scoto—Irish community, the emerging Labour Party had quite a sizeable task trying to convince the former to ditch their political allegiance to the Liberal Party. Many Irish Catholics in Scotland were afraid that labour politics, dominated as they were by men of Protestant backgrounds, might lead to the introduction of secular education. The STUC approved by a majority of 52 votes to 31 the introduction of secular education in all state—aided schools in 1913.243 There was also the anti—Irish statements of well—known Labour leaders to consider. Hardie had described the typical Irish immigrant coalminer as having ‘a big shovel, a strong back and a weak brain’;244 J. B. Glasier said on hearing of the death of John Kensit of the Protestant Truth Society: ‘I esteem him a martyr. . . [and] I feel honest sympathy with his antiRomanist crusade’;245 and R. B. Cunninghame—Graham called on

Glasgow socialists in his bid for the Calmachie seat in 1892 to protect him from ‘the attacks of reactionary priestcraft’.246 It was partly to allay Catholic Irish fears concerning the intentions of the ILP that John Wheatley set up, in spite of the condemnation of the Catholic Truth Society and certain prominent members of the priesthood, the Catholic Socialist Society in 1906. On Labour’s part there was a reluctance to put up Catholic candidates at elections for fear of a Protestant/Unionist backlash. An attempt by the ILP in the 18905 to form an electoral pact with the UIL in municipal elections in Glasgow ended in complete disaster, although John O’Hare was the first Catholic to gain a seat on the Glasgow Town Council in 1897.247

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The Challenge of Socialism Irish Catholics in the main turned to the Liberal Party as the best

hope for Home Rule; in this sense Labour was a distraction as a vote for it would allow the Unionists in. This happened in Glasgow in 1892 when Labour candidates, much to the chagrin of the UIL, split the vote and handed the Unionists three traditional Liberal seats.248

The Liberal Party had, of course, split on the issue of Irish Home Rule in 1886 and in the west of Scotland a large minority of enfranchised workers went over to the Liberal Unionists. The argument that Irish Home Rule would lead to the break up of the British Empire and to a loss of markets appealed to Protestant workers in the export trades, particularly since this appeal was made at a time of depression in

shipbuilding trades.249 From this essentially economistic argument a divisive Unionist-voting working—class bloc was created and sustained into the 19505. Similarly, the self-righteousness and moralism which flowed from

temperance not only alienated socialists from the vast bulk of Scottish workers, it also acted as a source of disunity within the labour movement itself. Hardie’s own temperance principles led him to condemn what he saw as the boozy behaviour of London socialists, leading to his refusal to join the SDF.250 Even within the ILP divisions emerged

over the question of alcohol. Willie Gallacher, of later Communist fame, when a member of the ILP and the IOGT, refused to back the candidature of miners’ leader Robert Smillie in Paisley in the 1906 general election because of his connection with a public house trust. Instead, Gallacher threw his support behind the Liberal, Sir Robert McCallum, a soap manufacturer.“1 Temperance convictions among socialists also impaired the building of political alliances with the Scoto-Irish community. Patrick Dollan, prominent ILPer and, later, Lord Provost of Glasgow, attacked the idea of an electoral alliance with the UIL in the November 1911 municipal elections because of its connection with the drinks trade. So vehemently anti-drink was Dollan that he argued that it was better ‘for the labour movement’s prospects electorally to be set back twenty years than to make any tactical arrangements with the UIL branches which had publican ties’.252 The cult of respectability which religion and temperance were outward signs of weakened the class message of Labour; emphasis

was placed on brotherly love and social justice. Although this made Labour more attractive to Christian socialists and radical Liberals

among the middle class, it hindered the development of a class analy— sis of society. Marx was attacked for ‘the glorification of the material 175

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

as opposed to moral forces’ and for ‘emphasising the necessity of a class war’.“3 In Keir Hardie’s political philosophy the ‘struggle for

emancipation’ was dramatised as ‘a battle not between economic classes but between idlers and labour, managing employers being included under the term “labour” along with workmen’.254 Indeed, the only capitalists attacked in Forward at this time were monopolistic mineowners.255 As a result, there was a general failure within the ILP

to theorise the relationship between the industrial and political spheres of labour activity. The two arenas of conflict were seen as separate spheres; a phenomenon which put the stress in the ILP on non—work relationships. Housing was the main area of dispute between the ILP and those on the progressive wing of the Liberal party in Glasgow. Most of the

housing units were owned by small landlords who dominated the town council and who allied themselves with the Liberals. Therefore,

while important strides were taken in Glasgow in providing for the public ownership of utilities, the housing market remained an area

which was politically taboo. To reform the market by increasing the level of municipally-owned housing would have hit the petty bour— geoisie in the most sensitive place of all — its pocket. Failure to act by the Liberals on the appalling housing conditions in the city, created a space for Labour to campaign on the issue of reform. By doing so Labour was able to build a constituency of support around the language of anti—landlordism, which linked the struggle of Irish peasants and Highland crofters against the rural landlord with the struggle against the urban landlord. This strategy appealed to both Catholic and Protestant alike since both communities endured similarly awful conditions. It also, as Eleanor Gordon points out, allowed women, particularly housewifes, a more active political role and they took the initiative in the drive for housing improvement?“ However, although housing brought together different groups and organisations previously ignored or excluded, the emphasis on municipal struggles led the ILP to assume that any ‘municipalisation was socialism’.257 Thus, the opportunity for providing an alternative to popular Liberalism was limited by the radicalism of the latter in this area.

Stress on localism also prevented Labour from developing a role for the state in relation to the economy and civil society. Although

the ILP, and the SLP before it, tended to advocate state ownership it was only intended to be applied to monopolies or inefficient industries. On the whole, the ILP was highly suspicious of increasing the power of the state lest that should lead to state capitalism and a reduction

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The Challenge of Socialism of individual liberty. There were also concerns expressed over bureaucracy. As J. B. Glasier argued: ‘State ownership is as a rule less

Socialistic . . . than is municipal or local ownership . . . [it is] as yet for the part a form of State Capitalism. Labour and wage conditions . . . are based upon the usage of capitalist employment’.258 State capital— ism led to authoritarianism and ran counter to socialism which was, according to Glasier, designed to ‘encourage the utmost possible

freedom of initiative and of self-government to every citizen . . . and every town, or locality’.259 The ILP’s commitment to Home Rule for Scotland, and Ireland, and the attachment of the trade unions to the doctrines of free trade further encouraged anti—statist attitudes. The anti-statist sentiments implicit in the campaign for Home Rule for Scotland was a distinctive feature of the Scottish ILP. These political sentiments had been inherited from the SLP and the various radical Liberal groups, such as the Young Scots and the Highland Land League, in their campaigns to reform the land laws north of the border and were also deeply embedded in the trade union movement. Most prominent Labour leaders were supporters of Home Rule, including Keir Hardie. While this did nothing to enhance support

for the ILP in the Scottish Highlands, which was rock-solid Liberal or Unionist depending on the constituency after the passing of the Crofter’s Act of 1886, attacks on the landowning class in Scotland won popularity among urbanised Highlanders. The publication of Tom Johnston’s Our Scotch Noble Families in 1909, described by one historian as the ‘most caustic arraignment of the Scottish aristocracy

ever committed to print’,260 sold around 100 000 copies. The parochial outlook and nationalist sentiments of the ILP combined with the fragmentation of the working class in Scotland made the formation at this time of a coherent anti-capitalist coalition a difficult, if not impossible, political project. While housing reform created the conditions on which a political coalition of interests could be built, the campaigns attracted little support from the trade unions.261 Home Rule appealed to those workers in exclusively Scottish unions, but had little attraction for members of British-wide unions such as the ASE or the Boilermakers’ Society. Indeed, it was the legal setbacks the unions suffered in the 18903 and early twentieth century, of which the Taff Vale judgement of 1901—02 was the most important, which more than anything else convinced organised labour of the need for independent political representation. Thus the shift of

the unions towards Labour was based on expediency rather than ideology. The STUC established the Scottish Workers Parliamentary 177

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

Elections Committee (SWPEC) in January 1900, while the TUC set up the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) the next month. Membership of both organisations was boosted by the setbacks of Taff Vale. The SWPEC and the LRC proved unsuccessful in elections in Scotland. In the 1906 general election the SWPEC’s five candidates

lost, with the miners remaining loyal to the Liberal Party. The LRC candidates won two seats out of four and as a result Alexander Wilkie, secretary of the Shipwrights’ Association, was returned for Dundee and George Barnes, of the ASE, for Glasgow Blackfriars. In 1910 a third MP was added, miners’ leader William Adamson, for West Fife, although now as Labour Party members since the SWPEC merged with the national Labour Party in 1909. All the newly elected MPs had pronounced Liberal sympathies. Indeed, Wilkie in his election campaign emphasised the help he had given to John Morley at Newcastle in 1892 and 1895 and also managed to avoid using the word ‘Labour’.262 In the years running up to the outbreak of war in

August 1914, and in spite of a massive increase in industrial strife, Labour contested five by—elections in Scotland, coming bottom of the poll in all of them. Although this happened in England as well, the

Scottish share of the poll was much lower, with the Labour candidate in the mining constituency of Midlothian in 1912 only polling 16 per cent of the total vote and letting the Unionist candidate in. Things were little better in terms of membership. All through the 18903 the ILP struggled to increase its membership and strengthen its links with the trade unions. Indeed, many trade unions and trades councils were reluctant to work with the ILP.263 A coalition of interests which included the UIL and the Co-operative movement had been established. However, this collapsed after a poor showing in the 1897 municipal elections in Glasgow and the Co—operative societies returned to their ‘no politics’ position, although a number of individual Co-operators remained active in Labour politics.264 Christopher Harvie calculates that in 1900 the Scottish ILP consisted of 1250 members and by 1910 this had only grown to 5000, grouped in 130 branches, fifty of which were situated in colliery districts, and twenty in textile centres.”5 Indeed, the ILP was losing branches faster than it was creating them with thirteen folding between 1910 and 1914. This also affected the Labour Party. When the Glasgow Labour Party was formed in 1912 the Co-operative Defence Association refused to join unless it changed its name to the ‘Progressive Party’, and the Irish also declined to affiliate, although, as we have noted above, the UIL 178

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The Challenge of Socialism Blackfriars and Hutchestown branch in defiance of the leadership of the League supported the Labour candidacy of George Barnes in the 1906 general election.266 The poor state of branch organisation also had a knock-on effect on the electoral performance of Labour. As J. O’Connor Kessack put in 1913: ‘the organisation in Scotland was not worth the name of organisation’. Indeed, until 1906 ILP branches were autonomous bodies and it was only in that year that the Scottish Divisional Council was formed to co—ordinate activity, with George Kerr as full-time secretary. Glasgow only got round to appointing a full-time organiser, John S. Taylor, in 1910.267 However, amid this general shambles a ray of hope came in the performance of the party at local elections. By 1914 Labour had two hundred local representatives in Scotland on parish councils, town and country councils, and school boards. In some areas such as Leith, Bothwell, Lanarkshire, and Wemyss, Fife, Labour controlled a third of parish council seats before the war, and in Cambuslang it controlled eight out of seventeen seats.268 The party did less well in the large cities and in Glasgow only held nineteen seats out of 75 — however, this figure was an all time high; and in Edinburgh Labour had three town councillors, the first being elected in 1909, three

school board representatives and one parish councillor when the First World War broke out.269

It is hard to conclude otherwise that what political progress Labour had achieved before 1910 was at the expense not of the Liberal Party, but of the revolutionary left. This begs the question of why Labourism advanced, albeit on a limited basis, where revolution had failed to attract dissident workers. Part of the answer lies with the commitment of the trade unions to Lib/Labism, but attention also has to be paid to the importance of the radical political tradition, of which Scottish Labour was a child of, and the way this was linked to perceptions of respectability. The SDF of Hyndman, which could still claim 1000 members in Scotland by 1911, with Aberdeen a noted stronghold, and the SL of Morris and their various splinter groups, such as the Socialist Labour Party (SOCLP) and the British Socialist Party (BSP), were seen as imported products and not organisations organically rooted in the Scottish political tradition. With the exception of the SOCLP, organisations of the revolutionary left were London-based at a time when the Scottish labour movement had a

separate national identity and Home Rule was part of its political baggage. Jock Carstairs Matheson of the SOCLP did his party no favour when he argued that nationalism was a conspiracy which ‘had

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

its beginning and its end . . . [in] the schemes of the ruling class’.270 Anti-parliamentarism was also anathema to the Liberal/democratic tradition of the organised working class in Scotland. Finally, a large part of the membership of the revolutionary left was atheistic and

intemperate which as we have seen alienated potential members such as Keir Hardie. Greater success was achieved in the industrial field by the revolutionary left. The SOCLP and the shop stewards who graduated from the Glasgow school teacher John Maclean’s classes in Marxist economics were active in promoting militancy among the skilled workers on the Clyde which culminated in the series of events known as ‘Red Clydeside’. However, until the crisis of the war years and the shackling of the official trade union movement by war agreements, there was little space for them to operate in. It was significant that during

the 1908 depression, which threw thousands of skilled workers on relief when a Liberal government was in office, it was the ILP which took the lead in uniting the various strands of the labour movement against unemployment.271 Whatever the future political development of the Scottish workers it would be the eclectic, élitist and Calvinist ILP and not the Marxists which would have the decisive say. The electoral failure of Labour and the minimal impact of the

Marxist left in this period pose important questions regarding the relationship between the labour process and politics which were highlighted at the beginning of this chapter. From the discussion above it would appear that labour process restructuring produces positive and negative tendencies in advancing class consciousness among workers. On the one hand, technological change and the intensification of industrial discipline and the wage/effort ratio constantly threatened the autonomy of the skilled worker in the planning and

execution of his work. Skill specialisation also led to greater labour mobility and minimised the division between the honourable and dishonourable sections of the trade. As a consequence of these growing pressures on skill and income, an ever-expanding group of demoralised workers looked for a different analysis of their economic situation beyond that offered by the Lib/Labism of traditional labour leaders. This created the space for socialists to articulate an alternative version of class experience, but as Richard Penn points out, the effect was profoundly contradictory. Socialism stands for the ‘unity and

equality of all labour, something which poses a dilemma for the exclusiveness of the craft worker’ in his desire to retain status and wage

differentials vis-d-vis other workers.272 Although skilled workers 180

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The Challenge of Socialism

played an important part in assisting the unskilled and women to become organised, it was mainly in trades in which the latter posed no threat to the former. Few in the skilled stratum were, at this time, prepared to accept labourers into their unions on an equal footing with themselves. Restructuring also results in divisions being created within skilled

trades. Changes in shipbuilding, particularly from wood to iron and steel, accelerated the frequency of demarcation disputes among shipyard workers and fragmented the response of labour in the industry to increased exploitation. The marginalisation of women’s issues and the policy of restricting females to lower—grade work further inten— sified the fragmentation of the Scottish working class. Sectarianism acted as another agent in this process. Moreover, in spite of the fact that this period saw issues connected with the control of work assume a greater importance to workers, it remains true that most strikes were still concerned with wages and hours. A unified response to changes in the labour process would therefore seem questionable, although this does not mean that sectoral responses were unimportant. As we have seen the introduction of the longwall method and in— creased mechanisation in the coal industry broke up the independent collier tradition and led to greater solidarity among the workers; a

fact reflected in the higher density of union membership. Within the sphere of politics the impact of labour process restructuring was also contradictory. While the introduction of new technologies and work routines may have engendered deep discontent within the site of production, Which in turn led to higher levels of trade union membership, there is little evidence that it actually politicised the majority of workers in the direction of socialism. Workers may have strenuously opposed attempts by management to intensify the level of exploitation in the workplace, but there was a [glaring failure to link this with the issue of the unequal distribution of political power; something which was undoubtedly assisted by the consumerist strategies of the ILP and its inability to theorise

the relationship between the industrial and the political. Outside of the increasing mania for sport, particularly football, what drove the

Scottish working class to tramp streets in their thousands in the period 1880—1914 was the struggles surrounding Demos. The largest political demonstrations were those concerned with the extension of the franchise in 1884 and those aimed at reducing the powers of the landowning classes in 1910. Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ and the elections of 1910 were, indeed, crucial reminders of the continuing 181

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T H E CHALLENGE O F LABOUR, 1880—1914

power of the radical tradition to raise the political pulse of the

Scottish working class. The attack on the powers of the House of Lords released the pent-up residual hatred of landlordism endemic

among Scottish and Irish workers. These sentiments were also shared by Labour leaders, many of whom were tied through their upbringing and the ethos of respectability into the values of popular Liberalism

as personified in the great Liberal leader, William Ewart Gladstone. Robert Smillie, the miners’ leader, ‘revered Gladstone as the greatest man he had met’, and that reverence was echoed in the statements of other socialists, such as Keir Hardie.273 Add to this the radical nature of much of the 1906—12 Liberal Government’s industrial and social policies, and its commitment at the level of the local state to munic— ipal ownership of utilities, and the ILP’s View that municipalisation equalled socialism, it is hardly surprising that Labour found it very difficult to differentiate itself from the Liberals. David Shackleton, speaking on behalf of Labour candidate, Alex Wilkie, in Dundee in the 1906 general election, and recognising the political attachment of the workers to popular Liberalism, claimed that the ‘Labour Party was going to be the left wing of the Liberal Party, pushing them on to work’.274 The political difficulties that Scottish Labour faced in breaking the hegemony of Liberalism north of the border would appear to underline the fact that political consciousness is a complex psychological construction, shaped by a wide range of social experiences, and that in its making, in contrast to the view expressed by Richard Price at the start of the chapter, the world of work exercises an important, but not an overdeterministic influence. Without the escalation of industrial conflict and the growth of trade unionism generated by the general restructuring of the labour process, the Labour Party would

probably not have emerged when it did. However, its impact in Scotland remained limited as it failed to find a means of effectively relating its political aspirations and language to the experiences of the broad mass of workers. As a result of differences in the standard of living, gender, religion, geography, language, recreational and residential patterns, as well as past political experiences and memories, the Scottish working class remained even by 1914 culturally diverse. Given this, it was only a party which adhered to an eclectic philosophy and possessed a political elasticity which had any hope of welding the sheer variety of working-class experience into a coherent political bloc. Although the object of gradually increasing criticisms and ten-

sions, the Liberals performed that role until the crisis years of the 182

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The Challenge of Socialism Great War and its immediate aftermath saw their hegemony collapse. Until then the spaces created by economic and social change were

not large enough for Labour, in spite of its electoral progress and the linguistic currency of socialism across a broad spectrum of the work— ing class, to colour in red hues the political map of Scotland.

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PART IV

War, Depression and the

Remaking of Labour in Scotland, 1914—1 945

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Chapter 19 INTERPRETATIONS

During the nineteenth century workers in Scotland had been deeply imbued by the principles and values of popular Liberalism and this

was reflected in the political ethos of the early pioneers of socialism in Scotland. Their politics rested on the foundations of anti-landlordism, democracy, nationalism and social justice; principles underscored by a value system which derived its strength from temperance and reli-

gion. And while Labour after the First World War broke with the Liberals over economic policy, preferring greater state intervention to free markets, it was these principles and values which provided the political zeal and sense of righteous mission to defeat the latter in the general election in 1922.1 However, the idealism forged in the

struggles to break the hegemony of the Liberal Party in Scotland was to be dissipated as electoral success and governmental responsibility shifted Labour to a pragmatic political course, and to a reliance on the bureaucrat and the planner rather than the people. The radical tradition which had grown out of the artisanal culture of the nineteenth century was dispatched to the historical dustbin as the new and disturbing forces of economic and technological change pushed Labour to a more authoritarian and statist alternative to evangelical socialism; a process which reached its apotheosis in the policies of the 1945—50 Attlee government. Labour under the weight of economic depression and mass unemployment was forced to redefine itself and its relationship to other socialist organisations. Part of that process of redefinition involved

the collapse of a shared political culture of activism with other

socialist groups and the demise of localist traditions. The fluidity of much of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist politics had meant that there was no clearly defined party structure and multi-membership of organisations was common which made joint

demonstrations a feature of political life.2 The inter-war period, however, witnessed the tightening of party discipline and centralised 187

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

control which created the conditions for a modus vivendi with capital. The disaffiliation of the ILP in 1932 and the failure of the General Strike in 1926 further encouraged this form of political discourse which sought an all-party and, indeed, quasi-corporatist, solution to the socio-economic problems of Scotland and, indeed, Britain in the inter-war years. Moreover, as unemployment, rather than work, became the major focus of Labour policy, the considerable influence on the Labour Party exercised by the rank-and-file trade unionists in Trades and Labour Councils, particularly as regards the election of parliamentary Labour candidates, was nullified as the Constituency Labour Party (CLP) assumed all the important political responsibilities in the 19305.

The inter-war period is, therefore, of profound importance in understanding the development of Labour politics in Scotland as the decades marked the re-making of the party and its ethos. Since the remaking process was in many ways influenced by the economic and social changes of the inter-war period they must firstly be analysed before moving to consider these significant political developments within the Scottish labour movement.

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Chapter 20

‘STARVING I N THE MIDST OF PLENTY’: ECONOMIC DEPRESSION AND THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF MASS UNEMPLOYMENT, 1914—1945

Although the First World War and its immediate aftermath brought economic prosperity and higher standards of material well-being for many Scots, the climate of optimism soon gave way to despair and hopelessness as the economy crashed in 1920 following the collapse of the short-term restocking boom. In the years that followed Scotland experienced lower rates of economic growth than the rest of the UK, performed more poorly over a range of industries, and endured a level of unemployment much higher than the UK average.

The props which had sustained the economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, that is, state and empire, were blown away and Scotland paid the price for overconcentration on a narrowly defined range of industries. All attempts to revive the economy failed and it was not until the re-armament boom of the late 19308 and the war itself did the situation improve and unemployment fall. The problem was of a structural, rather than a cyclical, nature and as such affected the heavy industries disproportionately to the rest of the economy. Output in shipbuilding fell from 650 000 tons in 1919 to 74 000 in 1933; a figure lower than in the 18505.3 In the related

engineering industry exports through Scottish ports fell by 42 per cent between 1913 and 1937 and in most other industries the story was the same. The coal industry saw production fall from 42.5 m tons

in 1913 to an average of 30m tons, and exports decline by 20 per cent, during the period 1913—35. Scotland’s contribution to total British steel output fell from 23 per cent in 1920 to under 15 per cent in 1937, while the iron industry could only produce a mere 36 000 tons in 1936.4

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING O F LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

While areas such as the English Midlands diversified under the pressure of the collapse of traditional industries into new product lines,

as late as 1935 Scotland was still reliant on staples to take it out of depression. There were virtually none of the new consumer goods,

such as cars, radios and gramophones, produced in Scotland; nor was there evidence of any commitment to the electrical and electronics industries. As Richard Saville points out: ‘The engineering industry in Scotland in 1935 was orientated towards traditional linkages connected with shipbuilding, boilers, locomotives and assorted specialised engineering work. . . . Mass production and consumer goods were neglected’.5 The small population and the low level of demand in the economy as a result of the slow growth in income, which only grew by a fifth between 1924 and 1937, made Scotland an unattractive area for setting up new businesses. Government policies to encourage firms to relocate in areas of high unemployment through financial incentives, such as limited tax relief and low interest loans, failed miserably to create new jobs. Firms were reluctant to move

from the centres of wealth and population and this only intensified Scotland’s dependency on traditional industries. The social consequence of poor industrial performance was mass unemployment. Throughout the 19205 unemployment never dropped below 10 per cent of Scotland’s insured workforce, and in the 19305 it averaged out at 20 per cent.6 The Scottish levels were consistently

higher than those in the UK. For example, in 1924 at 12.4 per cent of the insured population the rate was 2.1 per cent above the national average; in the peak depression year of 1932 at 27.7 per cent it was 5.6 per cent higher. Even as late as 1939, and in spite of the rearmament boom, unemployment in Scotland at 15.9 per cent was still 5.1 per cent higher than the UK average.7 This, of course, ignores the regional effect which was very powerful as unemployment was much higher in the west of Scotland than in the east. Motherwell and

Wishaw experienced unemployment rates of 49 and 53 per cent respectively during late 1932 and early 1933; a level only slightly lower than it had been in October 1922. There was, however, one particular blackspot in the east: Dundee. In 1932 there were 37000 persons registered as unemployed and in the jute industry unem-

ployment was running at 50 per cent.8 However, the service—based economies of Aberdeen and Edinburgh escaped the worst effects of

economic depression and in the 19305 had unemployment rates more than 10 per cent lower than those in Dundee or Glasgow.

Unemployment affected certain sections of the community more 190

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Economic Depression and the Social Impact of Mass Unemployment than others. Young school leavers suffered disproportionately, as did older workers. Throughout the 19205 and 19305, about 30 per cent of unemployed Scots were under 30 years old, and another 20 per cent were over 55. Much of this was long-term unemployment and as late as 1938 over 30 per cent of males in the west of Scotland had been out of work for more than a year, and over 10 per cent for more

than three years.9 Many of the unemployed were skilled male workers for whom the experience of being out of work was psychologically devastating. Shipbuilding, which had experienced an average of rate of unemployment of 29 per cent between 1920 and 1929, saw this figure increase to 42 per cent in period 1930 and 1938;10 while the steel industry lost 5000 workers between 1925 and 1936.11 The total size of the labour force in coalmining contracted in Lanarkshire b y 55 per cent between the end of 1920 and the end of 1938; while in Fife it fell by 27 per cent and in the Lothians by 21 per cent.12 In the past emigration was seen as the answer to unemployment and this occurred on an unprecedented scale in the 19205. In the decade 1921—31 Scotland lost 8 per cent, or 400 000, of its population compared to England’s 0.5 per cent, and Ireland’s 4.5 per cent.13 However, b y the 19305 many of the families who had emigrated in the 19205 were returning home, especially from America, as depression struck with even greater severity across the Atlantic Ocean. As a

result the outmigration rate in the 19305 fell by three-quarters. Added pressure came from the rise in population. Scotland experienced a natural increase in population some 30 per cent higher than England’s in this period. The upshot was that a larger portion of the population north of the border was looking for work in what could only be described as a stagnant labour market. The material experience of unemployment was contradictory; although poverty increased, Scotland, perhaps as a result of a fall in prices, experienced better nutritional and health standards which saw infant mortality rates (IMR) fall quite sharply from a very high level. Moreover, housing legislation increased the level of public sector accommodation and improved the supply of basic amenities. These improvements to a greater or lesser degree were experienced over most of urban Scotland. The I M R in Aberdeen fell from 95 to 59 per 1000 infants in the age cohort 0—5 years in the 19305, which, although putting the city on the same footing as Dundee, was still substantially higher than Edinburgh.14 Those children in Aberdeen who survived beyond their fifth year also experienced a small increase in weight and height in spite of the depression. A typical five year old 191

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

in Aberdeen in 1928—29 weighed 40.3 lb and measured 41.2 inches; ten years later the respective figures were 40.7 lb and 42.0 inches.” However, in spite of these improvements, John Boyd Orr’s Food, Health and Income (1935) showed that the diet of the Scottish poor

was insufficient to maintain health. Diphtheria was rife among children, with 15 069 cases reported as late as 1940. Of Glasgow children evacuated during the war 31 per cent were found to be infested with fleas and lice, and scabies was common.16 Shoeless children were still to be found in large numbers in large and small Scottish burghs. In Craigneuk, near Glasgow, ‘only the superior mother shod her children in summer’, the rest, with only ‘a pair of trousers, no underpants, a shirt and a jersey’ to their names, ‘ran barefooted in school and out of it’.17 Among adults the impact of poverty was no less visible or devastating. Jennie Lee, while in the mining town of Lochgelly, Fife, in 1927, spoke of her shock in witnessing its debilitating effect on one of her former female classmates: In 1917 she had been a pretty intelligent spirited girl. Now she had a baby in her arms, another clinging to her skirt and a slightly older child walking by her side. Ill—health, lack of proper food, and hopeless poverty were written all over her. Later I saw where she lived. A wretched insanitary but and ben with hardly a stick of furniture in it. She had not been brought up like that any more than I had. But she had fallen in love with a young miner, married him and children had began to arrive just when the slump years came catapulting down on our defenceless villages. He was unemployed for most of the time and when working, earned almost as little as when on the dole.18

Notwithstanding these correctives to any optimistic reading of social conditions in the 193 Os, the patchy but visible improvement in health

standards was influenced by the progress being made in housing construction. One- and two-roomed dwellings continued to house large sections of the Scottish population, with Aberdeen in 1921 having 37 per cent of its inhabitants living in such accommodation, which was a little higher than Edinburgh, but much less than Glasgow or Dundee, where over 60 per cent of the population lived in this type of cramped dwelling. Moreover, a very high proportion of working-class families had to share a water closet and had no baths. An Aberdeen women recalled that in the 1920s fourteen families in Littlejohn Street had to share two toilets and had ‘no gas or electricity, 192

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Economic Depression and the Social Impact of Mass Unemployment only an open fire to cook on. . . . For lighting we used paraffin’.19 Housing conditions were still so bad for many Glaswegians that James Stewart, Labour councillor, described the city as ‘earth’s nearest sub— urb to hell’.20 William Campbell, the stepson of communist leader J. R. Campbell, confirmed this view in his autobiography, saying of his family’s cramped two-roomed house in Stabcross Street, Anderston, Glasgow, that:

Our parents established themselves in one room, with my little brother Archie. All the rest of us [four children] slept in the other room in large bunks built into a recess. The kitchen con— sisted of a small gas ring in the corner. The only source of water was a small basin, with a lavatory next to it. This served all the tenants on our floor.21 However, between 1925 and 1935 Aberdeen Town Council like many other councils embarked on a housing construction programme and

over 2600 two- and three-apartment houses were built. By 1939 over 6000 council houses had been built.22 Motherwell and Wishaw local authority provided houses for one-seventh, or 9000, of its popula-

tion. In Scotland as a whole the period 1919—39 saw the public sector assume responsibility for 67 per cent of new housing con-

struction, compared to only 26 per cent in England.23 A move from an overcrowded and poorly equipped house to a new council flat was like a dream come true for many working-class families. As an Aberdeen tenant put it: ‘When we got a shift to Froghall Road we thought we were in a mansion’.24 Although council housing was generally of a higher standard than the available private rented accommodation, rents were higher. In Dundee council rents amounted to between 52 and 46 per cent of the average textile worker’s wage. The Medical Officer of Health for Edinburgh complained that:

It is apparently a waste of time. . . to convince many people who live in slums that a £15 house provided with . . . electric light, gas boiler, hot water system, wash house, tub and sink, drying green and open air all round, is in every possible direction worth £5 more than the dungeon-like slum devoid of almost every comfort that a human habitation should possess.” For those too poor to afford council rents, the slum was still the only option. The battle for accommodation continued to encourage the 193

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

transitory existence of many working-class families. Eddie Milne, Labour MP, recalled in his autobiography that ‘Due to the Aberdeen habit of “flittin” he attended three different schools before the age of eleven’. However, even in the slums there were degrees of discomfort. When ILPer John Paton’s family moved to Park Street, Aberdeen, from

his grandmother’s flat as a result of his mother’s second marriage, he

lived for the ‘first time in a house With gas lighting’, and his mother ‘rejoiced in a sink with cold water laid on in front of the windows of her kitchen!’.26 The continued existence of diseases of the poor and the wretched housing conditions were not only a reflection of high levels of unemployment, but also were a consequence of the generally low levels of earnings north of the border. For those on state-aided relief there was a marked change in the sexual character of the claimant. Thus, if the typical person in receipt of poor relief before 1914 was a woman, who was widowed, sick or disabled; then in 1938 half of those on the Poor Law were men. Before 1914 there were few areas where more than 5 per cent of the population were claiming poor relief.

After 1920 the Poor Law disabled roll in Bridgeton, Gorbals and Cowcaddens in Glasgow accounted for 40 per cent of the population of these districts.27 An expatriate Scot returning to Glasgow in the early 19305 after twenty or so years in the USA observed that: ‘Most of my boyhood pals are still in the Gallowgate. Some of them haven’t had a job in their lives and have been living off the parish. The rest are on the “buroo”’.23 The introduction of the Means Test in 1932 led to further deterioration in the living standards of those on relief by reducing their incomes and splitting up their families. For those in work the period 1931—33 saw Scots earn only 87 per cent of the UK average wage; however, some sections of society did

better than others. The salaried middle class experienced a 10 per cent increase in nominal wages in the 19208 while Scottish workers’ wages remained stagnant or fell. The miners, for example, with the failure of the 1926 strike, saw their minimum wage fall from 95 4d to 85 4.8d per day for an extra hour’s work.29 However, there was in a number of trades a narrowing of the differentials between skilled and unskilled workers, which led to an improvement in the standard of living of the latter. In shipbuilding a labourer’s wage in 1914 was only 57 per cent of that received by a skilled worker, but by 1932 it had risen to 68 per cent.30 This trend was also witnessed in construction, coalmining and engineering during the years 1914 and

1930.31 194

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Economic Depression and the Social Impact of Mass Unemployment Life for those on welfare was desperate, but in spite of the harshness and, after 1932 following the introduction of the Means Test, the humiliation of it, the payment of relief allowed the recipients a measure of dignity. They kept a roof over their heads and were able

to hang on to their furniture and other possessions. Those in work found that, although their incomes did not increase substantially, due

to the general fall in prices they were no worse off than normally. However, the poor standards of housing and the large degree of overcrowding which was a major source of ill-health continued to blight the lives of many Scottish working-class families.

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Chapter 21

BILLIES AND DANS I N THE JAZZ AGE: WORKING-CLASS CULTURE AND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

The existence of mass unemployment and the poverty which flowed from it obviously impacted itself in powerful ways on the culture of the Scottish working class. For many of the unemployed men of the 19205 and, especially, the 19305, hanging around street corners ‘offering each other opinions on everything from how prosperity

could be regained to what had the best chance in the 3.30 [race]’ was all that poverty afforded them in the way of leisure.32 However, for others escapism and hedonism seem more apt descriptions of their

experience than social puritanism. While the labour movement decried the influence of American jazz, describing it as ‘jungle music’,33 and condemned the growth of dance halls and the cinema — the ‘opium dens’ of yesterday34 — the working class remained oblivious to this kind of moralising. The Carnegie Trust sponsored investigations into the social condition of the unemployed in the 19305 found that 80 per cent of the young unemployed attended the cinema at least once a week.” Dancing was also popular and dance halls flourished in most towns and cities in Scotland during the 19205 and 19305. The unrespectable working-class pastime of betting on horses was added to by the growth in popularity of dog racing and the football pools. A Dundonian worker recalled that, in spite of the existence of mass unemployment, the 19305 were ‘surprisingly a good time for bookies. . . . The Howff, with as many as 400 punters in it at times, was nicknamed the Paddock’.36 Workers in Glasgow were said,

much to the displeasure of Alaskan adventurer Kenneth Mackenzie, to be more ‘interested in the Noon Record or who is favourite in the next race . . . than in listening to yarns about Alaska’.37 Keeping and 196

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Working-Class Culture and the Labour Movement in Scotland

racing whippets became very popular among miners in the west of Scotland.38 Indeed, so concerned were the religious authorities over this unashamed hedonism that the Archbishop of Canterbury claimed that ‘the country had gone to the dogs’. Football also continued to exercise a hold on the imagination of the working class, although in Glasgow its association with sectarianism became even more marked as Celtic began to fly the flag of the Irish Free State at its stadium and Rangers flew the Union Jack and adopted a policy of only signing Protestant players. The Protestant Billy Boys and the Catholic Norman Congs fought out ritual religious battles on the streets of Glasgow and on the terraces of Parkhead and Ibrox?’9 Then there was the traditional culture of drinking. Ironically, alcohol consumption began to fall quite sharply in the inter-war

period, with consumption in the 19305 a little over a quarter of that in the 19005, but that owed more to excise duty and the reduction in drinking hours than organised temperance opposition.40 In spite of this, a distinction has to be made between the total volume of alcohol consumed and the amount of drunkenness. Edwin Muir, in his impressionistic report on social conditions in Scotland in the 1930s, observed that among working-class Scots drinking had become more of a spasmodic and intense experience which meant that its impact was all the more degrading. Even in the streets of Edinburgh it was

impossible, according to Muir, to ‘get through a single evening without seeing at least one example of outrageous and helpless drunkenness’.41 The impact of drink on the household economy of workers, and particularly on married women and children, also remained no less devastating than in the nineteenth century. One contemporary caught the desperation of women faced with hard-drinking husbands and trying to ensure family survival, when he remarked that: It was a job for women to catch up with their husbands before the week’s wages had disappeared and there was nothing left to buy the household food. Families sought fathers, calling out names along the streets or in pub doorways.42

When the women protested too much a beating was often the result. Patrick McGeown, steel smelter, remembered women in the small industrial town of Craigneuk being battered ‘in public houses’ on Fridays and Saturdays by their drunken husbands for having the temerity to demand a share of their wages.43 Drink, then, not only offered escape, but was an important ingredient in defining masculine 197

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culture in working-class communities. The world of sawdust floors and spittoons, halfs an’ halfs, remained closed to women in this period, which only reinforced the male-bounded nature of public drinking and the patriarchialism it reflected.

Parallelling this rough culture was temperance, the healthy outdoor pursuits of hill-walking and amateur sport, as well as self-improvement classes, which the respectable working class remained drawn to. Temperance was still an article of faith for the respectable working class, as well as the labour movement. In 1920 the famous ‘No Licence Campaign’ involved a large input from the ILP in an attempt

to introduce ‘dry areas’ in Scotland. Its outstanding failure, with 508 burghs voting for ‘No Change’, and only 41 for ‘No Licence’, demonstrated how remote these nineteenth-century values were becoming. However, in spite of this, twelve months later the STUC endorsed a resolution moved by William Leonard, of the Glasgow

Trades Council (GTC) that: ‘this Congress reaffirms its opinion that the total prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors . . . will be a great advantage to the workers of this country’.

This view was shared by the ILP, which claimed that ‘The liquor trade was the most insidious form of capitalist exploitation’.44 It was

interesting that most of the fourteen votes Dundee prohibitionist MP, Edwin Scrymgeour, received for his draconian Liquor Traffic Bill in 1923, which included a five years jail sentence for trafficking in alcohol, came from Scottish ILP MPs, such as James Maxton and Tom Johnston. The labour movement also encouraged the development of art societies and clubs in order to promote greater cultural awareness among workers, expecting that this would unleash the beginnings of a proletarian renaissance in Scotland. The Glasgow Socialist Art Circle’s first exhibition in 1925 drew an attendance of between 6000 and 7000 Glaswegians. P. J. Dollan claimed that it marked the ‘dawn[ing] of the revolution in culture’.45 This initiative added to the

already impressive list of labour organisations offering wholesome entertainment and outdoor activities to young workers. The pre-1914 Socialist Rambling Clubs and ILP Cycle Scouts continued to attract respectable numbers of young socialists. Additionally, there were Socialist and Labour football leagues. For the less energetic there were vocational classes, such as the Girls’ Handicraft Classes run by the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in the 19305, and various choirs — the most famous being the Glasgow Orpheus Choir under conductor Hugh Roberton.46

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Working-Class Culture and the Labour Movement in Scotland

However, not all these healthy life activities were initiated by socialist bodies. Hill-walking and mountain climbing among the unemployed became popular in the 19205 and 19305 with clubs such as the Craig Dhu, Ptarmigan and the Lomonds being established on ‘democratic’ lines.47 Cycling was also a popular pastime with employed and unemployed workers alike. David Phillips, in his autobiography, said that in Dundee on Saturday afternoons ‘like great flocks of colourful birds congregating in preparation for migrating the cycling clubs gathered . . . at the imposing gates of Camperdown Park’.48 As much of the sporting and other activities were geared towards protecting youth from corruption and vice a crucial element in this project was the encouragement of stable family life. Capitalism was attacked by socialists because ‘it played havoc with the rich blessing of family life’.49 In practice, what this meant was the virtual subor— dination of women both in the home and the labour movement. The constant problem of keeping cramped living space tidy and clean, providing meals cooked on open hearths, doing the washing by hand, dealing with the endless demands of young children, made housework an arduous full—time occupation. For those women in work the situation was even more burdensome. Margaret Brooksbank, a mill worker in Dundee, claimed it was ‘a common sight to see women, after a long ten hour day in the mill, running to the steam washhouses with the family washing’.50 The patriarchal structure of the working-class home meant that males were absolved from contribut— ing to the daily chores. As a stonemason’s daughter recalled: ‘They [father and brothers] didn’t have to do anything in the house. We used to have to wash out their gloves and clean their patent shoes to let them away to the dancing’.51 Even in the labour movement the role mapped out for women was little different. As Harry McShane remarked, most socialists envisaged no alterations in the sexual division of labour or in contemporary family arrangements.52 Free love and casual relationships were considered a threat to the family. Labour leader, Tom Johnston, after visiting the Soviet Union in 1934, was able to reassure readers in

Forward that, in spite of easy divorce and casual unions, ‘the majority of couples in Russia . . . live all their lives together’, and concluded

‘that is a great good fortune to the world, is it not?’.53 As a result of this attachment to traditional family structures, birth control was strongly opposed, and Forward itself refused to take advertising copy from advocates of providing information and advice on the subject.

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Dora Russell, of the Workers’ Birth Control Group, excoriated the Clydeside MP8 for opposing Thurtle’s Local Authorities (Birth Control) Enabling Bill of 1926, which would have allowed local health boards to disseminate information regarding contraception among working-class women, blaming their reluctance on ‘the shadow of threatened religious opposition’. Indeed, the Catholic Church placed pressure on Labour candidates by sending them questionaires regarding their attitudes to moral questions. John S. Clarke, Labour MP for Maryhill and noted Marxist, had to give the Church an assurance in the 1929 general election that he ‘would oppose any legislation on Birth Control’.54 The stress on family values was in many ways the result of the

continuing influence of religion in Scottish society. Research into attendance and membership of religious institutions in the inter-war period by Callum Brown has shown that, in spite of a dip in affiliation in the aftermath of the General Strike, the Protestant churches suffered no significant loss of adult members, with the Catholic Church making steady gains. Moreover, if ‘active’ church membership is measured by those taking communion at least once a year, then Brown sees a marked rise in active membership in the Church of Scotland in the period 1918—25, and again in the economic downturn of

1937—38. The labour movement in this context was eager to prove its Christian credentials and in 1922 Forward assured its readers

that, contrary to claims by Tory churchmen, ‘Atheism avowed or otherwise has no place in the ILP policy or programme’.55 This was underscored during the service of dedication held in St Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow, following the electoral victory in the 1922 general election, when the crowd sang the 124th psalm — ‘Had not the Lord been on our side’. The strength of religious conviction was bolstered by the continuing existence of sectarian rivalries in Scotland. Any hope that the experience of the war would have marginalised these religious hatreds and tensions was lost as competition for work intensified after 1920

and provided fertile soil for the resurrection of sectarianism. Catholic workers were still faced with adverts in the job columns of the press saying that they need not apply.56 However, rivalry could be expressed in more innocent, but no less revealing, ways in local communities. In Craigneuk, Patrick McGeown said that the amateur football team he played for — Cowie Square Wanderers — had a red strip which represented a ‘compromise; the Irish section wouldn’t wear the blue of Scotland, and the Scots wouldn’t wear the green of 200

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Working-Class Culture and the Labour Movement in Scotland

Ireland’. Community rivalry in this area intruded into the arena of industrial relations during the 1921 miners’ dispute. Locked—out Catholic miners built a holy shrine at Carfin near Motherwell, which attracted tens of thousands of pilgrims.57 Churchmen and Protestant rabble rousers, such as John Cormack and his Protestant Action Society (PAS), as well as nationalists and

political commentators, fuelled these sectarian rivalries by claiming that the Catholic Irish were denying native Presbyterian Scots the opportunity of finding work. The Tory Lord Scone summed up the position of the anti-Irish coalition when he claimed that: ‘If the Irish in Scotland were reduced to even a quarter of a million, the unemployment problem in this country would be so small as to be negli-

gible’.58 In 1923 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland published a pamphlet entitled The Menace of the Irish Race to Our Scottish Nationality, and the influential Scottish intellectual Andrew Gibb, in his book, Scotland in Eclipse, underscored the feelings of the church when he claimed that the Irish were ‘responsible for most of the crime committed in Scotland, which otherwise would be the most law-abiding [country] in the world’.59 Religious and racial propaganda was taken further by the PAS in

Edinburgh and in Glasgow by the Scottish Protestant League (SPL). Both organisations saw as their political task, as the leader of the SPL — Alexander Ratcliffe — put it, to ‘Kick the Pope! That is our job! It is our programmel’.6O However, in Edinburgh this led to riots in 1935 in which Catholic conferences were attacked by angry mobs and priests and parishioners alike were spat on and beaten up in the streets.61 The small beleaguered Catholic community of Edinburgh located in clearly defined areas of the Old Town was unable to resist the extremist tactics of the PAS, and it was only the onset of war in the late 19305 that saw these attacks diminished as hatred was turned towards the Italian community, and the authorities began to take a tougher stance on sectarian violence. In Glasgow, the SPL pursued a more constitutional strategy, preferring to work through regular political channels. Any violence that did occur in the west of Scotland

tended to be between rival sectarian gangs. Part of the reason for this may have been due to the fact that Glasgow had a more varied resi— dential pattern, as well as the obvious fact of the size of the Catholic

community. Nevertheless, the emergence of Protestant extremism in the 19303 demonstrates the continuing strength of sectarianism among workers in Scotland, and the way that mass unemployment produced irrational patterns of social and political behaviour even among the 201

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

skilled stratum and the better educated members of Scottish society. Perhaps the level of hostility between Catholics and Protestant workers was also fuelled by the educational system. Catholic schools were absorbed by the state through the Education Act of 1918. This put ‘Rome on the rates’, according to the Protestant churches, as reli-

giously segregated schools were established. However, all denominational schools operated Within the meritocratic culture inherited from the nineteenth century. A typology of education was developed in the inter-war period which was closely linked to job orientation and social class. For the child deemed ‘academic’ and ‘endowed by nature with the mental equipment’ a secondary education was provided as a

preparation for the professions or university; for the ‘non-academic’ an elementary schooling in advanced divisions for older pupils was all that was on offer until leaving school at fourteen. In 1936 all post—primary educational establishments were renamed secondary schools and were divided into three year junior secondaries for those of ‘distinctly limited intelligence’, and five year élitist senior secondaries. As late as 1951, 87 per cent of young Scots between the ages of 20 and 24 had left school at fifteen or younger."2 However, the existence of a ladder of merit provided social mobility for the gifted working-class child and confirmed middle-class male stereo-

types of the dullard worker and the mentally inferior woman. The provision of mass education and the development of mass commercial leisure pursuits, such as the cinema, which made the older forms of community entertainment and the wholesome activities of the labour movement, with its self-improving ethos, seem outdated demonstrated a culture in transition. The cheapness of it all, including the radio, even allowed the unemployed to participate in a limited fashion in the new mass culture. Something corresponding to a homogeneous national working-class experience began to emerge in this period. Indeed, Carnegie investigators found that there was little to distinguish the lifestyles of unemployed youths in Glasgow with similar groups in England and \Wales.63 However, although converging, it was still a masculine culture in which wives served husbands and daughters fathers and brothers. Moreover, sectarianism continued to

act as a divisive force within the working class and the wider society, disturbing the solidarities of class based on common or shared expe— riences. The homogenisation of culture was, therefore, by no means all-pervasive, but the movement towards it was also underscored by changes occurring in the labour process, which to a large extent was breaking down the barrier of skill, although, as we shall see, not that of gender. 202

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Chapter 22

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE SKILLED WORKER, 1914—1945

Overall, the period 1914—4939 was marked by a large—scale accretion in employer power as mass unemployment and a decline in trade union membership weakened worker resistance to the imperatives of capital and the impact of technological change on the distribution of

skills in the workplace. Employers took advantage of favourable conditions to reorganise working methods and introduce scientific management regimes, such as the Bedaux system, all of which threat— ened the integrity of craft and workshop control over production built up during the First World War. As part of this trend almost all trades were subject to an intensification in industrial discipline and to general speed ups in production. However, like other periods of change in the labour process, the impact was unevenly experienced. Some trades, such as engineering and coalmining, which lent themselves to greater mechanisation experienced a more profound restructuring of skill than others. Shipbuilding, for instance, remained wedded to labour intensive methods of production and as a result continued to place a premium on skill. Moreover, even in trades subject to intense reorganisation of working methods, inherited work practices and customs acted to obstruct attempts by employers to establish complete domination of the labour process. Therefore, in spite of the enhancement of employer power in the 19205 and 19305, deskilling was limited and changes in the social relations of production proved on the whole to be incremental rather than revolutionary. Among the large employers of labour, coalmining and engineering probably experienced the greatest number of changes, although the same could be said of smaller and less studied trades, such as jute. They too underwent a profound reorganisation of production processes. However, because of the high levels of industrial conflict which characterised workplace relations in coal and engineering in 203

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING O F LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

the 19205, the historical spotlight has been more directly focused on

them. Indeed, coalmining has been the subject of inumerable studies into the changing nature of skill and work practices. All of them point to the increasing mechanisation of coalmining and the impact this had on the traditional skills of hewers. The mechanisation of coal-getting had been developing since the 19005, but during the inter-war years increased competition and falling profit margins drove the coal companies in Scotland even further down this road. In 1925, 50 per cent of coal output in Scotland was mechanically cut compared to only 20 per cent for Great Britain; ten years later the respective figures were 71.6 per cent and 59 per cent. Additionally the use of mechanical coal conveyors was more advanced in Scotland than in the rest of Britain, although still someway behind France,

where mechanised production in the Nord rose from 4 per cent in 1913 to 86 per cent in 1927.64 A5 a result of the application of machinery output per miner was higher in Scotland than in the rest of Britain. Even in areas where mines were small output per man year was higher than the British average until the 19305. In Clackmannanshire output was 20—30 per cent above the Scottish average and 35—40 per cent higher than the British; and, in spite of serious physical problems in extracting coal, miner productivity in Lanarkshire remained higher than the Scottish average for most of the inter-war years.“ The gains in productivity did little to increase the profits of the Scottish coal companies;66 however, the way they were manufactured had devastating effects on the skill and the health of miners. A study of the impact of mechanisation on mining skills carried out in the 19305 concluded that physical strength had replaced skill in the coal industry. As a consequence, ‘the skilled miner — hitherto one of the most independent of workmen in the country, is now reduced to the status of a living tool’.67 The elimination by machines of the old hewing skills of holing and undercutting coal and the widespread introduction of a twenty—four hour production regime allowed the coal companies, as Stuart MacIntyre has argued, to ‘replace older miners with unskilled, but more vigorous, men, and lent itself to “speed ups” and general intensification of the work process’.68 However, MacIntyre’s pessimistic View has been challenged by Barry Supple. In his official history of the coal industry, Supple argues that

mechanisation did not so much reduce mining skills as change their nature, and that the operation of the new machinery, such as coal

cutters, and its maintenance called for a high degree of ‘proficiency 204

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Technological Change and the Skilled Worker

and training’.69 Underscoring this View to some extent was the fact that the traditional ‘pillar and stoop’ method of coal-getting persisted in parts of Clackmannanshire, West Lothians and over most of Ayrshire right up until the outbreak of war in 1939.70 The smallness of many pits in the west of Scotland made it uneconomical to adopt the new technology of coal-getting and, thus, traditional hand-got coal methods still found favour. Thus, deskilling was far from complete

and the changes that occurred involved a recomposition of old and the introduction of new skills.

However, in spite of the incompleteness and incremental nature of technological change, Supple appears to have gone too far in playing down the degeneration of skill and health encouraged by mechanisation. Even he admits that intensive machine mining altered the ‘character of pit work. Strength rather than dexterity or experience was becoming paramount’.71 Moreover, the impact of mechanisation

turned the miners and their families from being among the healthiest of sections of the working class to one of the least. Health reports for coalmining in the period 1932—39 reveal an abnormally high incidence of acute and chronic sickness among the workforce. Doctors also reported unusually high rates of psychosomatic and pyschoneurotic illness among the miners.72

Another result of the adoption of mechanisation was the creation of a new division of labour in the mines. Under the ‘pillar and stoop’

method small teams of workers under the leadership of the indepen— dent collier were responsible for the whole operation of coal-getting. Mechanisation, on the other hand, called for a multiple shift system employing larger teams of workers, each performing a specialised part of the mining process. A hierarchy was formed rising from the lowly unskilled ‘oncost’ men, employed on such tasks as haulage, through to intermediate groups of drawers and roadmen, to the élite groups of hewers and machine setters.73 While under the traditional system the team leader was responsible for the discipline, hiring and payment of the team, in the new system the ‘oncost’ men were paid by the day and the élite groups of miners by the piece. The potential for inter—work and inter-community rivalry was implicit in the new division of labour, particularly when set against a background of intense competition for work; however, this was offset by the fact that under the shift system workers became dependent ‘not only on

each other but on workers on other shifts’.74 Moreover, as MacIntyre points out, the mechanised form of longwall mining fostered griev— ances uniting different grades of the workforce in common hostility

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

to the company.” Therefore, the new system of coal-getting, in spite of its generally degrading and divisive character, contained within it the basis of a new form of miner solidarity based on dependency and shared grievances.

Engineering also experienced a redistribution of skills; a process which had begun during the war years. The firm of Mavor and Coulson was of the opinion that what it had learned in the production of munitions could be applied to industrial production once the war was over. The lesson, which was boldly stated in the firm’s in-house magazine, was that the post-war engineering industry would require a new division of labour which involved ‘highly specialised machinery and a staff of skilled supervisors and tool makers . . . total operations [however] are reduced to so simple a character that they can be performed by unskilled labour’.76 This production strategy was put into operation in the inter-war years by the larger firms and significantly altered the balance between skilled and semi-skilled workers in the industry, and also led to a new division of labour among time-served men. In 1914 skilled workers made up 60 per cent of the total workforce in the engineering industry, while semi-skilled workers accounted for 20 per cent, with the unskilled making up the rest. Seventeen years later the respective figures were 32 per cent skilled, 57 per cent semi-skilled and 15 per cent unskilled. Additionally women workers were more prominent, rising from 3 per cent of the total number of operatives in 1907 to 13.2 per cent in 1935. Interestingly Noriel’s study of the distribution of engineering skills in the Renault plant in France arrived at similar conclusions with the number of skilled employees falling from 70 per cent of the total workforce in 1914 to under half in 1927.77 However, as Alan McKinlay points out, these national figures were in some ways misleading, distorted by the severity of the depression. It was, he claims, ‘widely recognised that

[on Clydeside] the overwhelming majority of semi—skilled workers were in fact time-served engineers’.78 In spite of this qualification, the inter—war period saw engineering

craft workers experience downward mobility as the distinctions between them and semi-skilled workers became increasingly blurred.

Although McKinlay puts this down to a recategorisation of skill rather than mechanisation,79 this fails to recognise adequately the degree of deskilling the two most important branches of the trade — fitting and turning — were subject to in this period. Engineering fitters were becoming more specialised as long-run batch work encouraged repetitive forms of manufacturing and limited the need for the all—round 206

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Technological Change and the Skilled Worker

skills of fitting. Even in the tool-rooms, where the highest degree of skill was practised, specialisation, as Yates notes, was on the ‘increase, and the range of work encountered [by the fitter] . . . is less’.80 In turning, the introduction of better machine tools after 1918 lowered the range of skills and severely reduced the number of lathe operations performed b y the turner.81 Specialisation also had two important knock-on effects: firstly, on apprenticeship; and, secondly, on the hierarchy of the workplace. Throughout the 19203 apprentices were used as ‘cheap labour for the bosses’, according to the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). A charge given substance b y the employers who recognised ‘that large numbers of boys and youths are not apprenticed but are learning and eventually taking their places in the skilled categories in the same way as apprentices. This movement . . . will be encouraged by the tendency of the industry towards simplification and sub—division of operations’.82 Ten years later an enquiry b y the AEU found that only 16 per cent of 1332 ‘fair sized’ engineering firms engaged appren-

tices.” Such was the degree of specialisation that striking engineering apprentices on Clydeside in 1937 not only demanded higher pay, but also the opportunity ‘to become brilliant mechanics, 3 chance which their employers denied them’.84 The AEU was powerless to prevent the drift towards ‘picking up’ as the numbers of apprentices on Clydeside in membership declined from 20 per cent in 1920 to only 4.5 per cent in 1929 and were still falling. An attempt to arrest the decline in apprentice membership b y the Glasgow AEU ended in failure when its Guild of Youth, established in 1928, collapsed within a year of founding.“ The increase in the number of learners accompanied the creation of a new hierarchy within the engineering workforce. In the fitting trade an élite cadre of workmen, comprising around a third of fitters, was evolving, centred on the tool room. Below this élite group, fitting became a trade divided into ‘a multitude of sub-divisions none of which utilised the full range of fitting skills and techniques’.“6 In the turning trade a distinction was made between the 70 per cent of

‘rough’ turners and the 30 per cent of ‘finishers’.87 As McKinlay also recognises, the progressive deskilling of the engineering worker

was underscored by a more intensive regime of industrial discipline which only served to reinforce the engineer’s sense of loss and impotence. After the 1922 lock-out Clydeside employers abolished the traditional convention of ‘minutes of grace’ at starting times and meal breaks; and in Edinburgh ‘speeding u p and time-checking even 207

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

for the lavatory has been brought to a fine art’.88 Additionally petty restrictions were introduced, such as bans on smoking at work, designed to reinforce supervisory authority. Movement within the workplace was also restricted by utilising labourers and specialist workmen to prepare and deliver the jigs and fixtures required for forthcoming work. One engineer serving his apprenticeship in the 19305 with Brown Brothers, Leith, caught the essence of the new

disciplinary regime when he recalled that: If I went and spoke to someone away from my bench you would get a tap on your shoulder ‘Go away up to the Gatehouse’. And by the time you got there they had phoned up the time keeper, he used to stand and go like that, ‘three days suspension’ . . . You weren’t allowed your tea break in the morning and you

used to have your piece in your food box — hide it under the bench and if you were caught . . . ‘Up to the Gatehouse’. Two or three days suspension depending on the mood.89 Another engineer recalled that in the 19308 security of employment

in the engineering industry had become so tenuous that: ‘Men were starting on Monday at eight o’clock and being dismissed at nine-thirty as being of no use’.90 Macho management also featured as foremen and managers roamed around the shop floor raising machine speeds at will.91 Buttressing the discipline was the increasing use of payments systems, such as Premium Bonus Rate (PBR), to break collective controls on output by promoting individual incentives. Although of little use to small jobbing engineering firms, who were interested in quality rather than in the volume of output, PBR became the favoured method of payment in the larger firms. By 1927 just over 63 per cent of turners and 51 per cent of fitters were on piece rates; by 1941 this had increased to nearly 70 per cent for fitters and 80 per cent for turners.92 The spread of PBR decisively broke the system of district rates, which had been the ‘cornerstone of the AEU’s job control strat-

egy’.” However, while it violated the principle of equality of reward and status in favour of payment according to employer evaluation of task worth and individual ability, PBR encouraged a system of continuous bargaining over piece rates.94 But this did not strengthen the power of the workers or their union as the negotiations over rates were conducted on an individual basis and rarely involved group or

mass protest over grievances. Thus, engineering workers, while experiencing a greater levelling 208

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Technological Change and the Skilled Worker process in terms of skill, found themselves emasculated by changes in the labour process which rendered them incapable in times of economic depression of registering meaningful protest against the tightening of industrial discipline, technological change and new

payments systems. The same could also be said of smaller trades. The failure of the jute strike in 1923 provided employers with a free hand to proceed with plans to rationalise and modernise the production processes. Spinners were forced to work two as against one frame and high

speed spinning was further advanced in the 19305.95 Weaving was subject to little change in the 19205; however, in the following decade weavers were subject to much higher levels of exploitation. In 1931

they were operating two 80-inch looms; two years later two three— yard looms were being tolerated.96 As the new machinery had to be run continuously to obtain maximum returns on the investment a

three shift system was introduced. This involved a restructuring of the labour force. Legislation preventing the use of women and juveniles on night shift meant that there was an increase in the number of male operatives and a corresponding reduction the amount of juvenile labour employed as piecers and shifters.97 By these methods there was a 10 per cent increase in output achieved in the jute industry in the 19305 by a much smaller workforce of 24 000 compared to

35 000 in 1930.98 Other trades less affected by technological change and deskilling,

nevertheless experienced more intensive working regimes. Motormen engaged in the heavy goods traffic in the 19208 were expected to drive continuously without a break for ten to twelve hours a day, although it was not uncommon for them to spend up to nineteen to twenty hours at work. In the passenger vehicle sector inter-company competition was so fierce that drivers were forced to operate at excessive speeds to capture passengers.” In spite of the passing of the Road Traffic Act of 1930 which made it illegal to employ drivers for more than eleven hours a day, or without a break for rest and refreshment after five-and-a-half hours continuous driving, employers in the road transport sector generally ignored this provision.100 Thus,

motormen were exposed to excessive hours of work, something which took a heavy toll on their ability to resist employer control of working time. Of the major industries to be crippled by the collapse in world markets in the inter-war period, shipbuilding was the least able to

reorganise production on the basis of new technology and/or scientific 209

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management techniques. The barriers to economies of scale, such as cyclical instability, which existed in the nineteenth century continued to limit the scope for standardised production systems; therefore,

reductions in costs in the 19205 were sought in the area of wages.101 Most of the investment went into improving the capacity of the yards by increasing the size of berths and improving the layout of the plant. The only technical improvement of any significance was the univer-

salisation of machine riveting.102 However, this by no means meant technological paralysis. An assault was made on the skills of the platers and there were attempts to introduce welding on a much

more extensive scale. The ‘piano’, or multiple, punch was capable of perforating steel plates without, as McKinlay notes, ‘the labour intensive method of shouldering plates into position’, and by 1926

ten Clyde yards had installed one.103 The piano punch also held out the possibility of increasing the level of prefabrication in the shipbuilding industry, since the plates could be assembled under cover; a development which would almost certainly have increased the level

of direct supervision and the awarding of semi-skilled status to the plater. Implicit in its introduction was also the destruction of the gang system in plating as the new machine had less reliance on helpers than the old labour intensive methods. However, few members of the Clydeside Shipbuilders’ Association (CSA) were prepared in an atmosphere of intense international competition to challenge the

Boilermakers’ union over these issues, and the piano punch was appropriated as with other technology by the men.104 The only men

to suffer were the helpers who saw their numbers decline and their wages reduced.105 In spite of the ability of the boilermakers to appropriate new technology in the 19205, they were subject to encroachments into traditional working practices and customs. ‘Tossing the brick’ - a ritual which symbolised the independence of labour and was performed on the day of restarting work after a holiday — involved on the sound of the yard whistle throwing a brick in the air, and only if it landed in a certain way would the men resume work; for the first few days it rarely did. By 1922 the manager of John Brown’s was confidently claiming that the ceremonial of ‘tossing the brick’ was a

dead letter, pointing out that ‘members of the ironworkers’ union started promptly to work instead of walking up to the Yard gates and then going away in their customary senseless fashion’.106 Therefore, depression effectively undermined these symbols of worker indepen-

dence in the shipyards and their demise buttressed and enhanced managerial authority. 210

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Technological Change and the Skilled Worker

The 19308 saw a more important challenge to union control of the production process in shipbuilding emerge. Simpler, more standardised ships began to dominate world production; a development which made prefabrication a much more feasible proposition. Prefabrication

called forth the skills of the welder, a prospect which threatened to undermine the position of platers and riveters alike. A direct indication of this was given when in the early 19305 the SEF reclassified the welding of plates to the ship frame as semi-skilled work. However,

a combination of craft resistance and the platers’ control of preexisting welding work on the bulkhead, allowed the workers, as Richard Price points out, to establish ‘their claims to all welding’.107 The stranglehold the Boilermakers’ Union had on the labour process meant that welding failed to make significant progress on Clydeside in spite of the general weakness of labour in the 19305. By 1939 welders only accounted for 2.8 per cent of the total workforce on the Clyde.108 In the allied trade of steelmaking the element of craft mystery which went into the making of steel placed an impregnable fence round the labour process. As one steel smelter put it: ‘Management couldn’t take over a furnace. Only the first hand could do that job, with an apprenticeship of twenty-five to thirty years’.109 The knowledge of the process was possessed b y the members of the craft community, in particular the foremen, who kept the foundry ‘Bible’. The ‘Bible’ recorded all observations which had a bearing on the final product, such as temperature, and this was handed to the next senior hand on the retirement or death of the foreman. If the next senior hand did not progress to leading hand, then, in the words of an official of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, the union ‘wanted tae no why’.110 All this points to the fact that mass unemployment and the general weakness of trade unions in the inter—war depression did not result in universal domination of the labour process by employers, and neither did it lead to sweeping technological change. Worker resistance continued to impede change in the workplace, but, arguably, employers were more restricted in modernising plant and machinery by their reliance on labour intensive production methods. It was only in those trades amenable to technological change and increased supervision that employers were able to assume the unrestricted right to manage their enterprises as they saw fit. However, even here, as the engineering industry shows, the sheer variety of the product market impeded the march towards Taylorist goals of rationalisation and standardised production. Deskilling and managerial control of the work process 211

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were to remain distant, but, as yet, unrealised ambitions. However, almost all workers experienced some loss of control over their labour, and were subject to a more intense form of discipline and working

rhythm. These changes in skill and work rhythms were in some ways related to the shifting managerial strategies for maintaining control in the workplace. As we saw in the last chapter those strategies developed in the nineteenth century by management were coming under pressure from changes in the social relations of the workplace and by the increasing bureaucratisation of production systems. The inter-war period intensified these pre-1914 trends in both areas of direct and indirect control. As one might expect the industries which experience the greatest

degree of organisational and technological change were also at the frontier of shifting forms of labour control. In engineering the position of the foreman came under serious threat during the First World War. Temporary state ownership of munitions factories led to a narrowing of differentials between skilled workers and foremen due to excessive overtime working, as well as increasing the supervisory role of the former as the number of dilutees increasedfl“ The enhancement of collective bargaining saw the number of state officials responsible for welfare and personnel and production issues increase, which further eroded the authority of the foreman. However, the most telling blow to the authority of the foreman came in the removal of his discre— tionary powers to organise labour and production on a day-to-day basis. Firms under the Munitions Act found that, as Keith Burgess says, ‘all aspects of workplace organisation, including manning levels, the choice of operatives . . . and the more general “ordering of work”

were subject to state control’.112 The engineering foreman was thus transformed into a supervisor exercising a more restricted role relating to discipline and training. The organisation of labour and production lay with specialist categories of management. However, in spite of the reduction in their privileges and power, foremen in the engineering industry were increasingly drawn into the management camp and away from their men and their institutions. Membership of the Foremen’s Mutual Benefit Society, established by the employers to attract foremen away from the ASE, only boasted 6819 members in 1919. However, after the collapse of the immediate post-war boom

membership more than doubled to 13 500 in 1922, and increased to 16 500 by 1930.113 The shift in status of the foreman and his progressive institutional distance from workers in the engineering industry was symptomatic 212

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Technological Change and the Skilled Worker of the increasing influence of Taylorite philosophy among the larger employers. In the coal industry there was also an increase in the number of supervisory or ‘oncost’ men to intensify work discipline. This drew class lines even more acutely as the blurring between ownership and authority which had existed in the nineteenth century was removed, making it very clear to the workers the source of their grievances and oppression. However, in other trades, such as shipbuilding and dockwork, which were less amenable to direct

supervision, the traditional forms of direct control acted to diffuse authority over a range of figures.

In shipbuilding the ‘bastards in bowler hats’, as the foremen were described by the workers, continued to exercise a large degree of discretionary power. They continued to perform all the routine tasks of organising labour and production. During the depression years their power was, as one shipbuilding worker put it, that ‘of life and death. . . . He could stop you putting bread on your table’.114 In less skilled trades, such as clockwork, the power of the foreman was even greater. One Edinburgh dockworker said that during the 19305 ‘there were some awfae bad foremen. They didnae treat you as human beings. You were there for their convenience’.“5 Of course, not all firms used direct methods of control associated with foremanship. Internal subcontracting which, as we have seen,

placed the responsibility for hiring, disciplining and paying the workers with key employees, was under threat before 1914 from the increasing bureaucratisation of production. Thomas Bell, in his evidence to the Board of Trade Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding in 1916, laid bare the disadvantages for management in the squad system when he stated that:

In shipyards it was thought that by giving the work out to squads you reduced the general charges and did the work more economically, forgetting that these squads were a number of men banded together who in time got worse and worse. By having only squads like that you play into their hands. . . . If a squad refused to d o a job you were at your wits’ end if you did not give way to them. Even if you offered some sum, no other squad in the shipyard would take their job up. You were in the hands of the squads instead of having proper discipline.116 The internal subcontracting system, therefore, acted as a source of worker autonomy and solidarity in the yards and made managerial

control problematic.117 However, it was in the process of gradually 213

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING O F LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

being reformed; but the initiative came from the men rather than the

bosses. The boilermakers were weary of the disputes with their helpers over wages and after the war acceded to employers’ demands to pay them through the office. The more democratic spirit of the post-First World War era also made it more morally offensive to employ other workers in such an exploitative manner. One plater’s apprentice articulated the distaste he felt when asked by his foreman to hire casual labourers, remarking that: ‘It would have been an odd sight . . . a couple of kids casting a quizzical eye over the dilapidated group of men old enough to to have fathered both of us and then having decided, saying “You” ’.118 Thus a major impediment to worker solidarity in the shipyards was removed as the platers shed part of their authority over their helpers. In the other centre of internal sub— contracting — the coal industry — the demise of the independent collier and the ‘pillar and stoop’ method of coal-getting brought an end to the system in most pits. However, it survived in certain areas up until the Second World War. The Lothian Coal Company used the contracting system as a means of divide and rule, or as one miner put

it, as a ‘means of puttin’ the workin’ man against the workin’ man’.119 The other main strategy for manufacturing consent among the workforce was paternalism. As we have seen, the system of paternalism was breaking down due to the advancement of state provision of welfare. State welfare schemes expanded enormously during the inter—war years as the prolonged existence of unemployment on a mass scale appeared to defy the logic of supply side economics; the existence of low wages did not price workers back into work. Added to this was the massive increase in public sector accommodation which undermined to a large extent the employers’ use of housing as a means of social control. Paternalism was confined to a few outposts of industrial capitalism in Scotland. Mungo MacKay, managing director of the Lothian Coal Company, used the threat of eviction to discipline the miners and to ensure that the process of reproduction

functioned in the interests of the employers. One miner, whose son wished to take up an apprenticeship away from the pits, was told by MacKay to ‘Either bring him up, stand him on Monday, or hand in the keys 0’ the house’. MacKay also fined those miners who failed to keep their garden in good order.120 Similarly, as Morris and Smyth have shown, in the industrial village of Prinlaws in Fife ‘everything was provided by the firm. Not only the houses . . . but [also] the church hall . . . and the water supply and street lighting’.121 However, even these strongholds of the paternalist system collapsed after the 214

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Technological Change and the Skilled Worker Second World War as nationalisation and the welfare state changed the nature of social relationships in the workplace and society. Control was increasingly to be had through the wage packet and the spread of payments by results systems in this period was a reflection of this. From this examination of the labour process in the inter-war period it would appear that with certain reservations the social relations of production were increasingly resembling the Marxist idea of class struggle. The locus of authority was far clearer than it had been in the nineteenth century when it was dispersed over a number of figures. Moreover, the distinctions between the skilled and unskilled were disappearing if wage differentials are any guide. A greater homogeneity was evident within labour and this in many ways

underscored the emergence of a more universal working-class cultural experience through the greater commercialisation of leisure, the growth of the media, and the large-scale expansion of state welfare schemes. The question which emerges from these discussions is how did this growing sense of class identity impact itself on trade unionism and labour politics in the inter-war years?

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Chapter 23

TRADE UNIONISM IN A COLD CLIMATE, 1914—1945

Trade unionism in Scotland underwent several phases of development in the period from the beginning of the First World War to the outbreak of the Second World War. Firstly, there was the phase of industrial militancy from roughly 1915 until the onset of depression in 1920; secondly, there was the revival of militancy in the period immediately prior to the General Strike; thirdly, there was the phase of accommodationism following the defeat of the General Strike and the onset of mass unemployment; and, finally, there was the

re-emergence of trade unionism in the late 19303 as a result of the re—armament drive. Within these phases of change and development the modern trade union movement in Scotland was created; its chief

characteristics being British, bureaucratic in organisation, and amenable to corporatist solutions to social and economic problems. The underlying question which emerges from this is how did the principle of ‘cooperation’, in the words of officials of the Boilermakers’ Union responding to the TUC report on the Mend/Turner talks of 1927, replace ‘class war’ and ‘Red Clydeside’.>122 The period in Scottish labour history associated with ‘Red Clydeside’ is perhaps the most debated and researched by historians of modern Scotland.123 There is, therefore, little that can be added to

the empirical knowledge amassed by historians concerning the events on Clydeside during the war years; however, a brief résumé is neces— sary if the foregoing analysis is to make any sense. The industrial unrest on the Clyde began in the shipyards and engineering workshops in early 1915 with a strike over wages. A much publicised agreement prior to the war between the unions, employers and the

state to do nothing to undermine the war effort effectively shackled the hands of the official trade union movement in representing the grievances of the rank-and—file and as a result the leadership of the 216

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Trade Unionism in a Cold Climate

strike fell to the local shop stewards. Many of them had attended classes in Marxist economics run by the revolutionary anti-war activist, John Maclean, and a large number were also members of revolutionary organisations, such as the Socialist Labour Party (SLP). Thus, the industrial unrest from the outset created the impression,

particularly in government circles, of a challenge to the state by polit— ically motivated agitators. The success of the ‘tuppence an hour’ strike in 1915 enhanced the reputation of the shop stewards with the rank—and—file and this only served to strengthen the unease within the state over Clydeside. To protect the gains made in early 1915 and to provide for future co—ordination of activity an unofficial Central Labour Withholding Committee was set up. This proved to be a perceptive decision as in the summer of 1915 the Munitions Act threatened the whole basis of

craft control of production. The Act was designed to boost production of war materials; however, in achieving this it introduced dilution and a form of industrial conscription in selected war related industries. A system of ‘leaving certificates’ was included in the measures, which shop steward and, later, Labour MP, David Kirkwood, branded a ‘slave’s clause’ as workers could only leave their employment with their employer’s consent.124 The other main source of discontent was the introduction of semi— and unskilled labour on work which was

previously the preserve of skilled craftsmen. It was in the response to these measure that the ad hoc Withholding Committee became the

more organised and permanent Clyde Workers’ Committee (CWC) in October of that year. The CWC organised stoppages against the Munitions Act and demanded that if dilution was to be introduced it was to be under workers’ control. Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, to assuage the fears of the labour force on these issues addressed them and the shop stewards of the CWC at a meeting in December 1915 in Glasgow and was given a hostile reception, being referred to previ— ously by Forward as the ‘best paid munitions worker in Britain’.125

Failure to pacify the workforce over dilution led the government to decide on a series of measures designed to destroy the CWC and end the industrial unrest. William Gallacher, the chairman of the CWC, along with John Muir and Walter Bell, was arrested on charges of sedition and the CWC journal — The Worker — was suppressed after only four issues. This signalled a general crackdown on the activities of the shop stewards and some, like Kirkwood, were arrested and deported to Edinburgh. With the imprisonment and deportation of 217

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING O F LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

the leading shop stewards, the CWC collapsed, although it revived in

the immediate aftermath of the war to lead a campaign for a forty hour week in industry; a campaign which ended in the famous George Square riot in Glasgow in 1919. The question which arises from this brief narrative account of the industrial unrest on Clydeside during the war years is: Did the state, by suppressing the shop stewards’ movement, prevent a revolutionary situation breaking out in Glasgow?

To answer this one must first of all appreciate the realities of artisanal workplace culture. As James Hinton points out, in his study

of the shop stewards’ movement on Clydeside, skilled workers in shipbuilding and engineering were noted for their craft conservatism and sectionalism. In his View it was the defence of skill and wages which motivated them in their struggles with the state, rather than

wider class considerations.126 Their opposition to the Munitions Act was precisely because it offended their notions of independence and

their right to sell their labour at the best possible price they could obtain for it. As David Kirkwood put it: The outstanding feature of the Munitions Act was that it denied the men the right to sell their labour to the highest bidder. This

cut clean athwart the political economy of the hour, and to the men of Clydeside it appeared little short of slavery. I felt it like that. I was happy in Beardmore’s as a free man. I resented being in Beardmore’s as a slave. I was part of the Forge by inclination. I would not be part of it by compulsion.127 The preservation of skill and independence was at the heart of the engineers’ struggle and because of this the revolutionary shop stewards failed to link the struggles against the Munitions Act with the activities being pursued outside the yards and workshops by the likes of John Maclean and James Maxton against the war. Indeed, Maclean,

in his famous ‘I accuse’ speech from the dock in May 1918, attacked the leaders of the CWC for this very reason.128 Those shop stewards who were brought to trial apologised to the court and made it clear that they had no desire or intention of hindering the war effort. At his

trial Gallacher insisted that he had ‘no desire to impede production’ and a fellow worker was called to give evidence that both he and Muir had opposed strikes.” Kirkwood also claimed that he was in favour of dilution and for his efforts when his deportation order was lifted in May 1917 he was made a foreman at Beardmore’s Mile End 218

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Trade Unionism in a Cold Climate

shell factory. As foreman Kirkwood, with Gallacher and Arthur McManus under him, introduced a bonus scheme which doubled production. As a reward Beardmore presented him with the ‘best hat in Glasgow’.130

Kirkwood’s qualified support for the war and his unwillingness to link the industrial struggle with the political struggle to bring a halt to the hostilities was, perhaps, understandable given his membership

of the moderate ILP; however, even among the more revolutionary elements within the CWC the war posed a real dilemma. To actively oppose the war meant consciously accepting the risk that one’s

country might be defeated. Since the CWC was never prepared to take that risk, it was unable to utilise its industrial power to bring

Britain’s participation in the war to an end. What politicised the industrial disputes on the Clyde and created an image of red revolution was the fact that the state had assumed control of the munitions industry. As a result, each strike was a political one. Each protest by the workers brought them into conflict with the state; thus, even straightforward economic demands for higher wages and better working conditions became political issues. Workers began to realise that bargaining with one’s skill, as had been the situation before the outbreak of war, was useless as it could only be represented collectively. As the official trade union movement was circumscribed by the wartime industrial truce from representing the interests of the rank-and—file a space developed in the area of representation which was filled by the revolutionary shop stewards. But the bargaining remained concerned with traditional issues and, as we have seen,

there was a general failure to politicise the industrial struggle by the shop stewards. For these reasons John Foster has argued that the climax of industrial unrest on Clydeside was not 1915 but at the end of the war. The strikes of 1919 overshadowed those of 1915 as they included far more workers and involved a greater loss of working days. Forty thousand workers were on strike in January 1919 in the shipyards and engineering works on the upper Clyde; and 36 000 miners were out in Lanarkshire and Stirling, along with 10 000 iron moulders.131 Over one-and-a-quarter million working days were lost, and there was strong support for the strike among demobilised soldiers, as well as women and young people.‘32 Glasgow was ringed by tanks as striking workers clashed with police in the famous George Square

riot. It seemed as if the whole of the working—class community of the west of Scotland had been mobilised in demand of the Forty Hour 219

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

week; indeed, as Foster points out, ‘no other place in Britain witnessed industrial action of anything like the general strike proportion seen in the west of Scotland in January 1919’.133 Moreover, the movement was led by shop stewards in the CWC and had the sup-

port of key elements of the Scottish labour movement, including the STUC, GTC and the Glasgow District Committee of the AEU.134 However, in spite of evidence of greater industrial militancy, and violent clashes with the authorities, Foster’s attempt to paint Clydeside revolutionary red is a little misleading and, at times, exaggerated. Firstly, the moderate ILP played a more important role in the strike than any of the other parties on the left. ILPer Patrick Dollan was

responsible for the publication of the strike news sheet — Strike Bulletin —which was circulated among workers at meetings and street corners.135 Among those labour leaders charged with incitement to riot after the clashes in George Square were David Kirkwood,

later found not guilty, and Emmanuel Shinwell of the ILP, sentenced to five months imprisonment, and William Gallacher of the CWC and the BSP, sentenced to three months. Secondly, the much vaunted solidarity of the Forty Hours struggle was only paper thin. Hugh Lyon, leader of the carters’ union and chairman of the STUC, played an opportunist role throughout the strike. As spokesperson of the STUC at a meeting with the CWC on 18 January 1919 Lyon argued for the forty hour week but opposed strike action. When the decision

to strike went against him, he contradicted his former position and joined the strike committee, becoming responsible for drawing up the strike manifesto. Yet on 27 January, three days after the strike had began, Lyon led the carters back to work, having made separate and secret negotiations with the transport employers for a forty-eight hour week.136 Finally, the strike was confined to the west of Scotland and there is little evidence to suggest that it was respon—

sible for engendering more widespread discontents and solidarities among workers in the rest of Britain. In the end the failure of the 1919 Forty Hours strike marginalised the shop stewards’ movement and brought to a close the phase of unofficial representation of

workers’ interests. However, in the engineering industry the wartime struggles confirmed the shop steward as an integral part of the bargaining process and this was recognised by the employers and unions alike.137

The re—establishment of control over their members by the official trade union leadership saw a new phase of worker organisation open up. The war and its aftermath witnessed a tremendous increase in the 220

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Trade Unionism in a Cold Climate

number of union members in Scotland. An STUC survey of 1924

showed that around a third, or 536 432 Scots out of a total population of 1 655 656 over the age of twelve, were members of a trade union, of which 14.6 per cent were female. Corrected estimates, which use

the number of insured workers rather than age as the basis of calculation, however, place the figure somewhat higher at 41.1 per cent.138

Even accepting the corrected estimates union density in Scotland remained below the UK figure, with eleven trade unionists in Scotland for every 100 in the population compared to 12.6 for the UK.139 Moreover, in major cities such as Aberdeen union density at only 27 per cent was well below the Scottish national average.140 These trade unionists were organised in 227 unions which would appear at first sight to suggest that the average Scottish union was small, but this is misleading as the thirty—six largest unions accounted for four—fifths of total membership.141 The rise in union membership in Scotland was accompanied, however, by a decline in the number of exclusively Scottish unions. By 1924, 60 per cent of organised workers in Scotland were members of British trade unions, and but for the fact that the autonomous

county mining unions were included in the figures for independent Scottish organisations, the proportion organised in British unions would have been overwhelming.142 Iron moulders in Scotland joined the National Union of Foundry Workers after the war; the Scottish tailors joined the National Union of Tailor and Garment Workers in 1919; the Scottish Amalgamated Society of Steel and Iron Workers joined the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation in 1921; the Scottish plumbers and cabinetmakers amalgamated with English unions in 1919 and 1920 respectively; the Scottish dockers merged with the TGWU in 1923 — only to secede, however, in 1931; and the gasworkers, municipal employees and National Union of Women Workers joined the General and Municipal Workers Union (GMWU) formed in 1924. By 1938 trade unionists organised in exclusive Scottish unions were to be found mainly in textiles, some building trades, such as painting and slating, printing, dockwork and baking, although the bakers’ union was affiliated to the TUC.143

The growing nationalisation of the labour movement inevitably drew Scottish workers into national disputes. The industrial battles

surrounding the mining industry, the engineering lock-out, and other large-scale industrial conflicts which characterised the period 1921—26 all involved Scottish trade unionists and promoted a greater sense of class consciousness. The anti-English sentiments exhibited by Scottish 221

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

unions before the First World War, and which were articulated as late

as 1919 in the forty hours strike against ‘the dictatorship of the London juntas’,144 broke down as worker supported worker in Britain in these epic struggles between labour and capital and the state. The outcome, however, was generally unfavourable to labour. The engineering lock out of 1922 over the vexed question of man-

agerial functions led to the near collapse of the AEU. The union’s financial reserves fell from £3.25m in 1920 to just over £35 000 and it was forced to suspend all its benefits with the exception of sickness and superannuation.” By 1923 over a quarter of the AEU’s member-

ship in 1920 had been lost. In Scotland the loss was even greater as numbers fell from 52 151 in 1920 to 25 030 in 1923, or by 52 per cent, reaching an all time post-war low of 15 126 in 1933.146 The

abolition of the district rate and the introduction of PBR systems undermined solidarity among engineers after the lock out and

increased the trend towards the ‘individualisation of shopfloor bargaining’.147 Workshop organisation broke down as employers sacked activists and the AEU executive dismantled lock out committees to prevent them becoming a focus for rank-and-file discontent. From between thirty to forty shop stewards under a full-time convener operating in Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge in ‘normal times’, the number dropped to zero in 1923. The same was true of John Brown’s on Clydebank.148 Such was the level of demoralisation within the engineering workshops that the executive of the union complained in 1932 that for the last ten years the ‘organisation had not functioned as a Trade Union’.149 However, the victory of the employers forced the AEU to make the transition from craft to industrial union. In October 1922 skilled trades such as sheet metal working, pipe fitting, and pipe bending were incorporated within the membership of the AEU. Four years

later the union opened its doors to all ranks of male, but not female, engineering workers irrespective of skill. Indeed, the new industrial unionism in engineering was organised around preventing the exten— sion of female labour. As Kibblewhite has noted, in the 19303, and in

spite of ‘lethargy in the face of continuing dilution, as soon as the threat was posed by women entering the trade, the workers on the shop floor swung into action with remarkable speed’. Not surpris— ingly on the eve of the Second World War, engineering unions were

still refusing to admit females into membership, which left the field open to the TGWU and the National Union of General and Municipal Workers to organise the bulk of the women.”0

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Similarly in the mining industry, the record of industrial success was, on the whole, disappointing, in spite of the fact that Scotland along with South Wales was the most strike-prone region in Britain, being ten times more strike-prone than Lancashire and twenty times more strike-prone than the Midlands.”1 There had been a radicalising

period during and immediately after the First World War while the mines were under state ownership. Younger miners, and those with Marxist sympathies were dissatisfied with the accommodationism of the Lib/Lab old guard of miners’ leaders such as William Adamson, Labour MP and leader of the Fife county union;152 they set up Reform Committees, mainly in the large mechanised pits around Blantyre in the west of Scotland, and Bowhill in Fife. Indeed, one-fifth of the Lanarkshire union’s branches became affiliated to the Committee and campaigned against conscription and (successfully) for the removal of the pro-war secretary of the county union.”3 The return of miners from war in 1918 only intensified the general discontent with the existing leadership and a protracted campaign led by left—wingers such as David Proudfoot and Philip Hodge, for a more militant policy and greater democracy within the mining unions was initiated. This development effectively split the Fife miners and two rival unions

represented the men until reunification in 1927. In spite of this Fife miners participated in the major disputes in the industry in 1921 and 1924. Defeat in the vicious 1921 lock—out, which saw running battles between miners and police, many acts of industrial sabotage and vandalism, such as burning haystacks intended as feed for pit ponies, led to demoralisation and redundancies; membership of the Lanarkshire county union fell from 50 000 to only 15 000.”4 Although within three years the losses had been made good and the miners’ unions,

boosted by the success in 1924 of ‘Red Friday’ saw a revival of militancy, which culminated in the 1926 General Strike, this does not disguise the fact that even before the crucial conflict in 1926 the miners were deeply divided. During the General Strike there ‘were even rival soup kitchens’, and in spite of the fact that between 1921 and 1926 successive miners’ conferences passed resolutions favouring a national union, the county unions, particularly Ayrshire and the Lothians, refused to give up their autonomy.155 After the failure of the 1926 dispute the NUSMW faced almost total collapse. Between July 1925 and July 1929 only £40 140 had been received in dues, levies and affiliation fees from the districts to the General Fund, and membership nose-dived from 50000 in 1926 to 25 000 one year later. The NUSWM only survived by severely pruning back its 223

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administration, running up arrears with the MFGB and ceasing to affiliate to the STUC.”6 Moreover, younger militant miners were ‘weeded out’ and the age profile of the mining industry in Scotland underwent a profound transformation. By the early 19305 one in five

miners was over fifty, whereas in 1921 a third were under twentyfive and 60 per cent were under thirty-five. The changing age profile of the labour force only increased the trend towards conciliation with employers.”7 However, it would be wrong to see the period running up to the General Strike of 1926 simply as one of industrial conflict and militancy. There were other forces at work designed to extend corporatist structures aimed at emasculating trade union militancy throughout Britain. By 1920 most manual workers were covered by national agreements regarding such matters as pay, hours of work and over— time!“ As well as the establishment of national agreements, joint

councils were set up with employers, of which there were seventythree in 1921. There were also thirty—three trade boards established in the years 1919—20 covering around 3 000 000 employees, mostly female, in industries where wages were unregulated.”9 This move in the direction of corporatism was intensified after the defeat of the unions in the General Strike. The events surrounding this moment of class struggle are too well-documented to need further articulation, but the consequences for the state of industrial relations in Scotland, and in Britain as a whole, are of vital importance. The General Strike of May 1926 collapsed within nine days amid cries of sell-out from the left and the rank-and-file. The idea of betrayal is, however, somewhat misplaced. The union leadership believed in the parliamentary road to social betterment and had no time for syndicalist strategies for capturing state power. Thus, once the state had declared the strike as unconstitutional, and faced with the prospect of class war or an honourable settlement, the General Council of the TUC eagerly accepted the terms laid out in the Samuel Memorandum. Thus, their actions came as no surprise, although the climbdown by the TUC was interpreted as a humiliating defeat. The miners deserted by the labour movement were left to shoulder the burden of conflict

on their own, which they did for eight months until starvation forced them back to work on the employers’ terms. In other industries employers weeded out militants and effectively quietened resistance in the workplace. The state taking revenge on the unions passed the

Trades Disputes Act of 1927, which forced civil servants into isolation from the rest of the labour movement and forbade public authorities

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from demanding union membership of employees. It also stipulated criminal liabilities for strikers involved in attempts to ‘coerce’ the government, restricted the right to picket and made union members ‘contract in’ to support the Labour Party. As late as 1939 more than half the workers in unions affiliated to the STUC were outside the Labour Party, having failed to ‘contract in’.160 Notwithstanding these measures, the state tended to adopt a non-

interventionist policy towards industrial relations. As H. B. Betterton, of the Ministry of Labour, put it to a delegation from the National Union of Manufacturers on 12 October 1926 advocating reform of labour laws, ‘the one thing that is desirable is not to do anything which would tend to bring in the State automatically into every trade dispute’.161 But it could be argued that the State had no need to inter— vene as the unions and the employers reacted to the collapse of the General Strike by adopting a more conciliatory attitude towards each other. The new mood was symbolised in the Mond/Turner talks of 1927/28 between the employers and the TUC. The idea of roundtable talks was initiated in 1927 in a letter of invitation from Lord Melchett (Mond) of ICI to the chairman of the TUC, Ben Turner. The talks proposed to discuss the whole issue of industrial organisation and industrial relations, focusing specifically on such matters as the management of industry, new developments in technology, and

the setting up of a National Industrial Council and conciliatory machinery for settling disputes, as well as programmes of industrial rationalisation. The first meeting took place on 12 January 1928 and a further twelve followed. The recommendations of the talks were endorsed overwhelmingly by the TUC at its 60th Congress.162 However, the initial response of the STUC was one of opposition. A Woodworkers’ resolution at the 1927 Congress condemned the ‘propaganda of industrial peace con— ducted by leading officials, Whether individually or in cooperation

with leading employers’ and called instead for the ‘elimination of capitalism’. It was carried with only one dissenting voice, although the general secretary, William Elger, decided not to raise the question of opposition at the British TUC later that year.163 The employers themselves adopted a more sanguine attitude and failed to commit themselves to the proposals emanating from the talks. As unemployment grew to alarmingly high levels following the Wall Street crash in 1929, the movement towards a tripartite consensus between labour, capital and the state became more irresistible.

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Although Ernest Bevin of the TGWU had stated as late as 1928 at the TUC that he ‘would rather discuss unemployment with capitalists than with government’ the existence of millions out of work changed the minds of even the most entrenched union leaders in a short space of time.164 By 1930 the STUC was calling on the state to introduce permanent schemes of arbitration and conciliation, arguing that ‘the time was now past when the state should merely keep the ring and allow powers to fight out their quarrels because industry was now organised in such a fashion that the State was involved willy-nilly in every large dispute’.165 As the depression reached a climax in 1932 the problem of making, rather than controlling work became the

primary focus of trade union deliberations, and the demands on the state increased. The STUC acknowledged the need for greater intervention by the state and centralised planning of the economy to regenerate Scottish industry. A list of demands was drawn up which included: the relocation of industry to depressed areas; public works; and the nationalisation of basic industries. But state ownership did not mean workers’ control of industry; nor did the STUC envisage the unions having an input into economic policy-making. Speaking as a member of the General Council,

C. N. Gallie made clear at the Scottish Labour Party’s annual conference in 1933 that the labour movement was opposed to attempts to ‘conscript wealth’, and that they were not ‘prepared to saddle workers with responsibility’. He further asked: ‘What side would they take in a dispute? Who would they be accountable to? . . . If they went on to argue for workers’ control they would cease to be socialists and would become syndicalists’.166 Nationalisation, therefore, was not the pathway to the socialist commonwealth but a mechanism for improving the efficiency of industry in the interest of

the nation and making it more socially accountable. Moreover, further nationalisation beyond the basic industries was only to be undertaken if enterprises failed to meet the criteria of a ‘well-distributed and properly planned industry’; only then, as William Elger put it, would

the ‘industry. . . be reorganised on Socialist lines’.167 A minimalist role was also envisaged in the area of economic planning and research, with the STUC calling on the Secretary of State for Scotland, Walter Elliot, to set up a body for this purpose ‘equipped by an expert staff’ and ‘financed directly by Government’.168 Such moderation made it possible for Scottish labour to come to an understanding with business leaders in the 19305 over issues of mutual concern. Scottish businessmen were equally concerned at the 226

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depressed condition of industry, and some of the more prominent established quasi-official bodies aimed at creating a broad consensus

on the needs of the economy. The first of these initiatives was the Scottish Development Council set up in 1931 under the chairmanship of shipbuilder Sir James Lithgow. But, as Michael Fry notes, while Lithgow wished for voluntary state intervention in regenerat—

ing the Scottish economy, younger industrialists ‘raised in decades of stronger state apparatuses’ pushed for the provision of state finance and close ‘involvement of the state in industry’.169 By 1936 both sides of industry had come to see planning as a ‘bipartisan ideal’.”0 This view was endorsed in the founding of the Scottish Economic Committee (SEC) in that year, which had strong representation from the STUC and the Co—operative movement, as well as local government. In its evidence to the Barlow Commission on the industrial location of the population, the SEC showed itself to be ‘a strong advocate of economic planning under an autonomous Scottish

body’.171 These developments in many ways presaged the construction of political consensus in Britain in the decades after the Second World War, but they also forced the leadership of the trade unions in Scotland to redefine its relationship with the rest of Britain and its own rank-and-file. The STUC and some individual unions had tra-

ditionally favoured the idea of Home Rule for Scotland. Indeed, it was the STUC, because of its conscious separate identity from the British TUC, which was the standard bearer of nationalist aspirations within the Scottish labour movement. In 1919 it passed a resolution calling for separate Scottish representation at the Paris Peace talks.172 However, the organisational amalgamations of the 19208 and the

increase in unemployment saw the STUC cool its stand on Home Rule. When the question of ‘the principle of Dominion Self-Government for Scotland’ was discussed at Congress in 1931 delegates affirmed that they had no wish to ‘cut the Scottish people off from England or to erect a barrier between them’.173 The solution to Scotland’s economic problems was to be achieved by the state in partnership with labour and capital operating in a UK-wide context committed to economic growth and physical planning of the economy.

The move towards adopting corporatist solutions to the economic problems of Scotland also led to an ever widening space developing between labour leaders and the left, particularly the Communists. As early as 1924 the STUC at its Ayr Congress refused to read a letter from the Communist front organisation, the National Unemployed

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Workers’ Movement (NUWM), regarding affiliation. By 1925 ‘there was positive hostility to the NUWM in some quarters’, and affiliation

was rejected by 116 votes to 36. Attempts to allow NUWM committees to affiliate to local trades councils were also defeated.174 All through the secretaryship of William Elger, the STUC remained implacably ‘opposed [to] working with the NUWM’ even to the point that in 1936 following the mass hunger march it rejected a proposal to initiate a joint campaign with the latter.175 One dissatisfied delegate to the 1936 Congress attacked the attitude of Elger and the General Council, claiming they were ‘apparently prepared to recognise Sir James Lithgow and Lord Elgin and go knocking at their doors while refusing to associate with a genuine working class body, even to the extent of receiving a delegation’.176 But this kind of impassioned class rhetoric went unheeded within the leadership and instead of co-operating with the NUWM, the STUC established Unemployed Associations (UAs) at the Hawick Congress in 1932 under the auspices of the trades councils. The UAs were intended to campaign for jobs

and improved scales of relief, as well as to prevent blacklegging disputes. However, by 1934 only four had been established, a further nine councils had reported that they had been unsuccessful in their attempts to form unemployed sections, and another twenty-three, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paisley and Dundee, had ignored the STUC instruction.177 Another initiative to stimulate employment was overtime bans and

campaigns for shorter hours, and while they were successful in the jute industry in Dundee in 1933, and also in the engineering trades in Aberdeen, as Kibblewhite points out, ‘in conditions of mass unemployment in the 19305 overtime bans were unrealistic’.178 Similarly, the campaign conducted by the metal unions for shorter hours in the early 19305 was a flop. A meeting held in Edinburgh in 1933 on this issue only attracted sixty people.179 The recognition by the rankand-file that a shorter working week could only be successful if there was an increase in the hourly rate, something which the employers would not accede to, acted to kill the campaign before it got started. In opposing the NUWM, the STUC and individual unions could not come up with anything appealing to the unemployed or anything

challenging to the orthodox line on unemployment. Indeed, given the half-heartedness of the support of the unions for the unemployed, one cannot but conclude that the employment initiatives emanating from the STUC were more concerned with protecting the living standards and the working conditions of those in work from competition from those on dole.

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Hostility was also expressed towards the parent of the NUWM, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Shortly after the TUC ruled in 1928 that no person associated with the Communist front organisation, the Minority Movement, would be eligible to attend the annual conferences of trades councils, James Doonan, of the executive of the National Union of Scottish Mine Workers (NUSMW), said of the CPGB that ‘Their policies and methods were alien to the traditions and desires of the British workers’.180 This was the signal to begin removing Communists from official positions within individual unions. The Scottish Carters, the Jute and Flax Workers, the Boilermakers, the Engineers and the GTC, which had

been an affiliated organisation in 1925, all initiated procedures to exclude from office members of the Communist Party and its affiliated organisations.181 The resolution of the Carters stating that ‘no communists or members of the Minority Movement can be eligible to hold any official position in, or be part of any delegation acting for

the SHMA’, was typical of those unions prescribing Communists.182 In response, the Communist Party set up rival unions, but the only one to enjoy a measure of success was the United Mineworkers of Scotland (UMS). With the support of the large, highly mechanised pits in Fife and Lanarkshire, the UMS exploited the mineworkers’ dissatisfaction

with the reformist leaders of the county unions and the deteriorating working conditions. A number of the leading members, like first president William Allan, had been active in the earlier Reform Committees and as such from its launch in 1929 the UMS had some credibility with the miners. None the less the UMS never recruited more than 4000 members and by 1932 this had fallen to 2000, 65 per cent of which were located in Fife. The organisation eventually disbanded in 1935 when its existence became an embarrassment to a party trying to build a united front with other labour organisations against fascism and unemployment. Success was in any case always problematical, not simply because of the geographical marginalisation the UMS, but also, as Alan Campbell points out, the UMS support was based on pits with a history of militancy and a high level of Catholic Irish workers. Protestant Larkhall was a weak area of communist support, whereas Catholic Blantyre and Craigneuk remained districts where support ran high for the CPGB.183 Unemployment and defeat in 1926 saw strike levels fall and Catholic miners were always wary

of offending the local parish priest. Abe Moffat recalled that during a strike in the Shotts coalfield in 1930 a decision to hold a demon— stration against the fact that the miners were receiving no relief from

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public authorities was thought impossible as it would pass the priest’s house and ‘if he happened to be in the garden, the Catholics would fall out from the demonstration’.184 However, in spite of these

handicaps to growth, reunification in 1935 did little to improve the relations between the miners’ leaders and the CPGB and they continued to be bitter. A resolution in July 1938 proposing to send a Scottish miners’ delegation to the USSR for the occasion of the lt anniversary of the Republic was defeated 4—11.‘85 The winding up of the UMS once more reunited the mining unions in Scotland and they, like unions in other industries, began to experience growth as the rearmament drive of the late 19308 began to put

Scots back to work. The AEU saw membership in Scotland grow from 15 126 in 1933 to 34 476 and rising in 1938, and this was reflected in the increase in the number of engineering shop stewards.

During 1937, the Glasgow division of the AEU alone gained nearly 150 shop stewards, and by June 1938 it was estimated that more than this number were attending stewards’ quarterly meetings.186 The NUSMW also recovered some ground and affiliated membership stood at 30 000 in 1935, although the largest increases were experienced in the general industrial unions of the unskilled, such as the GMWU and the TGWU which saw membership grow in large part through amalgamations from 16 830 in 1932 to 42 806 in 1939 and from 26 000 to 56 983 respectively in the same period.187 The state, perhaps mirroring the growth of corporatist sentiments, was also responsible for the increase in union membership. The Road Haulage Act of 1938 forced union recognition on employers and obliged them to accept collective bargaining and agreements, which saw membership of the SHMA increase from 7596 in 1932 to 10 500 in 1939.188 The Agricultural Wages (Regulations) Scotland Act of 1937

did much the same in the previously disorganised agricultural industry.189 By the outbreak of war in September 1939, the labour movement in Scotland had recaptured much of the ground ceded to employers

during the inter-war depression. However, the depression years had witnessed a sea change in the outlook of the unions towards important issues such as Home Rule, industrial relations and the economy. The defeat of the General Strike in 1926 had proved crucial as syndicalism became a dead letter and a new spirit of conciliation with capital began to emerge and deepen as the economic situation worsened. The acceptance of an all-British solution to mass unemployment saw

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Home Rule become the politics of the ‘parish pump’ as far as Scottish trade unionists were concerned.190 The move towards a nascent form of corporatism was irreversible and this involved detaching the extreme left from positions of power within the labour movement. The final coup de grace came in 1939 in the ‘Memorandum on the Role of Trades Councils’ which in combating the influence of the CPGB and promoting greater centralisation destroyed the old Trades and Labour Councils and divorced the industrial and political wings of the labour movement. In spite of these changes the Scottish labour movement remained deeply patriarchal. Although female trade union membership had grown during the inter—war years, craft unions still refused entry to women. Moreover, the workplace concerns of women workers remained marginalised within the labour movement despite the fact that the STUC set up a Womens’ Advisory Committee in 1927. Thus, while the momentous changes occurring in the industrial wing of the labour movement would have important knock—on effects for labour politics in this period, amounting to a Virtual remaking of the Labour Party in Scotland, the peripheralisation of women in the trade unions also ensured that their concerns remained neglected in the political struggles of the 19205 and 19305.

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Chapter 24

THE REMAKING OF THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE SCOTTISH WORKING CLASS, 1914—1945

Almost reproducing the experience of the industrial wing of the

labour movement, Labour in inter—war Scotland underwent signifi— cant changes in ethos and ideology which resulted in the destruction of its links with popular Liberalism and the evangelical socialism from which the party had evolved. Keir Hardie had defined socialism as ‘a People’s cause’ and ‘when it is won it will be their fight which has won it’.191 The role of Labour in this cause was principally, in the words of Willie Stewart, Hardie’s biographer, ‘To inspire the people with . . . faith ... in themselves’.192 However, after 1918 Labour moved in a relatively short period of time from being a party which strongly identified with Hardie’s unshakeable belief in the ability of the people to act as the agent of social and economic transformation, to one which relied on the bureaucrat and the planner to change society through the construction of a strong technocratic British state. The key turning point in this process was the departure of the ILP in 1932, but there had already been signs prior to this that the political traditions of the early Labour Party were failing to resonate with the concerns of workers faced with continuing levels of high

unemployment after 1920 and newer generations of Labour activists, radicalised in the turbulent years of the First World War. Indeed, the war years proved to be a watershed for the political fortunes of Labour in Scotland as not only did they sow the seeds of Liberal decline, but they also forced the party in opposition to far left organisations to define its political position on important ideological issues such as gradualism versus revolution, direct action versus the parliamentary road to socialism, and so on. These doctrinal questions 232

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class were never resolved at an intellectual level, as few on the Scottish left, outside of John Maclean, were given to political theorising;

instead they owed their resolution to lessons learned in day-to-day struggles over socio-economic issues, in conflict with the state, and in debates with political opponents. All these issues were pushed to the forefront of Scottish politics during the First World War and its immediate aftermath. As we have seen the west of Scotland became the focus of industrial conflict; however, it was also the scene of anti—war protest and rent strikes. Much has been written about this dimension of ‘Red Clydeside’ and to reconstruct the political narrative of this phenomenon, or to engage in the various acrimonious historical debates over whether these

years represented a missed revolutionary opportunity, would serve little useful purpose. What is important to the analysis offered in this chapter is not the chronicalling of the events which constitute ‘Red Clydeside’, but interpreting their outcomes for the development of Labour in Scotland, particularly as they affected the party in the 19203, from where the political narrative begins. The industrial struggles on Clydeside led engineering and shipbuilding workers to appreciate the ambiguities of their relationship with the capitalist state; similarly the rent strikes in Glasgow which led to the passing of the Rent Restrictions Act of 1915 also showed working-class women the possibilities within a democratised state for social reform. As R. J. Morris points out, in his article on ‘Red

Clydeside’, the passing of the 1915 Act and the subsequent housing legislation which followed the end of the war smashed the free market in urban housing rents.193 Those activists opposing the war, although a small minority even within the labour movement in Scotland in the initial phase of hostilities, not only experienced the oppressive side of the state through incarceration in His Majesty’s prisons on charges of sedition, but also developed a critique of the role of the state in running the war effort on the home front. Few were instinctive pacifists like Keir Hardie; what motivated their opposition to the war was the inequality of sacrifice demanded of the working class. Socialists argued that the war was being used as an occasion for arms manufacturers to make obscene profits, while at the same time the state allowed employers to press down on workers’ wages,

housing factors to evict war widows from their homes, and in its own right introduce a socially unfair system of military conscription. Tom Johnston, editor of Forward, caught the essence of socialist protest in his pamphlet — The Hans during Three Years of the Great War 233

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(1918) — in which the ‘Huns’ were war profiteers. The demand of the anti-war movement, therefore, was not the unilateral declaration of peace by Britain, but the conscription of all social groups and

resources: a socialised war effort underpinned by a socialised economy. As working-class casualties mounted the left opposition began to receive widespread popular support. By 1917 it was claimed that: ‘The strength of hostility to militarism in Scotland may be gathered from the fact that the War Party is a discredited minority in nearly all the Trades and Labour Councils north of the Tweed’.194 Even the moderate Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society gave support

to Patrick Dollan and Emanuel Shinwell in their refusal to do military service and generally opposed conscription.“ However, in spite of

growing opposition to the war and the success of the February Revolution in Russia, few members of the anti-war movement articulated a strategy aimed at politicising the war in the direction of overturning

the existing social order. Only John Maclean of the ESP and those grouped around him saw the war in this light, but crucially, although popular with the Glasgow working class, Maclean failed to create a mass movement.196 While there was talk of establishing soviets to

the extent that even moderate ILPers, such as Ramsay MacDonald, spoke in favour of the idea at the Leeds Convention in June 1917,

few on the British left understood the significance of the role soviets played in Russian politics and fewer still had any idea how to link them with existing working-class organisations. As John Wheatley perceptively remarked, ‘Everyone pointed to the Russian road, but none was ready to lead the way’.”7 The ILP’s brief flirtation with Bolshevism was finally ended in 1921 when the Scottish ILP conference voted by 93 votes to 57 to reverse support for the Third International. Motions favouring ‘Soviet’ style workers’ control and direct action, moreover, received only a handful of votes.198 The war years confirmed the ILP as the genuine expression of working-class political aspirations; an achievement which was the result of the party understanding more clearly than any of its left-wing

rivals the possibilities and limitations of working-class political mobilisation at this time. It was thus able to translate these insights into policies which accurately reflected the alternative political economy of the workers on Clydeside and elsewhere in Scotland. They were summed up in the party’s May Day Manifesto of 1918 which called for a ‘living wage for all’, the abolition of the food profiteer and

‘justice for our soldiers and their dependants’.199 Political insight led to gains in membership and support which saw the ILP increase its

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membership during the war years by 300 per cent and the number of branches by 50 per cent. By September 1918 Scotland was the largest

ILP region with nearly 9000 members.200 After the disappointment of the 1918 general election, which was fought out on a restricted franchise in extremely jingoistic circumstances, the ILP also enjoyed spectacular electoral success in 1920 when it won 45 seats on the Glasgow Town Council and two years later when it sensationally won ten out of city’s fifteen parliamentary divisions.

The electoral breakthrough in 1922 emphasised the shift to the left which had taken place within the Scottish working class. The formerly divisive issues of gender, ethnicity and religion were laid aside as both Catholics and Protestants, men and women, voted

overwhelmingly for Labour. Women were especially inclined to vote Labour and Forward noted that ‘women’s meetings were marked by a religious fervour for social reform and justice’.201 The women had put down the Rent Restrictions Act of 1915 to Labour’s efforts and had rewarded the party, particularly so when a judgement of the House of Lords in a test case sponsored by Labour forced landlords to reimburse tenants for past paid rent. Labour activists in Aberdeen in the 1922 general election shouted at workers entering polling stations to ‘Vote for [Frank] Rose [Labour] and you’ll get your rent money back’.202 Similarly, the Catholic Observer advised its readers to vote Labour as it had proved most sympathetic of all the political parties to providing resources out of local taxation for separate Catholic schooling within the state system. The Catholic press, however, had little choice but to urge its readers to opt for Labour as the partitioning of Ireland in 1921 removed the question of Home Rule from the political agenda until the 19603. After 1921 the Liberals had little to offer the Irish Catholics, and, rather than see them move in the direction of the atheistic CPGB, the Catholic hierarchy advised its flock to vote Labour as the lesser of the two evils. Tensions did emerge between the Catholic Church and Labour, particularly over the Spanish Civil War, but on the whole, the Catholic community proved loyal and

enthusiastic supporters of the party.203 From 1922 Labour became the main political party in Scotland, peaking in 1929 with 43.5 per cent of the total votes cast in the general election. However, if looked at from the perspective of urban Scotland, Labour’s dominance was all the more pronounced. From the 1918 general election in which Labour polled 34.9 per cent of the votes cast in the three largest industrial cities — that is, Aberdeen, 235

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Dundee and Glasgow — the party commanded a majority of votes in 1929 with 53.8 per cent of the poll. The position of Labour in the burghs of east and west Scotland, which included Edinburgh and Leith, Kirkaldy, Paisley and Hamilton, was equally dominant, rising from 26.7 per cent in 1918 to 48.7 per cent in 1929.204 Class identity, as witnessed in the rising support for Labour in the 19205, had it seemed become more important and manifest in voting choices than identities grouped around allegiances and feelings associated with ethnicity and religion. This was, in large part, the result of the wider,

homogenising social and economic forces mentioned above, but it was also due to the improvements in Labour’s electoral organisation. However, Labour’s electoral popularity masked growing discord within over the role of the leadership and the political direction of the party, particularly when in government. The ‘Red Clydesiders’ from their arrival at Westminster in 1922 showed themselves to be impatient with the slow pace of parliamentary reform and the need to rely on other parties to push legislation through the Commons. They were men in a hurry; the poverty of their constituents meant that they could not be anything else. Political impatience with established institutions gave the Clydesiders the image of being wild men; however, the evidence points to another interpretation, one which emphasises the conventionality and social conservatism of their world View. It would also point to their remoteness from the Scottish working class. Indeed, the class alliances that made up the Scottish ILP operated around traditional values of the radical political tradition: teetotalism, pacifism, Home Rule and a Christian socialist morality. They were the twentieth century’s embodiment of the spirit of the Covenanters, and often referred to themselves as such. As John Paton put it: ‘All of them could and did claim to be “rebels” against evil social conditions and the inequalities and injustices of

Capitalism, but of not one of them could it be said in any literal sense that he was a “revolutionary’”. Indeed, socialism was to most ‘a remote ideal of little practical importance’; what really mattered were

policies to ameliorate poverty such as ‘an increase in old age pensions and other small-change proposals’. As one commentator put it: ‘These Glasgow men have put at the base of their hard practical minds the two dogmas: “Everyone must work”, “A sufficiency for every worker”’.205 Few, if any, of the Clydesiders accepted Marx’s materialist conception of history, even those like Neil Maclean, William Leonard and James Maxton, who had acted as tutors in John Maclean’s Marxist economics classes. People were more spirit to them than the product of changing material circumstances. Most 236

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class of the Clydesiders ‘studied the works of Robert Burns, and not a

few. . . found their inspiration in the Bible’; a view supported by Patrick Dollan, who claimed that John Wheatley used to coach young agitators in his home ‘in collectivist policy and propaganda always based on the teaching of the early Christian fathers’.206 There was little, then, in the ideological baggage or educational background of the Clydesiders that set them apart from other members of the Labour Party; indeed, as said above, in many ways they could be described as socially conservative. What distanced them from the MacDonald was their determination to resolve the issue of mass poverty. However, the MacDonald leadership placed a greater prior—

ity on making Labour part of the mainstream of the British political system than resolving the problem of poverty. In practice this meant conciliating the middle classes and pursuing a moderate programme of social reform. T o the Clydesiders this policy was incomprehensible as they tended to view parliament as ‘territory occupied by the class enemy’.207 MacDonald’s stress on the primacy of representational politics over other forms of political or industrial protest also alien— ated the left-wing MPs and the rank—and-file in the Scottish ILP. T o the Clydesiders the war on behalf of the poor was to be fought on

all fronts and include all sections of the labour movement, including communists. James Maxton, MP for Bridgeton, Glasgow, was convinced that ‘capitalism could be brought to its knees by a wellorganised standstill . . . in a few weeks’.208

Not all in the ILP shared Maxton’s views. A powerful group within the party which included Emmanuel Shinwell, Tom Johnston and Patrick Dollan emerged emotionally and politically attached to MacDonald and his political practice and ideology. This axis showed its colours during the short-lived Labour government of 1923—24, which had increasingly drawn criticism from even warm supporters. Dollan defended MacDonald from his critics in the pages of Forward, claiming that ‘ N o man has worked harder for any cause than MacDonald has worked for the Socialism of the ILP’.209 Dollan, underlining the primacy of politics, also attacked the idea of using extra—parliamentary forms of protest as vehicles for social change, arguing that the ‘walls of Capitalism are more likely to collapse as a

result of the patient sapping and organised efforts of the ILP’.210 As the CPGB, since its formation in 1920, was the foremost proponent of direct action Dollan opposed its affiliation to the Labour Party

and was instrumental in pulling the Scottish ILP and the GTC round to this view.211 The growing chasm between these political tendencies widened 237

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even more in the aftermath of the General Strike of 1926. As far as MacDonald and his supporters in the Labour Party were concerned the failure of the Strike marked the triumph of parliamentarianism

over direct action. From then on it was to be parliament, and not the industrial struggle or street protest, which was to be the motive force

in bringing about economic and social justice. Ramsay MacDonald summed up the new political direction of Labour when he declared that ‘the weapon of the General Strike is no good — even less now than ever’.212 However, the triumphalism of MacDonald’s declaration was in stark contrast to the interpretation of the left, who saw the

defeat as marking not the end of mass working-class action, but rather its beginning. Maxton, for example, saw defeat and the series of repressive state actions which followed it, including the Trades

Disputes Act of 1927, as creating conditions which ‘made revolution inevitable’.213 While trade union leaders launched the Mond/Turner talks, the left in the Scottish ILP along with miners’ leader A. J. Cook

responded by issuing the Cook/Maxton Manifesto of 1928, calling for the working-class to engage in an unceasing war against capitalism and collaboration. The publication of the Manifesto ended any pretence of unity within the ILP in Scotland and the rest of the country. The experience of the Labour government of 1929—31 put the seal upon it. As far as Maxton and his supporters within the ILP were concerned, staying in the Labour Party meant ‘creating in the public mind the idea that the capitalist system in all its essentials must be preserved at all costs’.214 This View was endorsed at the local level. The annual meeting of the Glasgow ILP Federation in April 1932 expressed dissatisfaction at the ‘slow progress being made to achieve “municipal socialism’” and accused Labour conveners of council committees of becoming ‘so much engrossed with the technicalities and businessside of committees that they had forgotten their main objective on the Town Council, which was, Socialism?” The only option was disaffiliation. After several heated internal debates in 1932 the ILP by a clear majority opted for a clean break from the Labour Party. This led to political suicide for the ILP as its membership and influ— ence dwindled in the 19308. However, its departure was felt in other ways within the labour movement; indeed, it could be argued that until very recently disaffiliation was the singular most important event in the history of Labour, particularly so in the case of Scotland. Disaffiliation did not simply mean a loss of members and the establishment of a rival political organisation; it also involved the 238

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class virtual remaking of the Labour Party in Scotland in terms of its organisation, ethos and ideology. For until that historic event the ILP was in many ways the Labour Party in Scotland. In the 1929 general election, out of 68 Labour Party candidates all but one were members of the ILP, thirty of them directly sponsored. According to the 1928 Labour Party conference, three-quarters of party speakers were ILP activists.216 The ILP was also responsible for propaganda, which if

the Times report of 1922 is anything to go by was prodigious, with ‘152 meetings held in Glasgow’ alone in one week in August.217 The reporter was also ‘struck’ by the sheer volume of cultural activity underpinning the more overt political work of the ILP. There were:

Socialist study circles, Socialist economic classes, Socialist musical festivals, Socialist athletic competitions, Socialist choirs, Socialist dramatic societies, Socialist plays . . . Socialist Sunday schools . . . [and] Socialist newspapers.218 The list was by no means exhausted as there existed a great many more cultural and social associations and organisations connected

with the labour movement in some way or another.219 The influence of the ILP was also enhanced by the lack of interest shown by trade unions in the Labour Party in Scotland in the 1920s. Few unions paid more than a nominal affiliation fee to the Scottish

party; indeed, only the TGWU, the miners, the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers, and the railwaymen and railway

clerks paid more than one pound in affiliation fees. Many trade union branches failed to affiliate to the local constituency parties. The mining unions were the most active of industrial organisations

in the Scottish Labour Party, and in some ways constituted a ‘party within a party’, employing five full-time political agents in 1921. In places where there were no party branches, but where there was a union branch, the miners’ branch ‘functioned as the local Labour party’.220 However, the late 19205 saw the membership of the NUSMW decline because of recession and the split between the old unions and new reform movements; a phenomenon which only further strengthened the political influence of the ILP within the Scottish labour movement. Indeed, Dollan claimed that he did ‘some “ghosting” for those [miners’ officials] who were shy about writing

drafts for orations or making researches for economic and historical facts’.221

Although many of the pro-affiliationists, such as Dollan and 239

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Johnston, went on to form the SSP in 1932 to maintain the ideals and the cultural life of the ILP within the Labour Party, this did little

to improve the organisational structure of the latter. Indeed, by setting up a parallel organisation, it only led to duplication of effort. As Arthur Woodburn made clear on his appointment as secretary of

the Scottish Labour Party in 1932: ‘There was practically no Labour Party in Scotland. The Labour Party was still a federated body and the real drive was in the ILP. . . my job was practically to build from scratch’.222 The political task was, then, awesome, particularly as Labour had been reduced to just three parliamentary seats in Scotland in the 1931 general election. Moreover, in the nerve centre of Labour in Scotland — Glasgow — the party was at its weakest. Most of the Glasgow ILP branches, including Shettleston, Govanhill, Hutchestown, had

favoured disaffiliation and their departure meant whole constituency Labour parties (CLPs) lost their organisational structure. In the Bridgeton and Hutchestown district parties all the officials resigned because of their support for the ILP.223 According to Forward, the biggest Labour Party branches were now in West Lothian, Aberdeen, Dundee and West Edinburgh;224 all places which had strongly been in favour of affiliation?“ The cutting edge of Labour policies was now being sharpened in places with a history of political moderation, rather than in Glasgow with its radical and Marxist traditions. The building of the new Scottish Labour Party was largely the work of Woodburn and Elger, of the STUC, but also Labour councillors for Glasgow’s Ruchill ward. Both were from lower middleclass backgrounds and were members of the National Union of Clerks, as well as officials of the Scottish Labour College -— Woodburn as secretary and Elger as treasurer. These links, according to the former, created a close working and ‘harmonious relationship’ between the two men.226 As to political questions they both favoured an essentially bureaucratic, non-ideological approach. As such they acquired expert knowledge of party procedure, and were committed as much

by temperament as anything else to centralisation and tight party discipline. Elger had in his time as secretary of the STUC sought to reduce the powers of the trade councils, considering them undemo— cratic, and increase the influence of the General Council within the Scottish labour movement.227 With the assistance of charasmatic figures like Patrick Dollan, Woodburn and Elger were able to trans— form Labour from a radical, almost messianic party of idealists into a social democratic organisation run on mechanistic lines; a process 240

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class which, although successful, at least after the electoral débacle of 1931, in enabling Labour to Win votes, led to disillusion among party activists. The process of building of the Labour Party in Scotland in the 19305 involved, as far as the leadership was concerned, the eradication

of anti-centralising tendencies Within the constituencies, parties and branches. Branch discipline did constitute a major headache for the centralisers within the party. As the unit of organisation was the Trades and Labour Council, communist infiltration was a constant problem, as was the participation of Labour members in demonstra-

tions organised by or with the NUWM. Once the CPGB abandoned its ‘social fascist’ campaign in 1935 the call for a United Front against

fascism and unemployment appealed to a number of activists, whose participation led to their expulsion. Those expelled included leading party activists: Arthur Brady, secretary of the SSP, was expelled for

taking the chair with Harry Pollitt of the CPGB at a United Front meeting. Members of the Dundee Trades and Labour Council were

also expelled for acting with communists; and Edinburgh was warned that it would be disaffiliated if it co-operated with the United Front.228 The issue of party discipline was resolved in two ways: firstly, by Woodburn issuing a summary of the party constitution for the acceptance of all candidates for local councils and parliament, which created, he admitted, a ‘furore’ and led to fruitless appeals to the

National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party, although ‘they could hardly object to my enforcing the conditions of the constitution’;229 and secondly, when in May 1938 the Scottish Labour Party conference decided by a vote of 51 to 31 to separate Trades and Labour Councils from the local party organisation. The decision was overwhelmingly reaffirmed by the STUC later that year,230 and, in practice, meant that union delegates from outside the Labour Party would no longer vote in the selection of Labour candidates, which was now the sole province of the constituency parties. The crushing of internal debate and freedom of action was buttressed by changes in the composition of the NEC of the Labour

Party falling in the electoral debacle of 1931. The dominant trade union leaders of the 19303 used the weakness of the parliamentary party to extend their influence within Labour in key areas of policymaking. The fact that half the Labour MPs were sponsored by the Miners’ Federation made the task somewhat easy.231 The consequence of this was to strengthen the tendency towards even greater manage-

rial centralism within the party. From 1931 the NEC consciously 241

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKINC OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

used Labour’s regional organisation to police constituency politics. The Scottish executive was thus left with little discretion in policy or organisational matters. Its subordinate role was graphically illustrated by the NEC’s high-handed appointment of Woodburn as secretary without even considering nominations proposed by the Scottish

leadership, and by its imposition of former National Liberal candidate for Bethnal Green in 1922 and Liberal MP for South Hackney 1924—29, G. M. Garro-Jones, as Aberdeen North candidate in 1935.232 But the fragmented Scottish Executive, With its eighteen

members drawn from the unions, constituency parties, and socialist societies, lacked the cohesion to challenge its subordination effectively. Its powers were so severely reduced that Woodburn claimed that SECLP was only ‘a piece of internal machinery providing the movement with advice on Scottish affairs, and the movement in Scotland with a coordinating authority to review, advise and coop— erate [sic] the membership and organisation’.233 Nationally emasculated by an increasingly powerful NEC, itself subject to greater trade union control, Labour in Scotland found its declining independence had important ramifications for the values and principles upon which it had been founded and which had done much to shape its development. This was in line with the changes taking place across a wide spectrum of Scottish opinion which, as we have seen, emphasised the collaboration of labour and capital and assigned a higher priority to state intervention and planning in economic and social affairs than to the older radical idea of popular control of work. Initially, this involved a reassessment of Labour’s attitude towards the state, but it was also to have significant conse-

quences for its traditional championship of Home Rule for Scotland. The absence of an industrial policy was a noted weakness of

Labour in the late nineteenth century as it failed to politicise the links between workplace and the political system. Much of this was the result of Labour’s belief in the infinite productive powers of capitalism and in the historical and moral inevitability of socialism. As Woodburn put it ‘Economically, Socialism is the child of Capitalism. . . . [it] is

the logical outcome of the economic tendencies of Capitalism. . . . I believe Socialism to be inevitable’.234 Capitalism, it was believed, had solved the problem of production in that it had created the possibility of achieving and abundance of wealth. However, it had failed to solve

the problem of distribution because it had created a selfish society based on profit rather than need, disfigured by many people ‘starving in the midst of plenty’, as John Wheatley put it.235 To remedy the 242

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class situation all socialists had to do was to gradually take over the means of production and distribute the wealth of the nation on a more equitable and rational basis. Such evolutionary views, espoused earlier by MacDonald, not only minimised the role of human agency in bringing about social change,236 but also were naively based on the ability of capitalism to engender continuous economic growth, something which proved impossible during the inter-war depression. In these circumstances, the problem of distribution became secondary to the problem

of production, to which Labour had given little thought. The paralysis of Labour thought on how to stimulate growth in the economy and put the unemployed back to work, saw the political leadership drawn, like the industrial wing of the labour movement, towards the idea of consensus solutions. This had already been envisaged by Tom Johnston as early as 1926, when he called for un— employment to be treated as an issue standing above party politics.237 As Under—Secretary of State for Scotland in the second minority Labour government, Johnston held ‘weekly conferences of MP5 from all parties to discuss Scottish issues’,238 and a few years later he was a signatory to the manifesto of the Liberty and Democratic League (later the Next Five Years Group). The League was non-partisan and included men of diverse background and opinion, such as Julian Huxley, Lord Rutherford, Harold MacMillan, and Hugh Dalton; significantly it advocated physical planning as the primary means of economic regeneration. Johnston was clearly of the opinion that only through consensus could the Scottish economy be regenerated and he counselled his colleagues in the labour movement to enlist the ‘goodwill’ of ‘industrialists and agriculturalists’ in this endeavour.239 This plea by Johnston was echoed a few years later by Dollan in an address to the Glasgow Junior Chambers of Commerce in which he stated that he found ‘young capitalists more sympathetic and understanding to Collectivism than their fathers and grandfathers’, and called upon socialists to modernise their thinking in similar ways.240 Commitment to planning the economy was further boosted by the

experience of the Soviet Union, whose rates of economic growth appeared to defy western economic trends in the 19305. This only enhanced optimism among the Labour leadership about the possi— bilities of economic and social planning. As Woodburn said of his Visit to the Soviet Union in the early 19303, ‘here is a land of hope’.241 This type of uncritical admiration of the Soviet Union grew in

strength during the Second World War to the extent that Christopher Harvie could claim that ‘Russia’s resistance and planning gripped the 243

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

imagination of the left in Britain’.242 The overall effect, however, was

to make planning acceptable not only on the left but also to ‘middle opinion’. Support for a strong centralised state meant an end to Labour’s commitment to Home Rule for Scotland and an acceptance of the permanency of the Union. Previously, the demand for Home Rule by Scottish Labour was expressed in language which bordered on racism.

George Buchanan, ILP MP for Glasgow, argued in introducing his private members’ bill to the Commons in May 1924 that Scottish nationalism was derived from the fact that:

Our historical and cultural traditions are different; our racial characteristics are different. The Celt has long memories, the Englishman forgets quickly. There are members on these Benches . . . who fight their electoral battles upon, say, the battle of the Boyne. . . . We have members of these Benches who fight them on the battle of Bannockburn. . . . We can never obliterate these national characteristics.243 However, from the late 19205, and especially With the founding of

the National Party of Scotland in 1928 by old ILP stalwart Roland Muirhead, and the onset of severe depression in the early 19308, commitment to Home Rule began to waver. The changing outlook of Tom Johnston and James Maxton on this the question of home

rule is instructive as they represented the two wings of the movement. During the 19205 Johnston had supported George Buchanan’s Government of Scotland Bill in 1924 and James Barr’s Bill of 1927, which demanded dominion status for Scotland and the removal of Scottish MP5 from Westminster. However, his stance on Home Rule

underwent a significant revision by the mid—19303 and he became simply an advocate of administrative devolution. While serving on the 1936—37 Gilmour Commission on Scottish administration Johnston only went so far as to support the rationalisation of Scottish departments. By the time he took office as Secretary of State for Scotland in the Churchill coalition in 1941, his Home Rule programme con— sisted of no more than ‘increased administrative autonomy, the segregation of Scottish business in parliament and the development of ad hoc executive and consultative bodies’.244 From a more left—wing perspective, Maxton had by the mid-19305 come to associate nationalism with fascism and to argue that the real struggle for the labour movement was between capitalism and socialism, rather than between

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class competing models of social democracy. In this apocalyptic struggle there was no role for Home Rule as the ‘time had gone past for purely Nationalist struggles. A struggle for National independence and against Imperialism can only be justified if it combines with it a struggle for the overthrow of capitalism as well’.245 From both left and right, Labour had come to the conclusion that self-government offered no solutions to the economic problems facing Scotland. Speaking for the official wing of the party, Arthur Woodburn

argued: ‘The mere separation of Governments gives no power under capitalism to prevent industry growing in England instead of Scotland . . . National Socialist planning of Britain would, by coordinating industrial production and social need’.246 Home Rule was thus abandoned in favour of administrative devolution of economic and industrial powers. This led to a new relationship between Scottish Labour and the British state based on the understanding, as Michael Keating and David Bleiman point out, ‘that Scottish interests were best promoted by a strong UK government’.247 By 1937 self-government as a political issue was moribund. Labour’s immediate programme contained no mention of it. When some die-hard Home Rule Labour MPs complained, Hugh Dalton, speaking for the NEC, told them

that it was not ‘an urgent reform’ as the party ‘in its first parliament’ would be ‘too busy. . . bringing the Socialist Commonwealth into existence to spare time to give Home Rule to Scotland’.248 The decline of Home Rule sentiment among Labour leaders in Scotland was part of a wider assault on the cultural traditions of the movement itself. Idealism, the hallmark of the old ILP, was being

kept alive in the party by SSP activists; however, it soon came into conflict with Labour’s evolving commitment to consensual politics. Repeated clashes were experienced over issues relating to fascism and war. The SSP had inherited the pacifism of the ILP, as its first chairperson, Patrick Dollan, made clear in 1935 when he declared it to be an ‘anti-war party’. There would be, he claimed, ‘1000 conscientious objectors in Scotland for every score in 1914’?” However, as war

broke out in Spain, and later threatened to engulf the whole of Europe, a rift developed within the SSP and soured its relationship

with the Labour Party. As Labour procrastinated over the issue of intervention in Spain, the SSP called for an end to the British embargo

on the supply of arms and munitions to the Spanish government. While Dollan and other leading members of the Labour Party and STUC General Council were endorsing civil defence and air raid precautions, as well as supporting Chamberlain’s National Voluntary 245

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Service Scheme, the SSP was condemning such actions as ‘a betrayal of the working class’.250 By 1939, however, the SSP had all but collapsed. At its conference

that April it was admitted that ‘diminution in membership in recent years .. . is plain’, and that there was ‘a great deal of apathy within the SSP itself’; and although responsible for about 25 Glasgow town councillors, ‘no more than three or four came near the conference’.251

The pacifist position of the SSP alienated leading Labour figures. Woodburn, who had been a conscientious objector during the First World War, argued that pacifism was leading Hitler to believe that the ‘morale of our people is giving way’.”2 Labour’s abandonment of pacifism took place in the context of the struggle between democracy and fascism, as did its rejection of its republican past. As far as the leadership was concerned, the defence of democracy necessitated not only the building of a cross—class

alliance, but also involved the ratification of monarchy as bulwark against right—wing extremism. As James Middleton, secretary of the British Labour Party, put it at the Scottish conference in May 1935: ‘people were making comparisons between our own nation and the

nations who were suffering abroad and were thanking God for a constitutional monarchy’.”3 Writing on the death of George V in January 1936, Patrick Dollan underscored Middleton’s views, when he attacked the ILP ‘republicans’, claiming that ‘the workers have made more progress in Great Britain in the last 25 years than in any other country’, which proved to him ‘that the constitutional monarchy doesn’t interfere with the progress of Democracy’.”4 Later that year the Labour-controlled Glasgow Town Council organised celebrations for the Coronation of the new king, Edward VIII; interestingly as it turns out a crypto-fascist! The idealism of the ILP which had manifested itself in the moral

conduct of its members and in its encouragement of healthy pursuits for young workers as the living embodiment of the potential of socialist society, also experienced decline in commitment. The Socialist Art Circle, part of the labour movement in Scotland’s attempt to create a counter-culture to the commercialised world of capitalist entertainment, collapsed amid general apathy in the 19305955 The same was also true of support within the labour movement for Socialist musical festivals. A correspondent in Forward remarked that at the recent concert of the William Morris Choir there was

‘only a half-hearted turn out of Socialist Glasgow’.”6 The relevance of temperance to socialism also became unclear.

246

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Remaking of the Political Culture of the Scottish Working Class Although the British Labour Party had ceased to debate the subject

of temperance from the 1921 conference, the ILP throughout the 1920s kept up a fight against What it considered the growing menace of the drinks trade. Forward criticised the Daily Herald for failing to

‘register its first fearless condemnation of the drink evil’, and argued that Labour’s policy of municipal control was ‘an easy expedient of weakening the opposition to the drinks trade . . . the problem is not ownership of an evil, but the best method of abolition’.257 As late as 1929 a number of Labour magistrates in Glasgow who voted in favour of granting drinks licences to certain publicans were instructed by the Glasgow Trades and Labour Council (GTLC) to resign from the town council Labour group and banned from attending its meet— ings.”8 However, the departure of the ILP in 1932 saw temperance become increasingly irrelevant to Labour’s social values. Patrick Dollan, a former fierce opponent of the drinks trade who had at the 1923 ILP Conference described alcohol as an ‘insidious poison’, abandoned teetotalism in favour of an environmentalist position on alcohol abuse, saying: Give people a healthy environment, decent employment and a regular income, and they will practice a form of self-government which will demonstrate how capable and worthy they are of a higher order of society than capitalism . . . an upwards standard of life is more helpful for temperance than preaching or exhortation. . . . The [Labour] Party is not committed to prohibition any more than it favours intemperance. It believes in public ownership and control of the Liquor Trade.”9 The abandonment of the values of the older political tradition from which Labour had emerged was part of the process of remaking the party; that is, transforming it from a morally eclectic, idealistic and almost millenarian organisation into a bland, professional, electoral machine, capable of winning votes but incapable of infusing its members with the kind of emotional zeal to confront the evils of capitalism possessed by the old ILP. In many ways these changes were overdue; the older Labour tradition had its weaknesses, not

the least being élitism and social puritanism which alienated it from many members of the working class. ILP organiser, John Paton, remembered that as a young party member he ‘glowed with righteousness’, and acquired like other ILPers the ‘air of men set apart’.260 Robert Selkirk, miner, said that the ‘puritanical and moralistic

247

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WAR, DEPRESSION AND THE REMAKING OF LABOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1914—1945

temperance advocacy of Scottish miners’ leaders . . . antagonised miners and other workers’.261 The decline of moral sentiment within the political wing of the Scottish labour movement allowed the party to represent a larger constituency of working-class people than simply the respectable. It allowed, in the words of Eleanor Stewart, Labour candidate for Edinburgh North in the 1929 general election, the party to reach the ‘poorer districts’, not just those inhabited by ‘artisans, civil servants and the lower middle class’.262 But in widening the social bases of party support a price was paid in respect of membership and

political vision. The building of a mass party capable of mobilising working-class aspirations on a variety of levels beyond simple parliamentarianism was ditched in favour of electoral mobilisation. As activism declined it impacted itself on membership. After an initial increase in 1932, membership began to decline in the late 1930s, falling from 29 510 in 1935 to 29 159 in 1939, making Scotland the smallest regional Labour

Party in Britain.“3 Moreover, Labour’s vision of the ‘new social order’ amounted to little more than a meritocracy ‘in which the children of workers’, according to A. B. Clarke, miners’ leader and Labour MP for North Midlothian, ‘will have equal opportunity with the children of the wealthy’.264 As Christopher Smout put it: ‘Labour in Scotland became synonymous with the defence of council housing, jobs in heavy industry and sectarian schools: it had nothing whatsoever to do with participatory democracy, enthusiasm for socialism or hope

for the future?“ In a period in which class identity was becoming more pronounced Labour proved itself incapable of articulating an alternative political economy to the capitalist cycle of boom and bust, or providing a credible challenge to entrenched power and wealth in Scotland and the rest of the UK. Failure in these spheres made Scottish Labour defer to a much greater extent than previously to ‘middle class ideologies’,266 and to rely on the bureaucrat and planner rather than the people as agents of social and economic

change. The outbreak of war in 1939 accelerated this process as Labour and the unions became integrated into the wartime version of the corporate state.

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PART V

The Collapse of the Craft Culture and the Rise of New Labour in Scotland, 1945—19905

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Chapter 25 INTERPRETATIONS

The 19303 represented a transitional period in the history of the labour movement in Scotland. The remnants of the older radical tradition and the values associated with popular Liberalism were discarded as Labour remade itself as a statist, technocratic party, seeking cross-class support for the planned economy. This process

reached its apotheosis in the Attlee government with its policy of large-scale nationalisation of major industries and utilities and the establishment of the welfare state offering ‘cradle to grave’ coverage. The widespread approval these measures received from all social

classes created the basis of a settlement between labour and capital which lasted into the 19505 and 19605. The long economic boom of

these years provided the basis for full employment and a more generous system of welfare provision which satisfied the labour movement and, at the same time, rising profits appeased capital. However, gradually the economy began to falter under the weight of foreign competition and rising inflation. With the spectacular hike in the price of oil in 1973, anti-inflationary politics revolved round the successful implementation of incomes policies. But as they were only really applied with any vigour in the public sector, incomes policies created a perceived sense of unfairness among state employees. A groundswell of opposition emerged in the state’s backyard which ultimately led to the breakdown of consensus politics. Industrial warfare reached a crescendo in 1978—79 in the so-called ‘winter of discontent’. The level of industrial strife in this period combined with lengthening dole queues created the conditions for an electoral breakthrough by the Tories in 1979 under the leadership of

Margaret Thatcher. Her electoral success began an unbroken sequence of eighteen years of Tory rule and heralded the end of the craft culture

which had dominated the Scottish labour movement since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The rolling back of the frontiers of the 251

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

state, the ending of state subsidies to ailing firms, the large-scale programme of privatisation, and the judicial attacks on the trade unions

knocked away the economic and legal supports of the predominantly masculine culture of time-served men. The blight of manufacturing and primary industries in these years also led to the break up of the close-knit working communities which had provided bedrock support for Labour and the unions. The social policies of the Tories encouraged a greater sense of individualism as more people were given help to own their homes and a market system was introduced in almost all branches of the welfare services. Within the social and political milieu created by the Tories a ‘new labour’ ethos emerged, committed to the politics of consumption rather than production. Its constituency was formed from a new coalition of workers, both male and female, in the professions and service sector. These work groups had different

aspirations and expectations from those workers in heavy industry whose experiences had generated past solidarities in working—class communities. The year of 1979, then, marked the beginning of the end for the male, skilled industrial, Protestant worker in Scotland and represented a climacteric in the political development of workingclass politics north of the border. These changes in the economic structure and in the nature of political discourse and practice were, of course, not confined simply to Scotland; they were part of a British-wide, one might argue global, process of economic transformation and political realignment. In this respect Scotland’s experience appears no different to that of other parts of Britain and the rest of the advanced economies. However, there is a regional dimension to consider in this cross-national restructuring process. The diverse characteristics of Scotland’s economic and social development produced a different configuration of political behaviour. Economically, Scotland has experienced a more thorough dismantling of manufacturing industry and at a greater speed than other comparable regions. At the same time, it has been

the recipient of a greater volume of inward investment from overseas firms, particularly American, than any other part of the UK; a process which has led to most manufacturing output being controlled by companies based outside Scotland. Socially, the profound rupture of past social relationships and

lifestyles has resulted in Scots workers enduring higher rates of unemployment, and experiencing more privation and ill-health than their English counterparts. Given the numbers receiving some form of welfare benefit and living in public sector housing, the reliance on 252

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Interpretations

the state as a provider of resources is much more pronounced in Scotland. The decline of the economy and the emigration of large numbers of young and talented people has created a more skewed social structure, with proportionately more working-class voters than middle class, than is the case south of the border. Politically, the reliance on heavy industry and the prominence this gave to skilled workers and their interests meant that, while for most of the post-war

period England has been decidedly Tory, with even trade unionists voting in overwhelming numbers for Thatcher in 1983, Scotland has since 1959 consistently voted Labour. However, what is interesting is that the decline of the skilled man’s culture has not led to a shift in political allegiances throughout the 19805 and 19905. Scotland stubbornly refused to converge with voting behaviour south of the border and continued to vote Labour in increasing numbers. By 1997 there were no Conservative-controlled district councils or MPs. In Fife as late as 1995 the CPGB had two councillors, while the Conservatives

had none. Scotland is now a Tory—free zone. What challenge there is to Labour’s hegemony north of the border comes from a resurgent radical nationalism; a phenomenon which threatens to lead to the break—up of the British unitary state. In the light of Scottish peculiarities, a deeper investigation into the changing nature of the economy, the social life, the workplace and industrial relations is necessary before we can understand why polit— ical loyalties have been maintained in spite of the changing nature of the economy and society since 1945. However, it will also be important to look at how the Scottish labour movement itself has changed in terms of ethos and ideology if we are to understand the process of remaking which has gone on in the movement in recent years.

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Chapter 26

‘FROM SHIPS TO CHIPS’: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN SCOTLAND, 1945—19903

The outbreak of war in September 1939 provided a lifeline for the badly ailing Scottish economy. War meant ships, munitions, uniforms, fuel and energy, all the things that industry in Scotland was adept at producing. The restocking boom which followed the end of war in 1945 and the Korean War in the early 19508 sustained industrial growth. Employment in shipbuilding stood at 27 000 in 1951, the

same as it had been in 1900, and Scottish yards were producing an impressive 12 per cent of world output between 1951 and 1954. Similarly, the railway engineering industry in Scotland remained a

world force in the production of locomotives.1 It all seemed a far cry from the depressed 19305. War production had allowed Scotland a brief economic honeymoon of full employment and rising living standards. However, reality soon set in and the economic trends observable in the inter-war period reasserted themselves with even greater ferocity in the decades after 1945. From around 1960 there was a general attrition of Scottish manufacturing; then, in the 19805, a holocaust. Between 1960 and 1975, 10 000 men a year were losing work in the productive sector and this rate nearly doubled in the period 1979—87. Rather surprisingly, with the exception of Strathclyde, Grampian region lost more jobs in the decade 1971—81 than any other region in Scotland.2 Skilled occupations were particularly badly affected with 80 000 jobs lost in the decade 1961—71 alone; a loss larger than that in the previous fifty years.3 By the mid-19805 the new electrical and electronic industries were employing more than double the numbers employed in steel,

coal and shipbuilding in Scotland.4 Although each industry had its own particular story of collapse and closure, some factors were

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Economic and Social Change in Scotland

common to all. Foreign competition, low productivity and high transport costs saw a decline in orders and jobs as Scottish industry lost out to more competitive firms both in England and abroad. Looking at the pattern of deindustrialisation in a more specific manner, the most spectacular decline was witnessed in the former most important industries in Scotland — coal and shipbuilding. The coal industry was already in trouble by the end of the 19405. In spite of the general depression in the coal trade in the inter-war period, the

output of Scottish coal mines averaged 30m tons; however, in the years 1948—52 this had fallen to 23—24m. The average output of Scottish collieries in 1950 was 120 000 tons; the lowest for any division of the National Coal Board (NCB).5 From that date the industry’s fortunes continued to decline and by 1981—82 output had fallen to 7.1m tons and employment only stood at 20 000, whereas in 1939 it had been 90 000.6 By the end of the 19805 the Association of University Teachers could boast having more members than the National Union of Mineworker (NUM) in Scotland. Falling productivity and higher extraction costs, combined with the general switch from coal to other domestic energy supplies, saw the Scottish coal industry collapse, until today there is only one working mine. Similarly, shipbuilding experienced a catastrophic decline. The shift from warships and cargo ships to oil tankers in the post—1950 era found Scottish yards ill—equipped to compete with the emerging producers in the Far East. Shipyard berths were too small and narrow to cope with these monster ships and the technology used in Scotland was too weakly developed to establish the type of flow line methods of construction involved in building oil tankers.7 As a result contraction set in; yards closed and jobs were lost. The workforce in shipbuilding and marine engineering declined from 77 070 in 1950, to 41 000 in 1978, reaching a distinct low of 14 000 in 1991.8 The decline of shipbuilding was particularly devastating for the economy of the west of Scotland, as along with metals and engi-

neering, it accounted for around 57 per cent of total employment compared to 42 per cent for the UK as a whole. As much of its materials were purchased within Scotland other industries soon felt the cold draught of its decline. Steel was an obvious casualty since most of its production was destined for local markets. Indeed, 20 per cent of output in 195 0 was earmarked for Clydeside shipbuilding. From producing 20 per cent of British output in 1907, the share of Scottish steel fell to only 12 per cent in 1960; then total collapse set in in the

1990s.9 255

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

Other industries also faced massive decline. Unable to hold on to

its traditional exports markets and powerless to stem the flood of cheap imports from the Far East, the textile industry in Scotland contracted at an alarming rate. In 1950 it had employed 165 000 workers in Scotland, but lost 109 700 jobs in the next 28 years, with the bulk of them being jettisoned between 1960 and 1978.10 More craftbased industries also followed suit. The number of firms in the Aberdeen granite industry fell from 51 in 1935 to 32 in 1960; the number continued falling, until the industry completely collapsed in

the 19805. Having always been a dirty and unhealthy industry, the rise of the service sector saw few boys wish to enter an apprenticeship in the granite industry. The crisis in the supply of labour brought the industry to the point of collapse.“ The white fishing fleet at Aberdeen also suffered as a result of a general failure to invest in new trawlers and port facilities; in consequence the size of the fleet declined from 161 boats in 1958 to just 25 in 1980.12 As primary and manufacturing industry began to slide there was a general shift of the economy towards services and light engineering. Services, of course, had always been an important part of the economy, but in the decades after 1945 they assumed an even greater role. In 1936 services accounted for 32 per cent of output, but by 195 8 they reached 49 per cent, and by 1984 they accounted for 60 per cent of Scotland’s gross domestic product and employed some two—thirds of the total labour force.13 Even in traditional industrial cities services became the major employer of labour. In 1981, 72.8 per cent of the Glasgow and 69.6 per cent of the Dundee workforces were employed in the service sector compared to 80 per cent in Edinburgh and 74.2 per cent in Aberdeen.14 Seventy years previously Glasgow had 48 per cent of its occupied population engaged in manufacturing, Dundee

had 67 per cent, while Aberdeen had 36 per cent and Edinburgh 32 per cent.” This restructuring process reached a peak in the 19703 and 19805 as heavy industry after industry collapsed, considerably weakening Scotland’s industrial base. Indeed, in the year September 1979 to September 1980, 61 000 jobs were lost in manufacturing industries in Scotland, the worst hit being textiles, engineering and metal manufacturing.16 One consequence of deindustrialisation has been the rise in foreignowned firms and the decline of the indigenous family-owned firms, so long a feature of Scottish industry. By 1973, 59 per cent of Scottish manufacturing workers were employed by companies based outside Scotland. In that year a quarter of these companies were Americanowned; by 1984 US-controlled plants accounted for 68 per cent of 256

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Economic and Social Change in Scotland

employment in foreign—based firms in Scotland.” Although the plants established by American and other nationals are little better than low level assembly production units, they have produced a revolution in the labour market by reversing hiring policies based on gender and religion. The electrical and electronics industries have increasingly turned to female labour. By 1971 women workers in these industries accounted for between 42 and 50 per cent of the total workforce.18 Indeed, the structural changes taking place in the economy has led to a significant growth in the numbers of working women, especially

married women. The trend towards earlier marriage and smaller families, alongside the increasing ownership of labour saving domestic appliances, meant that married women found it easier to cope with the demands of work and family; thus, they faced less impediments to entering the labour market in large numbers and soon outnumbered single females. The introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1964 allowed women to plan their reproductive cycle and this further increased the incentive to find work. By 1971 it was estimated that 56 per cent of women between the ages of 20 and 29 in Aberdeen were on the pill.19 This changed the marital structure of the female labour market. In 1911 married women accounted for only 5.3 per cent of females in waged employment in Scotland; however, seventy years later there was a complete reversal with single women only

accounting for 30 per cent of the total and married women 62 per cent, the rest being either widowed or divorced.20 Overall, the percentage share of the labour market designated female has increased from 39.1 per cent in 1976 to 48 per cent in 1992.21 However, much of this share is located in part-time work (under thirty hours a week) in the service sector. From accounting for only 5 per cent of total female employment in 1951, the numbers in part-time work grew to over 40 per cent and rising in the decade 1981—1991; only 7 per cent of males were in part—time work at the later date.22 In spite of the oil boom, three-quarters of jobs created for married women in Aberdeen in the decade 1971—81 were of a

part-time nature.23 At the level of occupation, over 40 per cent of female shop assistants and 80 per cent of cleaners were part-time in 1981.24 This employment trend has not only had a major impact on

the working-class household, it has also significantly altered the dis— tribution of female employment. At the beginning of the twentieth century women were employed in three major sectors: agriculture, domestic service, and textiles and clothing. By 1981 over 75 per cent of females were employed in the service sector, particularly in local government, teaching, nursing and shopwork. Most clerical work 257

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

has become the domain of women as between 1961 and 1981 male clerical labour declined by 20 per cent to 60 000, while females increased by 50 per cent to 181 000. Between 1951 and 1981 there has been a doubling of the number of female nurses and teachers in Scotland.25 The growth of female employment and the dominance in the economy of the service sector did not compensate for manufacturing decline. The service industries proved incapable of absorbing all the surplus labour. As a result Scotland’s out-migration rate remained exceptionally high in the decades after the end of the Second World War. According to Slaven, three-quarters of the natural increase in

the population of the west of Scotland in the decade 1951—61 left the region. Consequently, there was only a modest growth in the eco— nomically active portion of the population from 1 053 000 in 1951 to 1 071 000 in 1961.26 The Toothill Report on the Scottish Economy (1961) pointed to the fact that in 1801 the population of Scotland was 18 per cent that of England and Wales; however, in 1961 it had fallen to only 11 per cent.27 Many of those who left were among the most productive and talented workers and managers; indeed, the vast majority of emigrants were in the age group 15—44, with the age cohort 15—29 accounting for 68 per cent of outmigrants in 1986—87;28 a phenomenon which further compounded the problems of the economy. As the potentially higher earning groups left Scotland in droves for more congenial and better paid work elsewhere, incomes declined which had a knock-on effect on the level of demand in the

economy. Despite an improvement in earnings in the 19605, by 1970 GDP per head in Scotland was just over 90 per cent of the UK level; sev-

enteen years later, and, in spite of the oil boom, per capita GDP had only improved marginally to 92 per cent of the UK average.29 Not surprisingly, Scots male workers earned around 96 per cent of the UK

average in the 19805.30 However, there were within Scotland existing regional inequalities. Wage rates in Aberdeen in the early 19605 were 90 per cent that of Edinburgh and Glasgow and significantly below that of Dundee, although this has been reversed in the last decade or 50.31 By the early 1980s Scotland was estimated to be ‘the worst region in Britain for its disproportionate share of all low paid workers’, with 16.4 per cent of manual and 8.1 per cent of non-manual men and 60.7 per cent of all women paid less than £85 per week.32 As in the 19605, more low paid workers were to be found in Strathclyde than in any other region of Scotland, although high rates of low paid 258

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Economic and Social Change in Scotland males were to be found in Tayside and Dumfries and Galloway.33 But for extensive overtime working, the figures for those in low paid employment would have been higher. By the late 19803 and 19905 the situation was little better, particularly for males, as Table 26.1 shows. TABLE 26.1 Percentage of adults on low wages in Scotland3 at selected dates Full-time

1988

1992

1996

Women Men All

57.1 20.1 31.9

52.2 20.2 32.0

47.3 21.6 32.0

(255 000) (195 000) (450 000)

a1996 — £5.89 per hour. Source: Scottish Trade Union Review, 8 3 (1997), p. 23.

The situation was so desperate at the lower end of the skills market that the Institute for Fiscal Studies was moved to say in 1994 that

‘some men can no longer provide for themselves’. The trend towards part-time work for men and women only compounded the problem. In 1996 over 76 per cent of all part-time workers earned less than the low wage threshold figure of £5 .89 per hour; at the beginning of the decade the figure for women on low wages (£4.92 per hour) in part-time work had been 77.7 per cent.34 Thus, although the economy went through a modernising phase in

line with that occurring south of the border and throughout the advanced economies of western Europe, there were aspects of this transformation which were peculiar to Scotland. Firstly, in a very short space of time Scotland went from being a producer of capital goods to a provider of services. The collapse of the industrial economy was at a faster rate than that experienced by England and the social trauma resulting from it all the greater. Sylvia Clark, in her history of Paisley, reinforces the quite extraordinary magnitude of socio—

economic changes experienced by Scottish workers and their families, and the urban blight which resulted from them in the last few decades, when she writes:

So the labour force in the Paisley factories was scaled down to the hundreds, and then to dozens, and finally in the case of Ferguslie Mills to nil. . . . The area once occupied by Ferguslie Mills is at the moment of writing [1988] not unlike a shellshattered No—man’s—land in some war. . . . The older male 259

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

inhabitants find it equally hard to accustom themselves to the

disappearance of the engineering works. . . . There are no brassfounders or rope-makers. There is one cloth-finishing works . . . but no marmalade or potato crisps, or textile factories; no soapmaking; no smelly glue factory. The Linwood [car] works . . .

finally died in the 19805. . . . Even the Co-op . . . the ‘Big Co’ has gone . . . there are no grocer’s shops in the town centre. . . . The latest departure in 1988 is Woolworths.”

Secondly, the manufacturing sector has become dominated by overseas capital; a phenomenon which has created unstable conditions of employment. Thirdly, the growth of part—time work, particularly for women, and higher levels of unemployment have had a corresponding impact on Scottish incomes which have generally been below the UK average. Finally, large scale out-migration has created a higher level of dependency in the economy and a lower number of middle—class occupations; only 31 per cent of economically active heads of households in Scotland were defined as middle class compared to 37 per cent for Great Britain.36 These changes have not only created difficult challenges for the labour movement in Scotland, they have also led to important changes in the social fabric of the country. Throughout the inter-war period and the decades following the end of the Second World War Scotland has experienced higher and

more enduring levels of deprivation than the rest of Britain. One factor contributing to this situation in a major way has been unemployment. Through the boom years of the 19503 and 19608 Scotland experienced an unemployment rate twice that of the average rate for the UK as a whole. Indeed, in 1961 With little more than 10 per cent of the UK’s population Scotland had more than 25 per cent of long-term unemployed.37 During the years 1967 and 1979 the level doubled, and in the period 1979 to 1983 it doubled again to stand at 14.6 per cent in May 1983, around one percentage point higher than that for Britain.38 Although in the 19905 the level of unemployment in Scotland fell from 9.4 per cent in 1989 to 7.6 per cent in January

1997, part of this is due to the state altering the criteria of classification from those looking for work to those claiming unemployment benefit.39 However, unemployment has been more prevalent among males than females. Over the same period male unemployment remained at more than twice the figure for females; a phenomenon

which, if the trend continues into the new millennium, will significantly alter gender relationships within the household and the wider society.40 260

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Economic and Social Change in Scotland There is, of course, a regional dimension to consider. Someone of working age in Strathclyde in 1980 was twice as likely to be out of work as someone in Grampian. However, the contrast is even more marked if we examine unemployment by parliamentary constituency. Glasgow Provan had an unemployment rate of 35 per cent for males aged 16—69, while Gordon in Grampian only had 3.8 per cent of males in this age group out of work.41 Many of the unemployed had been out of work for more than six months; indeed, three out of five men claiming benefit in May 1983 were in this category.42 Once unemployment grew to these proportions the effect was multi-deprivational as people’s lives became blunted and restricted on a whole series of different levels. A report by Strathclyde Social Work Department in 1980 graphically showed the impact the closure of Singers’ Springburn factory had on welfare services in Glasgow. Closure saw unemployment increase by 27 per cent in the city, rent arrears by 21 per cent, clothing grants by the DHSS by 23 per cent, reports to children’s hearings by 38 per cent, as well as significant increases in the rent and rebate awards.43 Thus, low pay and unemployment, as well as the increasingly age dependent structure of the population, has led to a greater reliance on social security. Between 1979 and 1982 the numbers claiming Supplementary Benefit (SB) in Scotland increased from 450 000 to 770 000, or by nearly 70 per cent.44 By 1991 just over a quarter of Scottish households had a gross weekly income of less than £100 a

week to live on.“ Much of the increase can be accounted for by the growing numbers of OAPs and single parents on SB. In 1991 CAPS accounted for 1 8 per cent of total population compared to 6 per cent in 1901; indeed, female pensioners now outnumber girls under the age of sixteen. Pensioners constitute one—third of those in poverty, or around 240000 people.46 Family breakdown has also increased the number of single parent families since 1945; in 1960 there were only 2000 divorces in Scotland, but thirty years later the number had

increased to 12 400.47 Kay Carmichael estimated that, in the early 19805, 31 per cent of single parent families were living below the poverty line, and 50 per cent of them were on SB.48 The upshot of all this is that one in five people in Scotland are living in poverty and the low income of many Scots has had a significant impact on the type and quality of housing available and their health. As we have seen, most Scots in the inter-war years lived in cramped and squalid housing supplied mainly through the private rented market. Although there had been an increase in public sector housing with 261

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

the construction of peripheral estates in the inter-war period, it was

really only after the Second World War that local authority building programmes took off in a significant way. Jimmy Allison, Scottish

organiser of the Labour Party in the 19705 and 1980s, recalled in his autobiography that at the age of 53 and 47 respectively his father

and mother were given their first council house which had an inside toilet in Glenburn, Paisley, in 1954.49 Indeed, the level of private

housing building after the war was negligible in Scotland, as in the period 1946 to 1966 over 90 per cent of new housing stock was in the public sector. However, due to expenditure cuts this fell to 49.4

per cent in the period 1976—80, and to 29.7 per cent in 1981—85 because of Tory government policy.50

The extent of public ownership of housing in Scotland was truly phenomenal. David Niven points out that between 1967 and 1970 public housing construction in Scotland accounted for over 80 per cent of housing completions which exceeded quite considerably the rate in the Eastern bloc countries of Czechoslovakia and Poland. The only Communist country to reach anything like the figure in Scotland was Romania at 57 per cent?1 As a result owner—occupation, at only 31 per cent of total housing stock, was at much lower levels in the 19705 in Scotland compared to England and all of Western Europe,

although in the 19808 this had increased to around 42 per cent.52 If viewed more specifically by city, then, in the mid—19805, 63 per cent of Glaswegians, 57 per cent of Dundonians and 48 per cent of Aber-

donians lived in municipally-owned accommodation in, generally, peripheral estates. In the cases of Drumchapel and Easterhouse in Glasgow these housing estates constituted small, low amenity towns of around 50 000 inhabitants.53 Labour activist, Tommy Sheridan, vividly described in his autobiography how the initial hopes of a generation of slum dwellers from Govan were crushed amid the

social deserts of the new estate of Pollok in Glasgow: The scheme was considered a paradise when my family arrived in 1966 . . . it was a paradise on paper. . . . The adults missed stopping for a chat at Govan Cross. They missed going to the pictures, the dancing, the shops. In Pollok there was no centre. . . . Nowhere to stop and chat. Nowhere to have a drink or a dance. Only churches, schools and a bit of windswept turf.54 The community spirit of slum life was traded for an indoor toilet and bath; an experience replicated throughout Scotland with perhaps

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Economic and Social Change in Scotland

even greater intensity in the smaller industrial towns of east and west of Scotland where the publicly rented sector is even more entrenched. According to Richard Rodger, in 1981, in Bellshill, Clydebank, Coatbridge, Irvine, Livingston, Motherwell and Wishaw, more than 80 per cent of households were renting from the local authority.

There was also a general enthusiasm for high rise among councillors and town planners and by 1969 Glasgow had built 163 tower blocks, with the 22 acre Red Road complex of 31 storey blocks, housing

4000 being the most of extreme example of this kind of residential brutality.” In spite of the large concentrations of state-owned housing stock, living conditions are far worse north of the border than south. Glasgow’s overcrowding level (more than 1.5 persons per room) in 1961 was 34.3 per cent compared to 10.7 per cent for Birmingham and only 6.4 per cent for Manchester. In twelve of the city’s 37 wards, one and two roomed houses accounted for over 60 per cent of the stock, while in 15 wards over 60 per cent had no fixed bath or \WC.56 In Dundee, in 1961, 35 per cent of housing was of the one or two roomed variety and a quarter of the city’s housing stock was classed as sub-standard.57 Although conditions have improved since the early 19605 — for example, only 6 per cent of Dundee housing was considered sub—standard in 1981, and the overcrowding rate in Glasgow fell from 46.9 per cent in 1951 to 26.0 per cent twenty years later — much of the public housing in Scotland has become a byword for decay, drugs and vandalism. The more upwardly mobile workers have bought into the housing market or purchased their council houses, leaving behind a population made up young families, single mothers and OAPs, who find work hard to come by and are generally living off state benefit. An in-depth study of the Ferguslie Park housing estate in Paisley in the late 19705 found that half the resident population were aged under twenty and only 10 per cent were of pensionable age. Forty per cent of households were dependent on social security benefits and male unemployment was running at 22 per cent compared with 10 per cent for Paisley and 4 per cent for Great Britain.58 The overcrowding and generally unsatisfactory condition of housing and high concentrations of poverty in Scotland have had a major impact on health standards. Although life expectancy for Scottish

men and women has grown quite considerably over the course of the twentieth century and the IMR rate has fallen significantly, health standards in Scotland still lag behind those in England and Wales. In 263

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

1981 life expectancy for Scottish men was two years lower than in

England and Wales.59 The IMR fell to 19 per 1000 live births in the 19705, but in terms of Western Europe only Belgium, Italy, Portugal

and Austria had worse rates.60 These are national figures, of course, and take no account of the incidence of social class. Statistics show that in the 19805 manual workers were twice as likely to die before reaching retirement than professionals, and the IMR was twice as high in unskilled families compared to professional families.61 Such glaring inequalities led one health economist to conclude that ‘the greater ill-health of the Scottish people is the result of a higher concentration of working-class people and poverty’.62 What this brief examination of the economy and social life of Scotland suggests is that large portions of the working and nonworking population are trapped in a cycle of poverty which leads to a culture of deprivation and a high dependence on the state for survival. For those whose earnings remove them from leaning on the benefits system, the high levels of employment generated by the state for most of the period after 1945 and the predominance of public sector housing, particularly in the industrial cities and towns, brings them into personal contact with the state as either employer, landlord or both. Scotland, therefore, has a more intimate relationship with the state than England and, perhaps, as we will see, this goes some way to explaining why voting patterns were so divergent in the

19705 and 19805. However, of more immediate importance is what kind of culture did the so-called ‘nanny’ state help create in Scotland

after the Second World War and how far has it changed in recent times?

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Chapter 27

THE AFFLUENT WORKER? WORKING-CLASS CULTURE, 1945—19905

The cultural world of the Scottish worker underwent profound changes after 1945. The poverty of the 19305 gave way to greater relative affluence in the 19505 and 19605 which created a more pri— vatised way of life and consumerist mentality. The old community solidarities gradually declined as urban populations were broken up

and dispatched to peripheral housing estates or new towns such as Glenrothes or East Kilbride: 200 000 people were transferred from Glasgow alone to these kinds of places in the period 1945 —75. However, in the 19505 and the early years of the 19605 aspects of popular culture which reflected older community links still flourished: the

Co-op, cinema, bingo, miners’ welfare clubs, pigeon racing, singing competitions, accordion bands and dancing at the local palais de dance on Friday and Saturday nights. Technology incrementally eroded these recreational patterns as did the growth of out-of—town

shopping facilities and other cultural innovations. The mass ownership of televisions rising from only 41 000 in 1952 to 1 200000 in the mid—19905, and, later, videos and computer games, saw the vibrant street culture which Edwin Muir depicted in his social report of the 19305 — Scottish journey (1936) - disappear indoors. Workers, taking advantage of cheap package holidays, became more cosmopolitan; a phenomenon also aided by television which brought an increasingly

shrinking world into the living room. The Spanish Costas replaced the west coast resorts as the summer destination of Scottish workers, even though the former was made to feel like the latter, only with sun. Holidays abroad and the influx of ethnic minorities from the Far East resulted in a change in eating habits; mince n’ tatties gave way to lamb curries and fried rice. Aberdeen’s first Chinese restaurant 265

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

opened in Union Street in the early 19605 and by all accounts ‘created a considerable stir’;63 but by 1996 there were ten such restaurants in addition to fifteen Indian establishments, as well as Turkish, Thai, Italian, Greek and French eating places. The motor car also allowed families away day excursions and created a market for out-of—town superstores, further assisting the process of inner city decline. By 1981, thanks to the oil boom, 53 per cent of Aberdeen’s households, and 41 per cent of council tenants, owned a car, whereas in nearby Dundee the respective figures were 43.5 per cent and 31 per cent.64 All these developments, coupled with the rapid decline of traditional industry wrought a profound rupture in working-class life in

Scotland; a process which Ian Jack’s nostalgic portrait of his father, a time—served engineering fitter, brilliantly captures. His father, Jack

writes: ended his working life only a few miles from where he had begun it, and in much the same way; in overalls and over a lathe and waiting for the dispensation of the evening hooter, when he would stick his leg over his bike and cycle home. He never owned a house and he never drove a car, and today there is very little

public evidence that he ever lived. . . . Few of his workplaces survive. The cargo steamer went to the scrapyard a long time ago, of course, but even the shipping line it belonged to has vanished. The coal pit is a field. Urban grassland and carparks have buried the foundations of the mills. The house he grew up in has been demolished and replaced with a traffic island. The school which taught him the careful handwriting has made way for a supermarket.“

One of the cultural casualties of these economic and social changes has been the co-operative movement. Once a recognised and essential part of working-class material and political culture — indeed, the instant recall of one’s share number was similar to remembering one’s telephone number today — the Co—op has ceased to play any role in shaping the consciousness of workers in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK, although it still has formal, if ever declining, links to the Labour Party. As a result of the growth of cut-price supermarket shopping, the share of the retail market in Britain held by the co-

operative societies declined from 11 per cent in 1960 to only 5 per cent in 1986. The annual share dividend — ‘the divvy’ - has been abolished and redundancies, deteriorating wages and market-orientated 266

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Working-Class Culture management have undermined even the loyalty of staff to the principles and ideals of the co-operative movement. Nowadays, the Co-op is seen as just another High Street retail outlet and its former role as one of the essential building blocks of working-class communities has dissipated accordingly.“ All these developments have unhinged individuals from communi-

ties and allowed for a more privatised lifestyle which focuses on the self and the nuclear, rather than the extended, family. One consequence of the growth of more privatised lifestyles has been the gradual reduction in the importance of voluntary social agencies, such as the churches, in working-class areas. Religious observation remained strong in the 19505, with the Church of Scotland reaching its peak of membership in 1956, and Sunday School enrolment rising by 41 per cent in the years 1945—56.67 Comparatively speaking, Scots in this

period were also more liable to be members of a Christian church and attend services more regularly than the English or the Welsh. In 1951 only 23 per cent of the adult population of England and Wales were church members, whereas in Scotland the figure was 5 9 per cent, and attendance north of the border was around 26 per cent of adults compared to 10—15 per cent in the south.68 However, since then church—going in Scotland has declined quite rapidly. According to Calum Brown, church adherence in 1963 had reached a nadir.69 By 1984 only 9 per cent of non—Catholics in Scotland attended church on Sundays. However, the Catholic Church has maintained, until only recently, quite a strong pull on its religious constituency. Its policy of building churches in working-class housing estates has allowed the church to maintain a constant dialogue with its parishioners. By the 1970s the Catholic Church had of all Christian churches in Scotland the highest proportion of council tenants in membership.70 Since then the number of parishioners has fallen, not simply because of falling birth rates among Catholics, but because of the impact of the same forces of secularisation which had undermined the ability of the Presbyterian churches to resonate with the aspirations and experiences of their constituency. The growth of scientific explanation and the perceived establishment bias of the Protestant churches alienated

young people in the 1960s. Religion was dismissed as superstition and out of touch with social realities. Although the churches have taken a more active social and political role in addressing contempo— rary concerns, and played an important part in the campaign for a devolved assembly for Scotland, it has made little difference to membership or attendance rolls. Perhaps, then, the main reason for 267

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the decline in religious observation among Scottish worker households is to be found in the fact that the churches have lost their social role to the state. The marginalisation of the churches in the process of dispensing social welfare has led people in times of acute distress to turn to the state rather than to the gospel for solace. Although the churches might blame materialism for falling mem-

bership rolls, the growing secularisation of the working class, indeed, of all social classes, has had one important and beneficial consequence in Scotland in as much as it has led to a diminution in sectarian rivalries and tensions. Although ritual battles are still fought out on the

terraces of Parkhead and Ibrox, sectarianism has been gradually marginalised in modern Scotland due to economic and social change. However, in the 19505 and 19605 sectarianism still played an impor— tant role in determining one’s life’s chances. Unspoken embargos still existed on employing Catholics in occupations, such as engineering, printing, and, further up the occupational ladder, in banking, fire service, quantity surveying, among others.71 Sectarianism also per-

formed an important role in cementing industrial communities together in opposition to the other. To be a ‘Billy’ or a ‘Tim’ provided a sense of belonging as well as status to otherwise drab and increasingly alienated forms of existence. That sense of belonging and of hatred of the other was evocatively caught by Meg Henderson, in a recent newspaper article, when she recalled that her grandmother, in spite of the fact that half her grandchildren were Catholic, was ‘a bitter Orange woman’. When she died in the 1950s ‘the plate on her coffin carried her lodge number beside her name’.72 It also was captured rather farcically in an incident in Singers factory in Springburn, Glasgow. The engineering unions had negotiated an extra day’s holiday in 195 6 to be taken on Christmas Day. Alex Ferry, president of the AEU, recalled that ‘all hell broke loose’ at Singers as Protestants felt that ‘catholics would be the chief beneficiaries since for them it was a more significant occasion on which they were required to attend mass’. The issue had to be put to a ballot and it was only carried by a small majority ‘despite the fact that more than half the workforce were women’.73

The decline of heavy industry and changing residential patterns, however, have severed sectarian ties for much of the working popu— lation, in as much as they led to the destruction of the kind of close-knit industrial communities which previously had nurtured sec— tarian loyalties and traditions. Economic transformation has ensured that the grip or the right religion are no longer passports to an 268

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Working- Class Culture apprenticeship or a job. Consequently, the association of generations of families with a particular kind of employment through a system of patrimony has broken down. The sons of formerly skilled workers are forced to find work in the newer foreign-owned plants and service industries whose hiring policies are religiously blind. Indeed, employers in these sectors are generally more concerned to screen out trade

unionists than to discover the religious affiliation of a job applicant. Therefore, the economic supports of sectarianism have been knocked away and there seems little to be gained financially from adhering to a sectarian tradition which is increasing seen as a sign of unsophistication. Socially, changing marriage patterns, due to a relaxation of

the Catholic Church’s ban on mixed marriages in 1973, have led to greater integration between Catholics and Protestants. The number of mixed marriages in the Glasgow archdiocese involving a Catholic was 44 per cent of total marriages in 1977, whereas in nearby Paisley it was 48 per cent; these figures were 20 per cent higher than in 1966.74 Because of these economic and social changes sectarianism has been pushed to the margins of Scottish society, thriving mainly in the small communities of east and west Scotland where solidarity and conformity are easily enforced. A recent study of Orangeism in Scotland pointed to the fact that two—thirds of the membership of the

Orange Order was over 45 which suggests that younger men and women are turning away from sectarianism.” Indeed, in the major towns and cities religion plays little part in governing one’s life chances, or in finding a place to live, or, as we will argue below, in determining political affiliation. The degree to which sectarianism had become marginalised was effectively demonstrated in the failure of paramilitary groups of both sides of the conflict to export the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland across the water, in spite of the fact that the west of Scotland had strong historic links with Ulster, a large Catholic population, and a history of sectarian strife.

The decline of religious influence and the traditional patterns of leisure in favour of market-dictated recreational activities raised issues

for the authorities in Scotland and in the rest of Britain concerning social control. Previously, voluntary agencies, such as temperance societies, had performed a quasi-policing role over working—class activities. However, their importance declined markedly in the decades after 1945 and the lacuna which developed was filled by a massive increase in local and national state intervention in the social lives of workers and their families. Since the Second World War the 269

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

state has increasingly been responsible for the widespread provision of recreation, including community centres, youth and sports organisations, as well as traditional municipal facilities such as playing fields, public baths, and so on, in order to, as a circular from the Scottish Education Department put in 1946, avoid ‘juvenile delinquency and other social weaknesses’.76 By 1988, 65 per cent of voluntary sporting activities in Scotland were being taken by state—sponsored youth leaders and trained coaches.77 Additionally, legislation was passed outlawing much of the ‘rough’ street culture, indeed, criminalising it, which flourished even in the decades after the war, and making

aspects of it, such as gambling, legal and respectable. Although there remain pockets of resistance to state control and market forces in the form of alternative lifestyles, these are only subscribed to by a minority of people and gradually, like punk rock, become assimilated in time, in a highly modified manner, into mainstream culture. Education has also played an important part in this process of homogenising culture and ensuring greater influence of governing bodies in shaping social attitudes. The Education Acts of 1945 and 1946 did not represent a major departure in educational philosophy, although the school leaving age was increased to fifteen. The disparity between educational provision and attainment between junior and senior secondary schools continued to prevail; indeed, only 20 000 out of 50 000 school leavers in the former had actually completed the full three year course.78 The rising tide of juvenile delinquency perceived by the authorities to be the result of alienation and failure among young people, led to the introduction of major reforms in education. The ‘0’ level was introduced in 1962 to stem the tide of wastage and was successful in raising the number of pupils achieving certification; a phenomenon which led to a call for the abolition of the educational

divide and the establishment of a comprehensive schooling system.79 This was duly introduced in 1965 and, as Andrew MacPherson remarks, it involved the creation of a system based not on equality

of ‘opportunity, but of treatment; that is, giving all individuals the conditions in which they could continue to develop. And, because it was universal, it implied policies that could and should be directed at whole communities, and not just at individuals’.80 But in the inner cities the new schools fragmented along the lines of residence and class and less working-class children benefited from the universalist

philosophy. It was only in new towns and rural areas that the new system of schooling achieved the desired social mix. Interestingly, standardisation of conditions introduced as part of 270

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Working-Class Culture

comprehensive education provided the basis for greater solidarity

among teachers and this manifested itself in various industrial disputes in the 19805. However, although the system of education in Scotland was nominally designed to improve relations between different social classes and to create more socially responsible young adults, it still failed a large number of working-class children and through religious segregation maintains a level, if somewhat diminished, of sectarian rivalry. It also has created ladders of opportunity for ambitious and talented working-class children to attain higher qualifications and achieve professional status. In 1868, the class profile of students in

Scottish universities was one-sixth working—class; in 1961, it was a quarter, and by the year 2000 it is estimated that it will reach 40 per cent.81 This development, however, further entrenches the process of

fragmentation Within traditional industrial communities as highly qualified sons and daughters move elsewhere in search of employment and homes. With the disappearance or break~up of these traditional industrial communities and the fragmenting impact of changes in the economy and society, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak nowadays of the existence of a working-class culture. Indeed, the CPGB, in the light of these developments, was moved to declare in May 1989 that the ‘fact and language of the working class as the main agent of

political change is a thing of the past’.82 To the new left the mentalities of consumption and the culture of spectacle, rather than those associated with community and participation, had come to dominate

working-class consciousness. The power to consume was seen as more than anything else the social cement of late capitalism. For those unable or unwilling to be a part of the consumer society, the abyss of the underclass awaits with a never-ending cycle of poverty and social isolation. While in many ways this is true, it would be myopic to ignore the values of democracy, fairness and social justice which still influence in profound ways the social outlook of most workers. Moreover, fragmentation has not diminished the efforts of the authorities to control the activities of workers and their families; in many respects this has increased. As in previous eras, control is never absolute and is subject to a constant process of negotiation and re-negotiation among the controllers and the controlled. For this study the question which arises from the cursory discussion of

working-class culture is how far cultural fragmentation has mirrored changes in the nature of work and workplace relations?

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Chapter 28

THE END OF SKILL? WORK AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS IN SCOTLAND, 1945—19903

The shifting structures of the economy and the labour market, as well as working—class culture, were related to the pace of technological change. Normally, innovations in techniques and machinery will occur more extensively and rapidly in conditions of rising demand in an economy, and will decline or stagnate in conditions of falling demand. Scotland in the inter-war years experienced declining demand for capital goods and other products and this acted as a disincentive to producers to improve the methods and machinery of production. Thus, employers mainly concerned themselves with extending and refining existing machinery and techniques throughout industry. The post-Second World War economic boom, however, created a more optimistic climate among employers and investment in new technology grew rapidly. In the building industry, the process of prefabrication had developed so extensively that as early as 1947 the president of the

Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers (ASW) considered that many of the jobs could be done by ‘mere process workers’.83 As tanker

building began to dominate the output of the Clyde in the 19503 it called for flowline methods of construction using the maximum amount of prefabrication. This increased the demand for welding skills; a development which ‘led to the rapid decline in [the] numbers of riveters’ and the usurpation of some of the plater’s functions in rolling and shaping metal.84 The simplicity of tanker construction meant that there were few opportunities to exercise traditional skills.” The allied steel industry saw key processes fully automated in the 19608; this undermined the personalised system of steel-making which in the past had depended ‘on the closely guarded skill and judgement 272

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Work and Workplace Relations in Scotland

of the men who ran the furnaces’.86 Similarly, in the other great jewel in the industrial crown — the coal industry — there was a profound reorganisation of production methods with the introduction in the 19505 of power-loading machinery. The new machines stripped the coal off the face layer by layer and simultaneously loaded it on to an

armoured conveyor which followed along the coal face. Coal could now be cut on all shifts, whereas in the inter—war period only one shift cut and the others prepared and cleared. By the 19608 the

Armoured Flexible Cutter had been installed in all longwall faces in Britain.87 These innovations did nothing to halt the decline of heavy industry in Scotland; however, the shift from heavy to light manufacturing

industry also did nothing to enhance the skill base of Scottish workers. The branch plants established by incoming overseas firms placed emphasis on semi—skilled assembly work and a disproportionate small reliance on technical and skilled workers. Much of the work involved the hand preparation of printed circuit boards; a task seen as eminently suitable to women workers. The multinational firms which set up in Scotland in the 19605, and beyond, therefore, accelerated the deskilling processes already at work in the economy. These developments also affected technical workers, such as draughtsmen and designers, normally thought to be outside the industrial proletariat. In 1963 the Technical and Salaried Staff Association listed seven broad categories of technical worker. Ten years later this had grown to 468 different categories which is evidence of the degree to

which the division of labour had affected this once privileged group of ‘office’ workers.88 Technological change was also experienced by workers assumed to be outside the dynamic sectors of the economy. The jute industry of Dundee underwent a process of profound technological change in the years 1949—55 , with automatic machinery replacing manual labour and increasing the workload of weavers. By 1946 the labour force had shrunk to 13 000, or by two-thirds since 1929.89 An outlay of £ 1 1m in replacing obsolete spinning and weaving machinery by the employers was rewarded with a 32 per cent increase in productivity.” Farmwork was also becoming more mechanised as tractors replaced horse-drawn implements. In 1939 there were 6250 tractors in use on Scottish farms. By 1944 this had increased to 20 158 as wartime

demand and failing supplies of labour forced farmers to become more capital intensive.91 Another supposedly unskilled occupation to have undergone profound change after 1945 was dockwork. Formerly 273

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

it was based on the muscle power of a largely casual workforce, but the introduction in the 19605 of automatic methods of handling cargo and containerisation eliminated the physical aspects of dockwork and

reduced the numbers employed in the industry.92 The service sector too has witnessed changes incurred through new technological regimes which have revolutionalised working methods. The growth of large retail outlets reduced much of shopwork to filling shelves and running tills, and the increased used of prepackaged goods led to the abandonment of the six years grocery apprenticeship. As point of sale equipment became more sophisticated, even simple addition skills became redundant. However, as shop workers were progressively deskilled, the administration of their activities, and those of other workers, were also subject to greater specialisation

and sub-division of labour. Crompton and Jones have shown that clerical work is more easily deskilled than manual work since it is conducted largely through the medium of paper. This makes it easier to arrange and rearrange the office on the principles of scientific management.93 The advent of word processors and sophisticated computer software programs has reduced the skill content of the work performed by the majority of clerical workers, and this has done much to encourage functional specialisation. The effect is to narrow both the range and scope of clerical work and, at the same time, enhance the power of the organisation over the individual.94 Have then clerks become the modern white-collar proletariat? If we take a strictly Marxist definition of the working class as a section of society producing surplus value, then clerks do not easily fit the description, but as Richard Hyman points out, there are ‘significant affinities’ since the clerk ‘adds to the capitalist’s income by helping him reduce the costs of realizing surplus value’; thus, his work is a source of profit to the employer.” From this we can build a theory of

exploitation and deskilling round the historical and actual experience of the clerk. However, that does not mean to say that the conditions of service in a capitalist enterprise between clerks and manual workers are essentially the same. Historically, clerks have enjoyed access to a promotion ladder, which some sociologists argue is a key difference between both grades of labour,96 and have experienced greater job security and perks, such as different eating facilities. This View has become somewhat less convincing in recent years as new research influenced by the rise of women’s studies has shown that since 1951 the vast majority of low level clerical workers are female, many part-time, and are outside the sphere of promotion.97 Increasing 274

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Work and Workplace Relations in Scotland feminisation has led to a narrowing of income differentials between male white-collar workers and skilled manual workers and, in the period 1970—78, a definite falling behind of the former. Studies of the social origins of clerical workers also show an increasing bias towards those from working-class backgrounds. One study of London clerks showed that in 1935 one-in—three came from working-class backgrounds; twelve years later the comparable figure was one-in-two.98 This was also true of the new breed of technical

workers who emerged in the 19603 and 19705. Chris Smith found that craftsmen in the engineering industry ‘provided the main reservoir of recruits into the new technical occupations’ and that most ' h a d came through the apprenticeship system. Such training ensured that white-collar technical workers had a craft, rather than a professional mentality, instilling in them a sense of collective identity.99 Thus, not only is the idea of a career ladder in White-collar work a notional one, the process of family socialisation and workplace experience also produced collectivist mentalities amenable to the introduction of trade unions; something which will be discussed in more depth later.

The motives behind the introduction of new technologies were primarily economic as employers hoped that it would lower production costs and/or increase output. However, it also created opportunities to challenge skilled labour’s independence in the workplace and open

skilled work up to intrusion from semi- and unskilled workers. Thus, accompanying changes in technology were changes in the character of supervision and industrial discipline. Indeed, it could be argued that in the post-1945 era there took place a revolution in workplace ideas on authority and discipline. New systems of control were introduced as the older systems proved incompatible with greater bureaucracy and increased workers’ power. The power of the foreman was markedly reduced as the introduction of time measurement for jobs presumed that wages clerks and personnel departments in large firms took responsibility for the recruitment and payment of workers. Foremen were downgraded to supervisors responsible for discipline and with some control over the pace and intensity of the work rhythm, but no longer an indispensable part of the management structure of a firm. The decline of family ownership also reduced the scope for paternalistic control of labour. Although 34.8 per cent of Glasgow

firms surveyed in the 195 Os claimed to provide welfare amenities of some kind for their workers,100 the extension of local authority

housing and the welfare state neutralised the attractiveness of these 275

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

benefits for workers. Morris and Smyth found that workers in the

autocratic firm of Prinlaws, Kirkcaldy, preferred the ‘minimal level of welfare capitalism provided by new firms to the demanding involvement of paternalism’.101 The exercise of power by employers had to be achieved in other ways. Some employers did continue to use high levels of company welfarism as a means of promoting worker loyalty and non-unionism. Studies of manufacturing firms such as IBM and various financial institutions have shown how higher wages and certain fringe benefits, such as cheaper mortgages, have been used to manufacture such outcomes.102 More recently, incoming Japanese firms have placed all employees on staff conditions, which include a wide range of fringe

benefits; this does much to promote a greater sense of company loyalty.103 However, since 1945 the majority of firms have increasingly resorted to the wage packet as the best way of securing power over the workforce. The system of piece—rate payment which developed in the late nineteenth century and linked the level of wages to output, as well as encouraging individual rather than collective bargaining, was widespread throughout Scottish industry in the 1940s and 19505. Half the workforce in coalmining, including all face workers, were on piece—rate, and it was nearly universal in engineering.104 However, the emergence of full employment and a stronger trade union movement saw employers move away from piece-rate to a measured day work system (based on hourly rates and performance

standards established by work measurement techniques) first in coalmining in the 19605, and, later, in engineering, shipbuilding, clockwork and the motor car industry.105 In any case, the old piecerate system was only found to be effective in enlarging management’s power in times when a reserve pool of labour exerted a downward pressure on wages, conditions which did not exist in the long economic boom of the post—1945 years. They were also highly complex and the subject of recurring disputes over their interpretation. The declining usage of piece-rate payments produced two contradictory effects: firstly, it encouraged the growth of collective bargaining by establishing uniform national rates for all workers in an industry; and secondly, it increased the degree of supervision to which workers were subjected. As a representative worker in a leading car manu—

facturer put it: When you go back to the old piece work system the discipline comes from the shop floor. There was certainly a great deal less 276

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Work and Workplace Relations in Scotland supervision; but under the measured day work system the laws

are made at the top and there is supervision which I consider to be ‘policemen’ in many ways to carry out these laws. This is the vast difference between the old system and the new system.“ The motor car industry saw the number of supervisors increase from

three to run the plant along with a manager, superintendent and a foreman, to a supervisor for every 25 men. This was also the experience of the coal industry.107 The progressive deskilling of the labour force combined with a tightening of industrial discipline would suggest that Scottish workers

were rendered powerless to combat the assault on traditional skills and working practices by capital. However, as mentioned previously, the nature of the product, the structure of the market and the degree of worker resistance provide important barriers to deskilling. These barriers are more obvious in the area of skilled work, but they are also influential in occupations that are considered unskilled, or labelled as white-collar. In the shipbuilding industry, the historic reluctance of employers to add substantially to fixed overhead capital because of the vulnerability of the industry to shifts in world demand meant that they continued to rely on skill intensive methods of production. As late as 1978 a shop steward described the Robb Caledon yard in Aberdeen as an ‘industrial museum’, adding, ‘we have a shaping machine dated 1910, a borer that no one knows the age of

and a pipe—bending machine that was taken as reparations in 1918 from the Germans’.108 Some years earlier a report by the SEF noted that:

The present organisation of shipyard labour so far as skilled trades are concerned, and the work that each trade may undertake, is largely based on the pattern set when iron and, later, steel ships were first built in this country.” Where management was successful in introducing new machinery and working methods, such as the multiple punch and welding, they were appropriated by the boilermakers. Similarly, the unstandardised nature of much engineering work meant that new techniques were inoperable in many establishments. Moreover, in the modern and increasingly computerised sector of the economy research has shown that workers have greater freedom to organise their work and the speed at which it is performed. Computerisation has increased the 277

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

demand for high level skills in the areas of programming and systems analysis, as well as in management information systems.‘10 Another consideration to take into account is that while techno-

logical change can result in the destruction of traditional skills, at the same time, it can also change the nature of existing skills, or, indeed, create new ones. In coalmining progressive technical change made the old collier’s skills redundant, but it also created a greater demand for skilled maintenance staff and electricians. In 1957 maintenance craftsmen accounted for 6 per cent of the total mining workforce in Great Britain; by 1981 the figure had increased to 20 per cent.111 In the highly automated electronics industry there has been an appreciable rise in the level of skill; a phenomenon which poses a major threat to the jobs of semi-skilled workers as hand preparation of

printed circuit boards declines sharply.112 Therefore, the impact of technological change can be contradictory and does not necessarily presume an irresistible move in the direction of a defenceless and deskilled proletariat of the kind envisaged by Braverman and others.113 However, what is clear from the discussion is that traditional craft skills have disappeared over the course of the twentieth century and with them the existence of a culture and system of values to which they gave rise. The independent craftsman symbolised in the owner—

ship of tools, the extensive system of workplace rituals and ceremonies, which served to emphasise his status in the workplace and underpin the values of craft pride and solidarity, disappeared with the arrival of the stopwatch, quality control, planning offices and modern technology. In his place emerged the semi-skilled assembly worker and the technician, more specialised and subject to greater managerial discipline. Other workers outside the realm of skilled work also experienced the passing of established working habits and customs, indeed, a whole way of life. The National Dock Labour Scheme and the decline in port transport destroyed the culture and community of dockworkers as family employment networks disappeared. The same point could also be made in respect of mining com-

munities in the 19805 in Scotland. The disappearance of traditional working-class communities, however, should not be seen as providing justification for nostalgic longings for the ‘old days’. The ownership of skill was always exclusive and sectional. Outsiders such as women and the Irish were always denied access to apprenticeships through some form or other of trade practice. Moreover, deskilling can result in increased opportunities for upward mobility, if measured in terms of the wage bargain, for those workers classed as unskilled. Although 278

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Work and Workplace Relations in Scotland specific figures for Scotland do not exist to any great extent, within

a British context the twentieth century has witnessed a narrowing of wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers. Between 1935 and 1955 average wages for unskilled workers increased by 337 per cent over their 1935 level, While the corresponding increase for skilled workers was 319 per cent. From the 19605 onwards differentials further narrowed; this was particularly marked in the 1970s due to the egalitarian effects of incomes policies.114 The main wages divide nowadays is between men and women rather than between skilled and unskilled. In 1981, the average earnings of a working woman in Scotland was 60—62 per cent of the male average. In 1991 the gap had slightly narrowed to 68.1 per cent; a figure, however, lower than that for England and Wales, where the differential was 71 per cent.“5 The magnitude of these changes in the labour market, in the nature and distribution of skills, and the social world of the worker, has had, as one might expect, highly important consequences for the character and development of trade unionism in Scotland since 1945. The question arises as to how far they influenced the growth in union membership and whether this had any impact on the level

of labour militancy in Scotland.

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Chapter 29

THE DEMISE OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE RISE OF WHITE-COLLAR UNIONS I N SCOTLAND, 1945—19905

The inter—war years had witnessed important changes in the nature

of the trade union movement in Scotland. Amalgamations with English unions destroyed the insularity and nationalism of trade unions north of the border. By 1947 only 15.1 per cent of trade unionists in Scotland were members of exclusively Scottish unions

and only one member of the General Council of the STUC represented a Scottish—based union; whereas in 1897 only one member of the Parliamentary Committee had represented a British union.“ Amalgamation also led to the disappearance of smaller organisations, and by 1947 the largest seventeen unions accounted for over 70 per cent of members, making for higher levels of concentration in Scotland than that for the UK as a Whole. Occupationally, the bulk of these union members were in 1947 located in coalmining, construction, metals and machines, transport, including the railways, and general labouring. The high representation of traditionally

male-dominated occupations in the Scottish labour movement emphasised the sexual division of labour in the workplace. Although there was a modest increase in the number of women trade unionists in Scotland between 1924 and 1947, female members still only accounted for 18.1 per cent of the total number at the latter date.117 However, since 1947 Scottish trade unionism has undergone a transition in keeping with that taking place in the wider economy and society.

The chief characteristics of this process of transition are: firstly, an increase in white-collar and a decline in industrial trade unionism; secondly, an expansion in general unions at the expense of those based on occupation; and lastly, an expansion in the number of women 280

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions becoming union members. Unfortunately, given the level of union amalgamation taking place since 1945, accurate density figures are not available separately for Scotland. In the absence of such data, affiliations to the STUC have been used as the best way of estimating the number of trade unionists in Scotland. On this basis Laurie Hunter has estimated that in 1951 there were

85 unions affiliated to the STUC with a combined membership of 730 000; by 1980 the number of unions had fallen to 73, while the

total membership had increased to 1 070 000. The degree of union concentration had become even more marked with eleven unions accounting for over 71 per cent of the total membership in Scotland.118 Within this totality there was a massive shift in the occupational

composition of the membership. In 1960 the industrial section of the STUC (mining and quarrying, railways, transport, metals and

machines, construction) accounted for 57 per cent of the total affiliated membership, while the service sector (distributive trades, public employees and general workers) contained 26 per cent. Ten years later the industrial section had declined to 48 per cent, while the service section grew to 42 per cent, in spite of an alteration in classification. By 1980 sections 8 and 9 (civil and public servants and non-manual workers) alone were responsible for 45 per cent of the STUC’s affiliated membership, and five years later the figure reached 51 per cent.119 The rise in the representation of non-manual workers was partly due

to the increase in the organisation of female workers in Scotland. From accounting for 18.8 per cent of total STUC membership in 1951, the number of affiliated female members grew to 35.2 per cent in 1979.120 By the late 19705, 40 per cent of female workers in Scotland were union members, representing a higher organised density than women in England had achieved.121 The broad changes in the occupational and gender profile of trade unionism in Scotland raise further questions regarding the motive forces behind such a transformation, and how the decline of craft and/or manual unions and the rise of white—collar organisations has altered the character of the labour movement north of the border. In

addressing the first, it is obvious that the economic and technological changes discussed above are crucial as they significantly altered the nature of white-collar work and created the objective conditions for an increase in trade union membership. However, although the long-

term conditions for union growth in the service sector undoubtedly existed, the realisation was problematic. During the inter—war years white—collar trade unionism was negligible, and even in the 19403

281

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

and 1950s, and in spite of favourable union legislation, organisation of the service sector moved at a snail’s pace. Thus, short-term factors must be explored before the question of union growth among whitecollar workers can be resolved. As one might expect, it was in the public sector that trade unionism

first gained a foothold, but in the decade 1968—78 the growth in the organisation of white—collar workers exploded in all sectors. By 1978 the number of white-collar trade unionists in Britain increased by two million; a two-thirds increase on the 1968 figure.122 In Scotland, the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO)

saw its affiliated membership of the STUC grow from 24 409 in 1969 to 62043 in 1979 and the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff (ASTMS) increase from 9036 to 32 629 over the same period.123 In the private sector, the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU) in 1968 became the first white-collar union to gain national recognition independently of government help and represented around 71 per cent of banking workers in Scotland.124 For the other white-collar unions the state was crucial to the creation of a climate of expansion. The setting up of the Donovan Commission in 1965 and the subsequent extension of collective bargaining rights which followed its recommendation, along with the Industrial

Relations Act of 1971 and the Employment Protection Act of 1975, were instrumental in securing recognition and bargaining rights for white-collar workers. Economic stimulus was also important. Historically high levels of inflation as well as prices and incomes policies in the 1960s and 19708 led to an erosion of white-collar workers’ real wages and this led them to join trade unions in increasing numbers to protect their standard of living. The success of the unions in achieving this goal simply reinforced the process. However,

this raises the question of class consciousness. Did the growth of union membership among white-collar workers alter the character of trade unionism in Scotland to any significant degree? Was it a force for moderation or militancy? Before addressing these issues, it is important to examine the

gradual demise of craft-based industrial unionism in order to decide whether, as the rising aspirations and interests of white—collar workers increasingly came to dominate its outlook, the Scottish labour movement experienced a sea change in attitude and ethos. As we have seen in previous chapters, the position of the skilled male Protestant trade unionist in industry was entrenched. It was his interests and values which lay at the core of the concerns of the labour movement north

282

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions of the border. Although inroads into the hegemony of the skilled

workers were made by both the unskilled and women during the inter-war years, craft unionism displayed a dogged resistance in the post-1945 decades to the forces of change and transformation. It

took a very long time for craft workers to relinquish their control of the leadership of the Scottish labour movement. In the struggle to preserve craft privilege, labour leaders employed a variety of strategies, varying from sectionalism, to sectarianism, to political influence; sometimes in a subtle, and sometimes in a crude manner, but always in an effective way. In the shipbuilding industry unions employed an industrial strategy based around control of the labour process to protect their respective

trades from the pressures of skill dilution. The traditional belief among the labour force that once work was lost it would be lost forever led to demarcation disputes in the 19505 and 19605. Platers and burners

fought with each other to control flame-cutting and planing mach-

inery and, later, these disputes extended to computerised cutting heads.125 Welders restricted entry to the trade and refused to allow unemployed members of other shipbuilding trades to operate welding equipment.126 Boilermakers used apprenticeship and separate agree— ments governing their terms of employment to maintain differentials with other shipyard trades. These differentials were maintained even during the famous 1972 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in. Payments to those taking part in the work-in were made on the basis of take home pay prior to taking industrial action.127 Sectional strategies

such as these, however, failed as shipyard after shipyard closed in the 19705 and 19805. But other craft unions followed the example of the Boilermakers. In the building industry the ASW opposed the formation of an industrial union for all construction workers, defeating a resolution at its 1959 annual conference ‘overwhelmingly’ on this question. The woodworkers naively believed that the organisational strength of the union and the manual dexterity of the woodworker would cushion it against the forces of change.128 Like the Shipbuilders, they were severely disappointed. Religion also played a part in maintaining craft exclusiveness. Alex Ferry, later president of the AEU, recalled, as a young Catholic male in the 1940s, that:

It was still much more difficult for a RC to be employed in the craft trade than it was for others. . . .I discovered that myself when I was trying to find an apprenticeship. The employer. . . 283

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

would ask you which school you had gone to . . . if you tried to cover it up, you were then asked about the Boy Scouts and the Boys’ Brigade. . . . Notwithstanding that, I managed to get an apprenticeship in one of the less desirable engineering compa—

nies in Clydebank. . . . when I moved into the Singer Sewing Machine Co. in 1954 . . . the effects of discrimination were even more glaring. The tool room, where I was, employed around

300 people. . . You could have counted the Catholics on the digits of your two hands and, in the shop in which I worked, I was the only Catholic.129

The power of the foreman to hire and fire, as well as the close—knit occupational networks, made it possible to use religion to police the boundaries of skill well into the post-Second World War era. However, this brand of exclusionism broke down in the 19605 as skill shortages emerged and the number of religiously-blind foreign firms setting-up in Scotland began to increase. A more subtle way of preserving the traditions of craft unionism was through occupational transfer. Large numbers of redundant engineering and shipbuilding workers found their way into car plants

and began to organise themselves around craft principles. This led to mounting industrial unrest in the 19605 as traditionally autonomous workers attempted to adapt to the routinised demands of assemblyline production.130 Between 1963 and 1969 there were 300 stoppages in the car industry in Scotland.131 Although the number of disputes fell in the 1970s, the experience of the car industry is a potent example of the difficulties created by cultural readjustment on the part of skilled workers and the way patterns of industrial organisation were transferred from a decaying industry to a rising one. By these means

craft attitudes were, at least for a time, kept alive in a totally different working environment. Yet another way of sustaining the craft culture and its material base was through influencing government policy, particularly with concensus-minded governments. Trade union policies regarding min— imum wage fixing, legal immunities, health and safety standards, and so on, have often needed government support in the past; thus it could be argued that the post-1945 era was little different in regard to state and labour relations. However, winning state assistance for trade union economic and social policies was allied to the continued support by the government for the staple industries in which most of the craft unions were to be found. At the local level, Labour politicians, 284

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions

b y ensuring that nationally agreed wage rates and conditions were implemented on council contracts and that non-union firms were denied work, also played a significant part in preserving the craft culture. However, the main vehicle for providing the craft culture with an influential voice in the policy-making circles of the local and national state has been the STUC and its General Council. Since its involvement in the early experiments of the 1930s in corporatism, the relationship with the STUC and the state has grown. James Craigen estimated that b y 1973 well over 1500 trade unionists were serving on boards and committees as diverse as the Scottish Postal Board, the Parole Board for Scotland, and the Consultative Committee for Edinburgh Airport, as well as the main government committees, such as the National Economic Development Council.132 The enhanced economic and social role of the STUC brought trade unions leaders into closer contact with leading civil servants and politicians, and their co-operation and views on the running of the economy were increasingly sought b y governments. Obviously, those unions domi—

nating the General Council of the STUC were in a stronger position to influence government policy than those outside it, particularly in regard to the question of state subsidies to failing industries. For most of the twentieth century the General Council has been dominated by the numerically superior craft/industrial unions, and

even in the changing conditions of employment which emerged after 1945, the skilled men’s unions were able to maintain their power base within the STUC, as Table 29.1 shows. TABLE 29.1 Occupational Structure of the General Council of the STUC at selected dates Occupational Group

1960

1970

1980

1985

No. %

No. %

No. %

No. %

Skilled

4

40

4

27

7

35

5

21

Manual

3

30

5

33

8

40

11

46

White collar Professional

3 0

30 00

3 3

20 20

1 4

5 20

2 6

8 25

Total

10 100

15 100

20 100

24 100

Source: S T U C , Annual Reports ( 1 9 6 0 , 1970, 1 9 8 0 , 1 9 8 5 ) .

285

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

Although the influence of the skilled workers’ organisations has undoubtedly declined since 1960, it must be remembered that in recent years the numerically larger general unions, such as the TGWU, have, due to mergers with craft unions, contained skilled sections. The Boilermakers, for example, are now part of the General Municipal and Boilermakers’ Union and through it are still able to exercise an influence, albeit a reduced one, on the wider movement. However,

it is clear that, until the 19805 when the Thatcher government fundamentally altered the relationship between the unions and the state, the interests of the skilled workers were still paramount within the labour movement in Scotland and that enabled them to win reprieve after reprieve for their ailing industries from successive Labour and Tory governments. The final factor in delaying the decline of the craft culture has been the ability of male trade unionists to resist successfully: firstly, to resist the encroachment of female labour into the realm of skilled work; and secondly, to marginalise women’s issues within the labour movement and to discourage them from taking an active part in the running of the unions in which they form a substantial majority. The labelling of women’s work as unskilled and of lower value than that performed by a man has traditionally been used by employers and trade unions to justify keeping women in a subordinate and less well paid position in the workplace. Little has happened to alter this

perception in the decades after 1945. The Equal Pay Act of 1975 was passed to give women and men doing the same, or broadly similar, work the same level of reward; however, this has done little to improve the economic position of women. It has proven very difficult

in job evaluation schemes to show that men and women are doing like work, and then there is the question of evasion and subterfuge by

employers. Perhaps, it is because of this that cases under the legislation in Scotland fell quite dramatically from 199 in 1976 to just 19 in 1978.133 Women might have been able to address these inequalities in the

workplace had they been in more influential positions within the labour movement. However, statistics show that while their mem— bership of trade unions grew in the decades after 1945, this has not brought a commensurate increase in influence. According to Esther Brietenbach, in 1979 over 40 per cent of women workers were members of trade unions in Scotland, compared to just under 38 per cent for Great Britain, and they accounted for 35.2 per cent of STUC membership, compared to 28.4 per cent for the TUC; whereas in 286

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions 1951 the respective Scottish figures were only 21.0 and 18.8.134 During this period only two women served on the General Council of the STUC — Louise Stein (1955—57) and Elizabeth McIntyre as chairperson in 1973 — a figure which compared unfavourably to the 19305 when, in spite of lower levels of membership, three women — Agnes Gilroy (1932—34), Bell Jordan (1933—42) and Isobel Binnie (1935—36) — were members of the Council.135 The situation at individual union level was no better. Although females in the health service union — COHSE — in Scotland in 1981 accounted for 81 per cent of total membership, only 27.6 per cent of branch secretaries were women. The National Union of Public Employees had 65 per cent of members who were female, yet only 4.4 per cent of branch secretaries and 25 per cent of shop stewards fell into this category. Ironically, in the engineering union — the AEEU — women have fared slightly better: 3.39 per cent of branch secretaries are female, while women only account for 13.8 per cent of the members.136 A decade later things had changed little in spite of more union amalgamations

and a greater level of awareness among women regarding gender issues. Although women made up 61.2 per cent of the membership of NALGO only 38.7 per cent of the union’s elected officers were female, and that was fairly typical of all the large unions, with the exception of the TGWU and the shop workers’ union — USDAW These organisations represented the nadir and the peak of female representation in the ranks of elected officials.137

Thus, the ethos of the Scottish labour movement remains deeply patriarchal and shifts in the occupational profile of the labour market have done little to alter this. The idea that a woman’s place is in the home, although less compelling than formerly, is still a strong and pervasive one in Scottish society. This was demonstrated during the miners’ strike of 1984 in which women were supposedly accorded an important role in maintaining solidarity. However, oral accounts of the strike suggest that involvement in the dispute beyond ‘running bingo nights’ and working in ‘the soup kitchen’ was all that was acceptable to the men. As two wives of Dysart miners put it: Some jist didnae want women around — they had the attitude

that it was OK for us to be in the strike centre washing dishes and making meals — but let them do the ‘men’s work’. . . . a lot of them were happy to see women involved, as long as the women were doing things the men’s way and for the men’s

benefit. But as soon as we started wanting to do things for 287

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

ourselves . . . they didnae really like that very much. . . . They didnae like us doing things without their permission. . . . men [were] . . . wanting the women to become involved as long as it

wasn’t their wives because it was going to rock the domestic boat.138

By marginalising women’s issues and keeping them, even in disputes that involved whole communities, in a subordinate position, the maledominated trade unions in Scotland were able to keep the focus of industrial relations on the narrow concerns of craft and related industrial workers. But what kind of system of industrial relations did the largely misogynist Scottish labour movement produce in the post-war decades? It has to be appreciated that the tempo of industrial relations was governed to a large extent by the profound restructuring of the Scottish economy and social life which took place after 1945. The decline of staple industries and working—class communities, and the impact this had on the mentalities of craft and other industrial workers, created a mood of bitterness and led to high levels of indus— trial conflict. According to Laurie Hunter, during the period 1952 to 1980, the number of industrial stoppages in Scotland was twice the UK rate, the workers involved averaged about 40 per cent above the UK rate, and working days lost about 55 per cent above.‘39 More disputes occurred in the Scottish coalfields in the 1960s than in any other district of the NCB, with the exception of South Wales and Yorkshire.140 Strike activity, as measured by working days lost, was running at a much higher level in manufacturing industry than elsewhere. TABLE 29.2 Working days lost in strikes per 1000 employees in Scotland,

1975—78 and 1980—82 Annual averages

1975—78

1980—82

All industries

361

450

Manufacturing

908

1152

88

136

Non-manufacturing

Source: J. MacInnes, ‘Economic Restructuring Relevant to Industrial Relations in Scotland’, Centre for Urban and Regional Research, University of Glasgow, Discussion Paper 2b (1987), p. 50.

What caused this eruption in strike activity? The answer lies in a combination of local factors, associated with worker fears, values 288

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions and location, and national ones, associated with government economic policies and labour market restructuring. Skilled workers, particularly in the integrated heavy industries of the west of Scotland, had developed a set of industrial attitudes towards capital forged b y decades of cyclical unemployment, economic hardship and workplace conflict. These experiences created a climate of suspicion and mutual loathing between the two sides of industry. Even during the post-war boom in the shipbuilding industry men were still kept on two hours’ notice.141 Oliver Blanford, the managing director of Fairfields shipyard in the 19605, commented that: If you look at the areas of British industry where there is conflict, it is car-making, shipbuilding, and coal, and they are all industries that fired their people every so often. If people have a long history of casual employment they are not loyal and cannot be expected to be loyal to their employer.142 Insecurity of employment also led to the development of a set of mentalities which can loosely be described as egalitarian. It has been noted that workers on Clydeside have been historically less interested in the level of absolute wages and more in the proportion of wages to profits. They have also been very concerned as to the distribution of earnings between groups of workers, particularly as regards regional equity. This, as Sydney Checkland remarked, meant that Glasgow could offer ‘no advantage in terms of labour costs upon which to build new firms and jobs’.143 A more recent study of one of the major overseas employers in Scotland showed that, in spite of the management dividing the labour force into permanent and temporary workers, the core workers ‘articulated a powerful litany of complaints at the unfair way in which they saw the temps being treated inside [the factory]’. For Alan McKinlay and Phil Taylor the ‘evidence

amounted to an impressive reassertion of the collective consciousness which can develop at the point of production amongst workers who

are contractually divided but whose shared work experience generates precisely that consciousness’.144 The solidarities which emerged from these employment insecurities

were underscored by residential patterns. According to Robertson’s analysis of one Clydeside firm in the 195 Os, one-third of the workers lived ‘on the job’, and one-half lived close—by; only about one-third lived on the opposite side of the river to that of their place of employment!“ Moreover, the prevalence of public sector housing 289

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945-19905

and/or rent-controlled private accommodation, and the low levels of owner occupation in Scotland provided a source of shared grievance over housing conditions; while, at the same time, it afforded widespread community support for those in conflict with employers or the state. There were also fewer financial considerations to take on board when deciding whether to opt for industrial action. However, notions of equality were not only a response to traditional experiences of job insecurity, or the result of community solidarities; they also owed something to the influence of socialist ideology. Communist Party and other left-wing groups’ infiltration of the official labour movement after the Second World War did not meet with the same level of hostility from trade unions as it had in the 19203 and 19305. Abe Moffat became the first communist president of the Scottish miners; Mick McGahey was an important figure in the NUM during the national strikes of the 19705 and early 19808; and jimmy Reid and James Airlie were prominent leaders of the famous UCS work-in in 1973. Communist cadres were established in most industrial concerns, even in American-owned companies, such as Timex, in the decades after 1945. High infiltration levels were made possible because the war and the economic boom which followed its end strengthened shop steward power. Between 1947 and 1961 the density of shop stewards in British engineering increased by 50 per cent, and in dockwork workplace organisation was said to have replaced official unionism as the medium of worker/employer relations.146 The foundation of the power of the shop stewards lay in the wage/effort bargain and the complicated systems of wage calculation. Even in clockwork Where national bargaining structures existed, adjusting the complicated wage system of port transport, dealing with manning levels, shift work arrangements and other employment questions necessitated the erection of local bargaining structures which unconsciously augmented the importance of shop stewards.147 The leverage this gave to militants within the labour movement to produce recurring conflicts with capital was extremely powerful and led to the wave of strike actions in the 19603 and 19705, which affected many white-collar workers as well as those in manufacturing.

Even in American—owned plants in Scotland in the years 1960—69 there was a preponderance to strike ‘which was markedly worse . . . than that of indigenous firms’.148 Employers reacted to the growth of shopfloor militancy by trying to alter the nature of the bargaining process. Centralised bargaining within the workplace, as advocated by the 1968 Donovan Commission, 290

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions was promoted and led to a fourfold expansion in the number of

personnel specialists in industry in the 19605 and 1970s and a spectacular growth in the number of shop stewards. As part of this process of formalisation of bargaining, the measured working day was introduced in coalmining in 1965, and extended to other areas of industry, such as car-making, in the period 1967 to 1972; and later,

in shipbuilding through the agreement between the nationalised British Shipbuilders and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering

Unions. Although opposed by key sections of the industrial workforce, such as face workers in coalmining and boilermakers in shipbuild— ing,149 national wage agreements, by bolstering the leadership against the rank—and-file, led to a marked reduction in the number of wildcat strikes, which was exactly the intention of the Donovan Commission. However, as Ashworth points out, in his study of the post-1945 coal industry, although the national power loading agreement of 1965 led to greater uniformity of wages in the industry and reduced the

number of pit level strikes, it also ensured that when they occurred in future ‘strikes would be bigger’. Moreover, in industries where formalisation of bargaining procedures had gone furthest, the record in terms of strikes was far worse than in other industries in the 19708.150

This is exactly what happened as government attempts at planning the economy in the 19603 and the anti-inflationary strategies of the state in the 19705 led to the use of incomes policies as substitutes for free collective bargaining. Corporatist strategies had the effect of politicising industrial relations in a way that led to recurring crises in the state and the fall of the Heath government in 1975 and the Labour

government in 1979. Faced with overt challenges from rank-and-file activists to incomes policies, the state attempted to shackle protest through the introduction of anti-union legislation; a strategy which only further politicised workers and raised the profile of the left-wing of the labour movement. In 1969 a series of one—day national stoppages led to Labour’s abandonment of plans to reform industrial relations as encompassed in the policy document In Place of Strife (1968). Edward Heath’s plans to do the same through the Industrial Relations Bill also led to mass industrial action in the period 1970—71. A decade of intermittent large-scale labour protest and internecine industrial warfare culminated in the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978—79 which saw the fall of the Callaghan government and the election of the Conservatives later that year. The new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and her close adviser, 291

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

Sir Keith Joseph, concluded that the experience of the 19705 had

shown that the political cost of running the economy through incomes policies was too high; they signally failed to deliver low inflation and economic growth, and only embittered employer/employee relations. An alternative strategy based on exposing the economy to the full blast of market forces and pruning back government spending provided, it was thought, a surer means of bringing order to an anarchic system of industrial relations. Feather-bedding subsidies to ailing industrial giants, such as coal and steel, were to be phased out as part

of this general shake out of British industry. The Tories hoped that this would induce a new sense of realism in industry and force trade unions to accept the competitive rate for the job, rather than a rate established through the use of their monopoly power — at a peak in 1979.151 Thus, the defeat of the trade unions was central to the Thatcher government’s anti-inflation strategy. Mass unemployment and anti-union legislation were to be the chosen weapons in this political struggle for sound money. An impressive array of legislation aimed at crippling the effectiveness of trade unions was passed between 1980 and 1984. The Employ-

ment Acts of 1980 and 1982 effectively ended the closed shop in all firms where less than 80 per cent of the workforce favoured com— pulsory union membership; secondary picketing and sympathy strikes were outlawed; and the 1984 Trade Union Act provided for secret

ballots before industrial action and introduced a contracting-in system of affiliation to the Labour Party. While the state was effectively shackling the trade unions, market forces and falling government expenditure were forcing up the level of unemployment. During the period 1980—81 over a million jobs were lost in the manufacturing industry in Britain. The impact of mass unemployment and government legislation had the desired effect. In the years 1978-80 an average of 1 874 000 working days were lost in Scotland through industrial disputes; however, during the first half of 1981 this had fallen to 240 000 per year.”2 In American plants based in Scotland four out of five experienced no industrial stoppages in the period 1979—83, and only 0.09 per cent of working days were lost in strike action in 1983.153 In Britain as a whole the number of trade unionists fell from 13m, or 54 per cent of the employed workforce, to 11m, or 46.7 per cent, in 1985, and to 42 per cent in 1992, while the proportion of workplaces with recognised trade unions declined from 64 per cent in 1978 to 53 per cent in 1992.154 This began a downward trend until in 1997 the number of trade unionists in Britain was less than 7m, with most of them located in the public sector. 292

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions

Government hostility towards trade unions and unemployment, however, cannot solely account for the fall in membership and the decline of labour militancy. Bill Jordan, president of the AEU, commented in July 1987 that ‘Most of the government’s union legislation has been ignored by a majority of employers’.155 Therefore, other factors have to be taken into account when trying to explain the experience of the labour movement during the Thatcher years. Changes in the labour market, which have led to a massive rise in the number of part-time workers, who see trade unions as irrelevant to their situation, have been perhaps more significant than legislation in

determining the level of membership. Also the invasion of Scottish manufacturing industry by overseas firms has led to the formation of

a considerable number of non-union establishments, particularly in the high-tech electronics sector, or single union agreements. Sproull and MacInnes’ survey of industrial relations in the Scottish electronics industry in 1987 found that smaller, newly established plants and those located in new towns were more likely to be anti-union than

those of greater longevity situated in urban conurbations. Overall, two-thirds of electronics plants in Scotland did not recognise unions; however, in small plants with less than fifty employees the figure

increased to one—in-ten, while in plants with 500 or more workers seven out of ten firms afforded recognition.”6 This experience is

borne out by national studies. A survey carried out by Cranfield Price Waterhouse in 1992 showed that seven out of ten employers with over 200 employees continued to negotiate with unions, while in small workplaces of less than 25 workers ‘union recognition has collapsed’.”7 Location was also relevant to the question of union recognition. John Leopold found that 90 per cent of firms in Cumbernauld and East Kilbride had no non-manual employees in a union and nearly two-thirds had no manual unionised employees. Where unions are recognised ‘this is, in most cases, on the basis of single union deals only’.158 Increasingly, the workers in the service sector and in ‘Silicon glen’ electronics industries are becoming devoid of union representation. Identification with the firm is assiduously being cultivated

through various psychological screening programmes. One study of the Nissan plant in the north east of England claimed that ‘shopfloor workers will [only] be appointed after rigorous testing, a part of which will be to identify those unsuitable for employment because of their trade union affiliations or sympathies’.”9 A similar procedure appears to have been employed in Scotland at semi-conductor plants since surveys in 1987 could find no evidence of union membership, and 293

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

this was underscored by a more recent study of the electronics sector which showed that employment growth was concentrated in the non-union sector, thus, ‘further diluting industry density levels’.160

While the growing number of non-union establishments allied to the continued existence of high levels of unemployment has considerably weakened the labour movement, its approach to industrial relations has also fundamentally changed as the organised working

class has become increasingly to be found in white-collar occupations, particularly in the state sector. The frequent clashes between whitecollar organisations and their employers throughout decades of the 19705, 19805 and 1990s, tended to be located in the areas of education and health. Although bitterly contested, these disputes did not exhibit the same levels of conflict that were witnessed in, say, the miners’ strike of 1984, as the tactics and industrial strategy of the white-collar unions have been qualitatively different from those adopted by manual unions. Much of this can be put down to the fact that they share membership of the union with those nominally in superior positions, as well as to the high incidence of home ownership among those in white—collar occupations. These factors provided powerful restraints on industrial action which few manual workers in Scotland have had to face. The last rearguard action by the old working class, which demonstrated so effectively and vividly the difference between manual and non-manual unions, was the afore-

mentioned bitter struggle of the miners in 1984. That dispute was to prove the last dying scream of the old proletarian mentality. The defeat of the miners cleared the way for a metamorphosis in trade union organisation and in the conduct of strikes. As a result, manufacturing industry is no longer the pre-eminent site of workplace conflict; more and more it is the public sector, particularly in education, where the arena of struggle is to be found. Indeed, of the amazingly low figure of 425 800 working days lost in the UK as a result of industrial stoppages in 1996, 152 700, or 32 per cent, were lost in the education sector alone.161 However, since the defeat of the miners in the 1984, few disputes of any size or consequence have occurred in Britain, in spite of rising

frustration with wage settlements in the public sector, whether among blue- or white-collar workers. The acceptance of flexible labour markets, with their chronic job insecurity and low wages, by the present Labour government can only intensify these trends and actively hamper the trade union movement in its efforts to recruit

new members in hitherto weakly organised sectors of the economy. 294

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Demise of Craft Unionism and Rise of White-Collar Unions Therefore, in a relatively short space of time, the Scottish working class went from being one of the most highly organised working classes in the history of industrial capitalism, to a fragmented one as yet barely able to defend its economic and political interests. This was bound up with the collapse of the male, Protestant craft culture, which although narrow and sectional, exhibited a highly developed sense of solidarity and community. The newly dominant service sector and white—collar unions, with their socially diverse working constituencies, cannot hope to forge such intense solidarities among their members; a situation which has obvious and important political consequences. The concerns to which organised labour addressed itself to in the immediate post-war decades were those bound up with wealth redistribution and full employment. The gradual demise of skilled workers since 1945 and their replacement by non-manual labour poses several important questions: firstly, did the growth of white-collar unionism change the social priorities of the labour movement; secondly, has it led to a remaking of the Labour Party’s political ethos; and finally, has it radically redrawn the landscape of political affiliations north of the border?

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Chapter 30

LABOUR AND NATIONALISM: WORKING-CLASS POLITICS IN SCOTLAND, 1945—19905

One of the historical ironies of the second half of the twentieth cen— tury has been that as the working class in Scotland has fragmented

along occupational and cultural lines these divisions have had little impact on electoral behaviour. Indeed, since 1929, when it won a majority of Scottish parliamentary seats for the first time, Labour has turned Scotland into fiefdom. On only three occasions, in 1931, 1935 and 1955, has the party failed to win a majority of seats in Scotland. Indeed, in the 19705, 19805 and early 19905 the predisposition to vote Labour led to the development of significant discontinuities between the electoral behaviour of Scottish workers and those in the rest of Britain. Until then the distribution of votes between the main parties was consistent and in keeping with other parts of Britain; a convergence of political allegiances which allowed political commentators in the 19605 to claim that:

Today politics in the UK is greatly simplified by the absence of major cleavages along the lines of ethnic groups, language or religion. . . . The unimportance of these differences in politics is

demonstrated by the failure of the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties to secure representation in Parliament.162

However, from 1974 manual workers in Scotland increasingly showed themselves to be out of step with their English counterparts as Table 30.1 shows. The marked cleavage between Scottish and English workers’ political allegiances can partly be explained by reference to existing socio— economic conditions. As we have seen, since the end of the Second 296

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Working-Class Politics in Scotland World War, Scotland, because of structural economic problems, has

become more dependent on the state than other parts of the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland. This has reflected itself in employment patterns and housing tenure, as well as in the large proportion of the Scottish population living on state benefit. Thus, when the Tories took office in 1979, committed to rolling back the frontiers of the state and reducing public expenditure, it was to be expected that their free market values would clash with the deeply entrenched collectivism of Scottish society, which Labour had so assiduously cultivated since its foundation. TABLE 30.1 Percentage of Conservative support in England and Scotland among manual workers, 1974—1992: random sample

Skilled manual Semi-skilled and unskilled

England

Scotland

Work group

1974 1979 1992

1974

1979

1992

14

17

18

25

36

40

12

21

15

23

33

31

Source: A. Brown, et (11., Politics and Society in Scotland (1996), pp. 147, 149.

However, it would appear that surveys into social attitudes in Scotland would show the Scottish workers to be no more concerned over

issues such as social welfare, unemployment and state intervention in the economy, than workers south of the border.163 The difference between the two is essentially political, something which is rooted in national perceptions of Conservatism. The more entrenched the Conservatives became in support of the Union, the more anti—European they became, the more they were viewed in Scotland as the party of English nationalism. It was interesting that the flag-waving patriotism of the Falkland War in 1982 failed to provoke much more than a lukewarm response in Scotland.“4 Thus, the divergence in voting pat— terns is deeply related to the growth of a heightened sense of national identity in Scotland. It is this phenomenon, rather than a greater sense of class consciousness, which provides the key to understanding the developments in working-class political culture in Scotland since 1945.

However, this was scarcely predictable in the decade following

the end of the Second World War. Labour won the 1945 election by a landslide, although doing marginally less well in Scotland than in

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England and Wales.“ The economic and social policies of the new government represented the climax of statist philosophies and the triumph of British nationalism. Although the CPGB and left-wing Labour activists worked with the SNP in the late 19305 and 19403 to promote self-government for Scotland through the non-partisan Scottish Convention movement, the leadership of the Labour Party in Scotland, in the words of Arthur Woodburn, secretary of State for

Scotland in 1947, considered Home Rule as economically ‘suicidal’.166 In spite of this, the Convention collected two million signatures for the National Covenant — a declaration in favour of Home Rule — but the movement had petered out within a year with no tan— gible results for its prodigious propaganda work.167 It was described as a ‘Tory plot’ by Woodburn and nationalist sentiments within the labour movement were channelled by the leadership into Labour’s cosmetic 1948 White Paper on Scottish Affairs; something which sin— gularly failed to capture the imagination of Scottish workers and their families.168 Labour had declared itself a Unionist party and it was through the agency of the British state, rather than a Scottish Assembly, that the modernising of the socio—economic fabric of the country was to occur. The demise of nationalist sentiments saw Scottish politics ossi—

fy into a largely phoney battle between two mainstream parties committed to the political consensus established in 1945. Although political differences between Labour and the Conservatives over the welfare state, nationalisation and full employment were minimal, the symbolic potency of Unionism, Presbyterianism and Imperialism as a means of mobilising working-class support provided a basis for the latter’s electoral triumphs in the 195 Os. Even as late as 1968 a study of the relationship between religion and voting behaviour in Dundee showed that manual workers in the Church of Scotland voted 39.5 per cent for the Tories compared to only 6 per cent of Catholics in

that occupational group. Given that the 1950s witnessed a religious revival, the identification of Presbyterianism with Conservatism was all the stronger. This linkage proved too powerful for Labour in 1955 and even the working-class shipbuilding constituency of Govan, Glasgow, fell to the Tories, although here the existence of a traditional working-class Orange vote was also important. The Tories also won solidly Orange working-class wards in Glasgow such as Kinning Park, Whiteinch, Partick and Govanhill.169 The fact that there were a series of colonial wars as well as the Suez crisis of 1956 heightened identification with the nation and the Empire and this 298

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Working-Class Politics in Scotland

served also to assist Tory political fortunes as the perceived party of nation and Empire. However, after the 1959 general election the working-class Conservative vote in Scotland gradually evaporated as it did within other social classes north of the border. The potency of political symbols associated with Empire, Presbyterianism and Unionism failed to resonate with working—class aspirations and interests. As the British

Empire disintegrated in the 1960s, and church-going and sectarianism declined, Conservative values appeared to be out-of—step in the radical 19608 and early 19705. They were depicted as reactionary and aimed at addressing the concerns of a society which were rooted in past struggles and which no longer had any relevance to contemporary Scotland. These labels stuck and in the succeeding decades the introduction of such unpopular measures as the Poll Tax and the widespread dislike of Mrs Thatcher’s style of political rhetoric brought more misery for the Tories. Support declined with each successive election until in the aftermath of the 1997 general election the Tories controlled no local council in Scotland and had no Scottish MPs at Westminster. Although the weakening of the relationship of Presbyterianism with Conservatism has been evident in recent decades, this is not to say that religion has no impact on Scottish politics. Even within the labour movement in Scotland sectarianism has occasionally reared its head from time to time. The Monklands affair of the early 19905, in which Catholic Coatbridge was seen to be favoured at the expense of Protestant Airdrie by the Labour-controlled district council, demonstrated the continued sensitivity of this issue in Scottish politics. Moreover, a study of the ideological orientations of Glasgow councillors in 1989 by Richard Levy and others showed that the deeper the religious commitment, the greater was the likelihood that support would be given to ‘moderate’ reformist political programmes”0 a phenomenon that Tom Bell noted in the late nineteenth century and Tom Gallagher documented in the inter-war period.171 There is also evidence that working-class Catholics in Scotland are marginally more likely to favour a Scottish parliament for Scotland than are Protestants; while the heavily working-class membership of the Orange Order in Scotland is predominantly Unionist and Conservative in

its voting behaviour.172 But, in spite of these qualifications, with the sharp decline in church-going, religion in Scotland nowadays plays only a minimalist role in shaping electoral behaviour, or in influencing policy at state or local level. 299

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW] LABOUR, 1945—19905

With the destruction among potential supporters of previously strong ideological and religious barriers, Labour, enjoying mass support, began to reconstruct Scotland into a kind of political fiefdom. However, it was a political project that was to prove incomplete as a resurgent nationalism emerged in the 19603 capable of winning votes from workers in the old and new industrial centres of Scotland. In the 1959 general election the SNP polled only 0.8 per cent, or around 20 000, of the total Scottish votes cast; a figure in line with its showing in 1931. However, by the 1966 general election its vote had increased to 5 per cent, or 130 000, and a year later Winnie Ewing won the Hamilton by-election — at that time, Labour’s safest seat in Scotland. By May 1968 Labour was facing a rout in local elections

when the SNP outpolled all the other parties with 34 per cent of the vote. Unthinkably, Labour lost control of Glasgow to the Progressives and the Conservatives, who formed a minority administration with SNP support.173 The Labour vote in municipal elections in Glasgow had fallen by 52 018, or 43 per cent, in the years 1960—68, while the SNP had seen its share of the poll increase by 93 393, or by over 3000 per cent. Although Labour recaptured Hamilton in the 1970 general election, SNP support grew to 11 per cent of the total electorate and the Western Isles were won. Organisation was also improved with constituency parties established in all of Scotland’s 71 parliamentary divisions. By 1975 the SNP had 475 branches, 175 more than Labour in Scotland.174 In the general election of October 1974 SNP parliamentary representation increased to eleven, and two years later Labour lost 131 seats in the municipal elections, 98 of them to the nationalists.” Moreover, many Labour activists had left the party in late 1975 to join two dissident MPs —Jim Sillars and John Robertson - in forming the Scottish Labour Party (SLP). Although the SLP failed to make any electoral headway and soon collapsed after prolonged bouts of internal wrangling, the split was highly damaging to morale and organisation in the Labour Party.176

The SLP was, in part, born out of the growing frustration of activists with the machine politics of Labour in Scotland in the post1945 era. The departure of the ILP in the 1930s, had, as we have seen, left a yawning gap between Labour’s professed idealism and its political practice. That idealism, however, was reborn in the electoral victory in 1945 and was reflected in the increasing individual mem— bership of the party, which had risen from 17 21 1 in 1943 to 24 670, or by just over 30 per cent, in 1944.177 Mass membership campaigns were launched in the early 195 Os and the Glasgow City Labour Party 300

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Working-Class Politics in Scotland aimed at recruiting 15 000 new members.178 However, once it was realised that the new members might upset the traditional balance of power in the CLPs, the idea of building a mass party of political idealists was abandoned in favour of a party controlled by a small caucus of trade unionists and bureaucrats. With an annual income of just £760 in 1962 and only five full-time agents paid by Transport House, compared to 55 for the Conservative and Unionist Party, there was little that the Scottish Council of the Labour Party (SCLP) could do in any case to build a mass party. As a result, party membership in Scotland in the years 1951—64 was never higher than 8 per cent of the total for Britain, and in comparison to Scotland’s share of British population and MPs was in an embarrassing deficit.179 The 19503 and 19603 in Scotland witnessed the haemorrhage of branch activity and radicalism. The former ‘wild men’ of the Clyde, due to their valuable contribution to the war effort, were showered with awards and honours from a grateful establishment. Patrick Dollan accepted a knighthood in 1941; David Kirkwood became the first Baron of Bearsden ten years later; honorary doctorates and other titles were bestowed on Tom Johnston; and William Elger became Deputy Lieutenant of the County of the City of Glasgow in February 1945.130 The embrace snuffed out any challenge to the status quo. Even left-wing MPs such as John McGovern, Labour MP for Shettleston, lost their enthusiasm for radical social change. In 1930 he had attempted to make the oath of the allegiance to the Crown optional, and as late as 1948 had objected to a proposal to place the Duke of Edinburgh on the civil list; however, in the 19505 McGovern became a warm supporter of the monarchy. At a Columbia University dinner in the Waldorf Astoria, New York, on 30 November 1954 he cheered the ‘Queen Mother heartily’.181 Along with Lady Agnes Dollan, McGovern joined the right-wing Moral Rearmament Movement of Frank Buckman to fight against ‘godless Communism’.182 The situation was no more inspiring at the grassroots level. Jimmy Allison recalled that his application to join the Labour Party in 1959 took two years to process, adding that this was not simply administrative incompetence, but was part of:

a deliberate policy of people being kept out in case they upset the balance of power within the local constituency. There was at least one example of applicants being told that the local party was ‘full up’.183

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

Moreover, the youthful enthusiasm of Allison was almost immediately snuffed out by the general ideological ennui of practical socialism. At his first meeting of the ward party in Paisley, Allison said only ‘eight people [were] in the room, including three Labour councillors . . . we spent our time talking about trivial matters such as street lighting and the state of the pavements’.”4 This only mirrored the Scottish

party whose annual conference was restricted to discussing purely matters relating to Scotland. As Frances Wood points out, restriction led to a preoccupation with ‘the Scottish economy, housing and education’, which is probably why in the 195 Os and 19603, fearing they

might die from boredom, Labour leaders avoided the SCLP’s annual conference. 185 Allison’s experiences and those of delegates to party conferences are borne out by the history of particular CLPs. Glasgow Maryhill CLP in 1953 had a membership of 2071; two years later this had

fallen to 1259, or by 37.5 per cent. At ward level the situation was even more disastrous with average attendance at meetings of only 24; a figure which was recognised by the secretary as being ‘too low to provide the nucleus of active members required to keep the party in good working order’.186 The Govan CLP had only 79 members in 1962; the Gorbals CLP had no idea of its ‘actual membership’.187 The poor showing of the party in Glasgow in the 1968 municipal elections, however, provides the best insight into the decline of activism in Labour’s Scottish stronghold. An internal enquiry into party organisation in the city showed that the total individual membership of the fifteen Glasgow CLPs was a mere 1786. Nine CLPs had less than 100 members and of these six had less than 50; only one con-

stituency — Pollok — had over 300 members. The organisation of the Glasgow Labour Party was described as ‘deplorable’. Such was the disregard for recruiting new, especially young, members that there were only three branches of Labour Young Socialists in Glasgow — at a time when young people were in revolt against what they saw as an outdated and reactionary political system.188 Organisational disarray was equalled by the political arrogance shown towards

traditional working-class Labour supporters by the party leadership. Jimmy Allison wrote of his incredulity, when running his first election campaign in Paisley’s FoxBar and Ferguslie Park wards in 1967, that the ‘Labour councillors who held the seats never canvassed’.189 In spite of a number of internal enquiries, throughout the 19708 party organisation and morale remained in the same chaotic state as

they had been in the 19505 and 19605. Fred Underhill, secretary of the Labour Party, wrote to Jimmy Allison, complaining about the fact

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Working-Class Politics in Scotland that in eight of the fifteen Glasgow CLPs ‘membership . . . remains disgraceful’. He added that ‘For Labour held seats at this vital stage of affairs to have only around 100 members is shocking’.190 The secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland, Helen Liddle, highlighted that ‘Party activists lacked the motivation to go out and work’ during the 1980 European elections, and that the campaign ‘was worse than the [1979] general election’.191 The situation was no better in other parts

of Scotland; indeed, in some places the level of working—class participation was even lower than in Glasgow. Aberdeen, for example, in the early 19703 had only 200 members: the lowest ratio of party members to voters in Scotland. J. P. MacKintosh, analysing the condition of Labour in Scotland in the mid—19705, found himself confronted by a political party which was not only failing to address the concerns of the new constituencies which were emerging as a result of economic change, but also one in which activists and leaders alike were locked in a time warp regarding social attitudes: The dependence on the Clydesdale horse has given the Labour Party an increasingly old—fashioned image at a time when afflu— ence has tended (especially in the more prosperous east of

Scotland) to blur class images a little. This, and the long-standing opposition of the Labour leadership in Scotland to such liberal

causes as divorce law reform, reform of the licensing laws and free contraceptive aids on the Health Service, meant that the party had little appeal to other sections of the community, to the young or to the progressive elements in the professions. Even the

massive patronage of the Secretary of State was not used to appoint lively people. As a result, the Labour Party in Scotland has aged and lost dynamism. Its one absorbing interest has been jobs (saving rather than creating jobs) and capital projects such as schools and houses. But the original idealistic vision of a kind of society socialists wanted, of the point of building schools and houses, tended to fade out and now the social purpose of the party is far from clear.192

From MacKintosh’s perceptive analysis, it is hardly surprising that as

Labour was organised round a set of out-of—date traditional masculine definitions of the working-class’s political interests, the party, especially in Scotland, it would fail to embrace the gender and race politics of the 19705 and early 19805. Women remained fundamen— tally unrepresented on the Scottish Executive of the Labour Party; as 303

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COLLAPSE O F THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE O F NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

parliamentary and municipal candidates; and as delegates to annual conference. At the Annual Conference of Labour Women (ACWL)

in 1967 a veteran party member said that Labour ‘was the most masculine dominated and masculine orientated party she had ever encountered’. Indeed, such was the marginalisation of women’s issues in the Labour Party that its own newspaper — Daily Herald — neglected to report the proceedings of the ACLW193

Incredibly, and in spite of the growing women’s movement of the 19705 and the changing gendering of employment, in 1978 the Scottish party voted to abolish the women’s seats on the Executive. The basis for this action was that the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimi— nation Acts had delivered female equality and positive discrimination in favour of women was Viewed as ‘an insult to women’s personal abilities’.194 In spite of being supported by leading female members in the Labour Party in Scotland, the decision taken in 1978 did not lead to an increased presence of women on the Scottish party’s exec— utive committee; it remained at three. Moreover, the Scottish Women’s Committee was a paper organisation dependent on press-gauging women to serve on it; an unsurprising action given that in 1981 there were only thirteen women’s sections in the whole of Scotland. The party’s record in terms of selecting women as parliamentary candidates was equally unimpressive. From a high of eight female PPCs in 1955 the number fell to three in 1970, where it roughly stayed, with the exception of October 1974, until the 1990s, when six women were selected as PPCs - the worst for any Labour region, with the exception of Wales and the north of England. Over the period 1955 to 1992 only twenty Labour parliamentary seats have been won by women. As late as 1987 there was only one female Labour MP in Scotland. Moreover, things were little better at municipal level. A survey of 54 Glasgow Labour councillors in the late 19803 showed

that 89 per cent of them were male and middle aged.“ It was female activists who acted decisively to empower both individual women and women’s organisation in the Labour Party, in spite of the indifference of the leadership. The Scottish Women’s Action Committee (SWAC), set up as an offshoot of the Bennite Labour Co-ordinating Committee, persuaded delegates to reverse the 1978 decision at the 1984 Scottish Conference, and, as a result, for the first time in the history of the [Labour] Party in Britain, two of those seats were elected by women delegates at the Scottish Women’s Conference.196 The conference success, however, was a reflection of grassroots activity. The proselytising efforts of SWAC had seen the number of Women’s Sections grow to 56 and achieve parity with 304

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Working-Class Politics in Scotland men in the constituency section of the Scottish party. In 1993 the

Scottish Labour Women’s Caucus was established to improve the representation of women at all levels in the party. This action mirrored the activities of women in the trade union movement. As the number of male jobs have declined, the unions have had to focus on recruiting female members. In response to the changing gender bias of the labour movement the STUC initiated plans in 1994 to have equal gender representation on the General Council.197 Similarly, due to pressure from female activists, and the fact that more women voted for Labour in the 1992 general election than men, the Labour Party in Scotland had to agree to all-women short lists in vacant winnable parliamentary seats to overcome the gender deficit. However, as Alice Brown points out, it will be ‘some time before women in the party gain equality with men in terms of being Westminster Parliamentarians’, as Labour’s electoral hegemony has meant that there is a ‘slow rate of turnover of available seats’.198 A proposal to establish all-female short lists in every vacant seat in Scotland was defeated at Scottish Labour’s conference in 1994. Thus, in spite of the male rhetoric of equality, women in the Labour Party continue to feel that these ‘principles were not always practiced in the party’.199 The ossification of Labour in Scotland both politically and ideo-

logically, and the alienation of women and the young, particularly in forty year period after defeat in the 1951 general election, made it

extremely vulnerable to the fallout from a radical resurgence of nationalist sentiments in the 19703. However, in spite of its organisational failings, the 19805 and 1990s have seen Labour rebuff, although not entirely douse political challenge posed by a resurgent nationalism. The referendum of 1979 on Scottish devolution saw only 32.9 per cent of the electorate north of the border favour a ‘Yes’ vote, although supported by the Labour leadership. A general election quickly followed in which the SNP lost most of the ground it had gained in 1974. Failure led the left-wing of the SNP to articulate a need for the party to cast off its ‘Tartan Tory’ image and to focus its political energies on winning over Scottish workers to the nationalist cause. This meant contesting with Labour in the latter’s backyard — central Scotland.

Alice Brown, et 41., have shown this strategy to have met with some political success. In the 19605 and 1970s the typical nationalist voter was exhibiting no strong sense of class loyalty. It was the party of the young, the unpwardly mobile and those living in new towns; indeed, those outside the socialising experience provided by the industrial

communities of central Scotland.200 However, an analysis profiling 305

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COLLAPSE OF THE CRAFT CULTURE AND RISE OF NEW LABOUR, 1945—19905

the social composition of the ‘Yes’ vote in the 1979 referendum on a Scottish Assembly showed that ‘support for the Assembly was heaviest among Labour and SNP voters, younger voters and the working class’.201 The class nature of support for devolution provided a solid basis for the political strategy of the SNP and by the early 19903 the party had secured the votes of 26 per cent of the Scottish working class, but only 21 per cent of middle-class voters. The SNP vote in 1992 was 55 per cent working class compared to Labour’s 62 per cent.202 In the 1980s the SNP’s stand on issues such as nuclear disarmament, the poll tax, put it to the left of Labour and undoubtedly some workers came to see the former as more representative of traditional Labour values and voted accordingly. Indeed, while Labour was disowning its history, the nationalists were using the historic symbols of popular struggle in Scotland, such as ‘Red Clydeside’, to mobilise the Scots towards a radical nationalism.203 The strength of national identity as well as the substantial and continuing support for the SNP forced the new Labour government

of Tony Blair to cede to Scotland a measure of Home Rule. The referendum which took place in 1997 overwhelmingly endorsed the growing nationalist aspirations of the Scottish people. Whether this means there will be a similar ringing endorsement for the social and economic policies of New Labour only time will tell. However, if the past is anything to go by party managers cannot afford to be overconfident; historically, Scottish workers may not have been on the whole revolutionary, but they have always been radical in their demands for democracy, fairness and social justice. The shift from industry to the services seems in no way to have diminished the

resonance of these values for the Scottish workers, although they have been tempered by the growth of materialism. The post-1945 decades have borne witness to a complete transformation in the economic, social and political landscape of Scotland. These changes have encompassed the destruction of the once all—

powerful sectarian masculine culture of the skilled worker and its replacement by a workplace culture which is, on one level, more democratic, less misogynist and anti-Catholic, and, on an another,

less cohesive and disciplined. In spite of its weaknesses and flaws, the older workplace culture was capable of mobilising workers around commonly agreed interests and values, which had they been absent

may have brutalised workers and their families to a greater extent than that to which their suffering and hardship over the last two hundred years bear eloquent testimony to. However, the labourism that the skilled man’s cultural hegemony gave rise to in Scotland

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Working-Class Politics in Scotland froze out consideration of other levels of experience of family, gender and sexuality, as the world of work was afforded primacy of concern. The changes in the labour process, deindustrialisation and the growth of the branch plant economy in general, have altered these perceptions. A deskilled working-class has found itself unable to challenge the appropriation by capital of its working space and time to any—

thing like the extent of its industrial forbears. This has reflected itself in the decline of trade unionism and the powerlessness of the labour movement to arrest the spiralling unemployment of the last few decades, or defend the social wage. The use of parliamentary legislation and the law courts by the state and hostile employers have effectively ended the closed shop, the sympathetic strike, mass picketing, and made other aspects of the mentality of collectivism redundant. Industrial conflict is more likely to be found in the public sector,

where high concentrations of organised white— and blue-collared workers remain, rather than in the increasingly unorganised private

sector. Although politically this fragmentation has yet to impact itself on traditional voting patterns, it is interesting to note that nationalist support is strongest in those sectors of production in the Scottish economy which are the most dynamic — electronics and light engineering — and in the new towns where these industries are located. Labour’s vote among workers has been largely confined to manual workers, council tenants and the substantial section of Scottish society reliant on state benefits or employment. To capture the more socially mobile and those with real disposable income Labour has had to fashion a politics of consumption. As a result, the traditional working-class voter increasingly finds his/her values and traditions at odds with the social market ethos of New Labour. The alienation of old Labour may yet come back to haunt the new party in the years to come, particularly in a Scottish parliament elected on proportional representation, and provide the basis for a realignment on the left of the political spectrum, perhaps rallying around a radical nationalist agenda. In spite of profound economic and social restructuring, the core values of democracy, fairness and social justice which have dominated working—class political culture since the late eighteenth century still remain potent symbols on which to establish and fashion a political constituency. This is what was at the heart of the rejection of free market Conservatism in Scotland throughout the 19803 and

the 19905 and it is these values, regardless of which party is in power, which will endure into the new millennium. 307

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Only the more essential works are listed. Most of the other useful collections, books and articles have been cited in the Notes and many of the books listed below have extensive and specialist bibliographies. Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. 1. Manuscript Collections Socialist League Collection (International Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam).

Webb Collection on British Trade Unions (British Library of Political and Economic Science, London).

Arthur Woodburn Papers (National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh). 2. General and Theoretical Works on Social Class Blackwell, T. and Seabrook, J. (1985), A World Still to Win: The Reconstruction

of the Post—War Working Class. Foster, J. (1974), Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial

Capitalism in Three English Towns. Fraser, W. H. (1996), ‘The working class’, in Fraser, W. H., and Maver, I. (eds),

Glasgow Vol 11: 1830 to 1912, Manchester. Gray, R. Q. (1981), The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth Century Britain, 61850—1914.

Hobsbawm, E. J. et al. (1981), The Forward March of Labour Halted. Hyman, R. and Price, R. (eds) (1983), The New Working Class? White-Collar

Workers and Their Organisations. Jones, G. S. (1983), Languages of Class: Studies of English Working Class History, 1832—1982.

Joyce, P. (1980), Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Late Victorian England. Joyce, P. (1991), Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848—1914, Cambridge. Kirk, N. (1987), ‘In defence of class: a critique of Gareth Stedman Jones’,

International Review of Social History, XXXII, pp. 2—47. Knox, W. W. (1990), ‘The political culture of the Scottish working class, 1830—1914’, in Fraser, W. H. and Morris, R. J., People and Society in

Scotland, Vol II, 1830—1914, Edinburgh, pp. 138—66.

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Select Bibliography Knox, W . W . (1992), ‘Class, Work and Trade Unionism’, in Dickson, A. and

Treble, J. H., People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, 1914—18, Edinburgh, pp. 108-37. McKibbin, R. (1990), Ideologies of Class. Social Relations in Britain, 1880—1950.

Mann, M . (1993), The Sources of Social Power; Vol II: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760-1914, Cambridge. Newby, H . et al. (1978), Property, Paternalism and Power: Class and Control

in Rural England, Wisconsin. Price, R. (1986), Labour in British Society. Reid, A. (1992), Social Classes and Social Relations in Britain, 1850-191 4. Samuel, R. (1991), ‘Reading the Signs’, History Workshop Journal, 32, pp. 88—109. Savage, M . and Miles, A. (1994), The Re-Making o f the British Working Class, 1840—1940. Walker, W . M . (1979), juteopolis: Dundee and its Textile Workers, 1885—1923,

Edinburgh. Young, J. D. (1979), The Rousing o f the Scottish Working Class. 3 . Economic Life Cairncross, A. K . (ed.) (1954), The Scottish Economy, Cambridge. Campbell, R. H . (1965), Scotland Since 1707: The Rise o f an Industrial Society, Oxford. Campbell, R. H . (1980), The Rise and Fall o f Scottish Industry, 1707—1939,

Edinburgh. Checkland, S . (1976), The Upas Tree: Glasgow, 1875—1975, Glasgow. Dickson, T . (ed.) (1980), Scottish Capitalism: Class, State and Nation from

Before the Union to the Present. Flinn, M . et al. (1977), Scottish Population from the Seventeenth Century to the 19305, Cambridge. Forsyth, D . J. C . (1972), US Investment in Scotland. Gulvin, C . (1973), The Tweedmakers: A History o f the Fancy Woollen Industry,

1660—1914, Newton Abbot. Harvie, C . (1987 ed.), N o Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland since 1914.

Knox, W . W . (1995), Hanging by a Thread: The Scottish Cotton Industry, c.1 85 0—1 91 4 , Preston.

Rodger, R. (1988), ‘Concentration and fragmentation: capital, labour and the structure of mid—Victorian Scottish industry’, journal of Urban History, 14, pp. 178—213. Rodger, R. (1985 ), ‘Employment, wages and poverty in Scottish cities, 1841—191 1’, in G . Gordon (ed.), Perspectives of the Scottish City, Aberdeen, pp. 25-63. Saville, R. (ed.) (1985), The Economic Development of Modern Scotland,

1950—1980, Edinburgh. Slaven, A. (1975), The Development of the West of Scotland, 1750—1960. Treble, J. H. (1986), ‘The characteristics of the female unskilled market and the formation of the female casual labour market in Glasgow, 1891—1914’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 6 , pp. 33—46. Whatley, C . A. (1997), The Industrial Revolution in Scotland, Cambridge.

309

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

4 . Social Life

Brown, G . and Cook, R . (eds) (1983), Scotland: The Real Divide, Edinburgh. Devine, T . M . (ed.) (1991), Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nine-

teenth and Twentieth Centuries, Edinburgh. Devine, T. M. and Mitchison, R. (eds) (1988), People and Society in Scotland, Vol 1, 1700—1830, Edinburgh. Dickson, A. and Treble, J. H. (eds) (1992), People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, 1914—1990, Edinburgh. Ferguson, T. (1948), The Dawn of Scottish Social Welfare. Fraser, W . H. and Morris, R. J. (eds) (1990), People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, 1830—1914, Edinburgh. Hassan, J. (1980), ‘The landed estate, paternalism and the coal industry in Midlothian, 1800—1880’, Scottish Historical Review, LXI, pp. 71—91. Muir, E. (1985 ed.), Scottish journey. Rodger, R. (ed.) (1989), Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century, Leicester.

Smout, T. C . (1986), A Century of the Scottish People, 1830—1950. 5 . Culture

Brown, C. G. (1987), The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1 730. Gallagher, T. ( 1987), Glasgow. The Uneasy Peace. Religious Tension in Modern Scotland, Manchester. King, E. (1979), Scotland Sober and Free: The Temperance Movement,

1829—1979, Glasgow. King, E. (1987), ‘Popular culture in Glasgow’, in Cage, R . A. (ed.), The Working

Class in Glasgow, 1750-1914. Knox, W . W (1988), ‘Religion and the Scottish Labour Movement, c.1900—39’, journal of Contemporary History, 23, pp. 609—30. MacFarland, E. (1990), Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth Century

Scotland, Edinburgh. Muir, J. (1901), Glasgow in 1901, Glasgow. Murray, B. (1984), The Old Firm: Sectarianism, Sport and Scottish Society,

Edinburgh. 6 . Work and Wages Braverman, H . (1976), Labour and Monopoly Capital. Breitenbach, E. and Gordon, E. (eds) (1992), The World is Ill-Divided: Women’s

Work in Scotland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Edinburgh. Harrison, R. and Zeitlin, J. (eds), (1985), Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers

and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century Britain, Brighton. Levitt, I. and Smout, T . C . (1979), The State of the Scottish Working Class in

1843, Edinburgh.

Littler, C . (1982), The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies. MacIntyre, S. (1980), Little Moscows: Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Inter-War Britain. McKinlay, A. (1989), Making Ships, Making Men, Clydebank.

Pagnamenta, P. and Overy, R. (1984), All Our Working Lives.

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Select Bibliography Routh, G . (1980), Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906-1979. Wood, S . (ed.) (1982), The Degradation of Work?

7. Trade Unionism in the Nineteenth Century

Arnot, R. P. (195 5 ), A History of the Scottish Miners from the Earliest Times. Buckley, K . (1955), Trade Unionism in Aberdeen, 1878—1900, Edinburgh. Campbell, A. (1979), The Lanarkshire Miners, 1775—1874, Edinburgh. Fraser, W . H . (1976), ‘The Glasgow cotton spinners 1837’, in Scottish Themes,

ed. J. Butt and J. T. Ward, Edinburgh, pp. 80—97. Fraser, W . H. (1988), Conflict and Class: Scottish workers 1 700—1838, Edinburgh. Gordon, E. (1991), Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 185 0—1 91 4 , Oxford. Johnston, T . (1923), A History of the Working Classes in Scotland, Glasgow. MacDougall, I. (ed.) (1979), Essays in Scottish Labour History, Edinburgh. Marwick, W H . (1934—35), ‘Early Trade unionism in Scotland’, Economic History Review, V , pp. 87—95. Wilson, G. M . (1979), ‘The strike policy of the miners of the west of Scotland, 1842—1874’, in MacDougall, I. (ed.), Essays in Scottish Labour History,

Edinburgh, pp. 29-64. 8. Trade Unionism in the Twentieth Century Bell, J. D. M . (1954), ‘Trade Unions’, in Carincross, A. K. (ed.), The Scottish

Economy, Cambridge. Brietenbach, E. (1979), Women Workers in Scotland: A Study of Women’s

Employment and Trade Unionism, Edinburgh. Campbell, A. B. (1996), ‘The social history of political conflict in the Scots coalfields, 1910—1939’, in Campbell, A. B. et al. (ed.), Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910—1947, Aldershot.

Foster, J. (1990), ‘Strike action and working class politics on Clydeside, 1914—1919’, International Review o f Social History, XXXV, pp. 33—70. Foster, J. and Woolfson, C. (1986), The Politics of the UCS Work-In. MacIntyre, S. (1980), Little Moscows: Communism and Working Class Militancy in Inter-War Britain. McGoldrick, J. (1980), ‘ A profile of the Boilermakers’ Union’, in Kruse, J. and

Slaven, A. (eds), Scottish and Scandanavian Shipbuilding Seminar: Development Problems in Historical Perspective, Glasgow, pp. 197—219. McIvor, A. J. and Kennefick, W (eds) (1996), Roots of Red Clydeside, 1910—1914:

Labour Unrest and Industrial Relations in West Scotland, Edinburgh. STUC (1956), Trade Union Organisation Glasgow.

o f Women and Young Workers,

Tuckett, A. (1986), The Scottish Trades Union Congress: The First Eighty Years,

1897—1 977, Edinburgh.

9. Working Class Political Movements in the Nineteenth Century Biagini, E. F. and Reid, A. (1991) (eds), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 185 0—1 91 4.

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Clarke, T. (1990), ‘Early Chartism in Scotland: a moral force movement?’, in

T. M. Devine (ed.), Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, Edinburgh. Dickson, T. and Clarke, T. (1980), ‘The making of a class society: commercial—

isation and working class resistance’, in Scottish Capitalism: Class, State and the Nation from Before the Union to the Present, pp. 137—80. Donnachie,

I. et al., (eds) (1989), Forward! Labour Politics in Scotland

1888—1988, Edinburgh. Fraser, W H. (1985), ‘The Labour Party in Scotland’, in Brown, K. D. (ed.), The

First Labour Party, pp. 38—63. Glasier, J. B. (1921), William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement.

Gordon, E. (1991), Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1 85 0—1 91 4,

Oxford. Gray, R. Q. (1976), The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh, Oxford. Howell, D. (1983), British Workers and the ILP, 1888—1906, Manchester. Hutchinson, I. C. G. (1986), A Political History of Scotland, 1832—1924: Parties,

Elections and Issues, Edinburgh. Hutchinson, I. C. G. (1987), ‘Glasgow Working Class Politics’, in The Working

Class in Glasgow, 1750—1914, ed. R. A. Cage, pp. 98—141. McKinlay, A. and Morris, R. J. (eds) (1991), The ILP on Clydeside, 1893—1932:

From Foundation to Disintegration, Manchester. Montgomery, F. (1982), ‘Glasgow and the struggle for parliamentary reform, 1830—1832’, Scottish Historical Review, LXI, pp. 130—45.

Montgomery, F. (1979), ‘Glasgow and the movement for Corn law repeal’, History, 64, pp. 363—79. Wilson, A. (1970), The Chartist Movement in Scotland, Manchester. Wood, I. (1975), ‘Irish nationalism and radical politics in Scotland, 1880—1906’, Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, 5, pp. 22—33.

10. Working Class Political Movements in the Twentieth Century Brown, A. et al. (1996), Politics and Society in Scotland. Brown, G. (ed.) (1975), The Red Paper on Scotland, Edinburgh. Drucker, H. M. and Brown, G. (1980), The Politics of Nationalism and Devolution. Keating, M. and Bleiman, D. (1979), Labour and Scottish Nationalism, Edin-

burgh. Knox, W. W. (1984), Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918-1939: A Biographical Dic-

tionary, Edinburgh. Knox, W. W (1987), james Maxton, Manchester. Knox, W W and McKinlay, A. (1995), ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour in

the 1930s’, Twentieth Century British History, 6, pp. Melling, J. (1983), Rent Strikes, Edinburgh. Morris, R. J. (1984), ‘Skilled workers and the politics of the “Red Clyde’”,

Journal of the Scottish labour History Society, 18, pp. 6—17. McShane, H. and Smith, J. (1978), No Mean Fighter.

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NOTES

Introduction

For an introduction to post-modernist philosophy and its impact on historical writing see D. Attridge et al., Post-Structuralism and the Question of History (1989); G. Himmelfarb, ‘Some reflections on the New History’, American Historical Review (AHR), XCIV (1989), pp. 661—70; J. W Scott,

‘History in crisis? The other side of the story’, AHR, XCIV (1989), pp. 680—92; R. Samuel, ‘Reading the signs’, History Workshop journal (HWI), 32 (1991), pp. 88—109; L. Stone, ‘History and post-modernism’, Past and Present, 131 (1988), pp. 217—18; P. Joyce, ‘The end of social history’, Social History, XX (1995) and ‘History and post-modernism’, Past and Present, 133 (1990); G. M. Spiegel, ‘History and post-modernism’, Past and Present, 135 (1992), pp. 194—208; D. Mayfield and S. Thorne, ‘Social history and its discontents: Gareth Stedman Jones and the politics of language’, Social History, 17 (1992), pp. 165—88; J. Vernon, ‘Who’s afraid of the linguistic turn?’, Social History, 19 (1994), pp. 81—97. E. J. Hobsbawm et al., The Forward March of Labour Halted (1981) and ‘Labour’s lost millions’, Marxism Today, (July, 1983), pp. 7~13. S. Lukes, ‘The Future of British Socialism?’, in Fabian Essays in Socialist Thought, ed. B. Pimlott (1984), pp. 269-83. G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1934); W Greenwood, Love on the Dole (1933); J. B. Priestly, English Journey (1934); R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (1957); A. Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963). For sexism and working-class males see C. Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (1980); for racism see P. Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (1992). C. Calhoun, The Question of the Class Struggle (Chicago, 1982). R. Q. Gray, The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth Century Britain c.1850—1914(1981).

C. More, Skill and the English Working Class, 1870—1914 (1980); K. McClelland and A. Reid, ‘Wood, iron and steel: technology, labour and trade union organisation in the shipbuilding industry, 1890—1914’, in Divisions of Labour. Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century England, ed. R. Harrison and J. Zeitlin, (1985) pp. 151—84; P. Joyce, ‘Labour, capital and compromise: a reply to Richard Price’, Social History, 9

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NOTES T O INTRODUCTION

(1984), pp. 67—76; J. Zeitlin, ‘Craft control and the division of labour: engineers and compostors in Britain, 1890-1930’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 111 (1979), pp. 263—74.

See A. Gorz (ed.), The Division of Labour (1973). D. Bell, The End of Ideology (New York, 1964). K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, 2 Vols (1969 edition). For a discussion of Taylorism see C. Littler, The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies (1982), and B. Doray, From Taylorism to Fordism: A Rational Madness (1988). T. Elger, ‘Braverman, capital accumulation and Deskilling’, in The Degradation of Work?, ed. 5. Wood (1982), pp. 25—53. Elger, ‘Braverman’, p. 25 . V. Beechy, ‘The sexual division of Labour and the Labour process: a critical assessment of Braverman’, in The Degradation of Work?, pp. 54—73. R. Samuel, ‘Workshop of the world: steam power and hand technology in mid-Victorian Britain’, H W], 3 (1977), pp. 6—72.

P. Joyce, ‘Labour’, p. 69. C. More, Skill, pp. 151—2, 166—7. C. More, ‘Skill and the survival of apprenticeship’, in The Degradation of Work?, pp. 111—13. C. Smith, Technical Workers: Class Labour and Trade Unions (1987); W W. Daniel, Workplace Industrial Relations and Technological Change (1987)

21. 22. 23.

For a review of the debates see G. Marshall, ‘What is happening to the Working Class’, Social Studies Review, 2 (1987), pp. 37—40. A. Reid, Social Classes and Social Relations in Britain 1 85 0—191 4 (1992), p. 36. See for example W. F. Watson, Machines and Men (1935); A. Williams, Life

in a Railway Factory (1915); Working Man, Reminiscences of a Stonemason (1908).

24.

A. McKinlay, ‘The inter-war depression and the effort bargain: shipyard riv— eters and the “workman’s foreman”, 1919—1939’, Scottish Economic and Social History (SESH), 9 (1989), pp. 55—70.

25. 26.

R. McKibbin, ‘Why there was no Marxism in Great Britain’, in Ideologies of Class. Social Relations in Britain, 1880—1950 (1990), p. 41. M. Savage and A. Miles, The Re-Making of the British Working Class

27.

H. Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (1968); E. J. Hobsbawm,

28.

P. Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class,

29.

G. S. Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in Languages of Class. Studies in English Working Class History 1832—1982 (1983), pp. 90—178. October 1839.

1840—1940 (1994), p. 3. Labour’s Turning Point, 1880—1900 (1974).

30. 31.

32. 33.

1848-1914 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 5—6.

E. F. Biagini and A. Reid, ‘Currents of Radicalism, 1850—1914’, in Currents

of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850—1914 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 5. Reid, Social Classes, p. 56.

J. H. Goldthorpe and D. Lockwood, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge, 1969); see also the critique by J. Westergaard, Class in a Capitalist Society: A Study of Contemporary Britain (1975).

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Notes to Introduction 34. 35. 36. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

A. Rattonsi, ‘End of an Orthodoxy? The critique of sociology’s view of Marx on class’, The Sociological Review, 33 (1985), pp. 641—69. T . Blackwell and J. Seabrook, A World Still to Win: The Reconstruction of the Post-war Working Class (1985), p. 4 8 . P. Joyce, Visions, p. 9 . Reid, Social Classes, p. 57 . G . Eley and K. Nield, ‘Starting over: the present, the post-modern and the moment in social history’, Social History, 20 (1995), p. 357. Joyce, Visions, p. 9 . N . Kirk, ‘In defence of class: a critique of Gareth Stedman Jones’, International Review of Social History (IRSH), XXXII (1987), pp. 2—47. M . Mann, ‘Sources of variation in working class movements in 20th century Europe’, New Left Review, 212 (1995), pp. 14—54. R. Miliband, ‘ A New Revisionist Spectrum’, New Left Review, 150 (1985 ), p. 13. N . Kirk, ‘History, language, ideas and post-modernism: a materialist view’, Social History, 19 (1994), pp. 221—40. J. Foster, ‘The declassing of language’, New Left Review, 150 (1985 ), p. 40. W . Gammage, The History of the Chartist Movement (1894), p. 57. N . Kirk, ‘Defence’, pp. 2—47. R. J. Morris quoted in K. Boyd and R. McWilliam, ‘Historical perspectives on class and culture’, Social History, 20 (1995), p. 100. P. Joyce, Visions, p . 8 .

Eley and Nield, ‘Starting over’, p. 359. Savage and Miles, Remaking, p. 90. O n the ethos and values of Scottish radicals see T . C . Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830—1950 (1986); F. Montgomery, ‘Glasgow and the struggle for Parliamentary reform, 1830—1832’, Scottish Historical Review, LXI (1982), pp. 130—45. 52. I. S. Wood, ‘Drink, Temperance and the Labour Movement’, Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society (JSLHS), 5 (1972), pp.22—33; W . W Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish Labour Movement, 1900—1939’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988), pp. 609—30. 53. For statistics see C . Brown, ‘Religion and Secularisation’ in People and Society in Scotland Vol III, 1914—1990, ed. A. Dickson and J. H . Treble (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 48—79; R. Currie, et al., Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford, 1977). 54. For a history of sectarianism see T . Gallagher, Glasgow. The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1 9 8 7 ) .

55.

J. Hunter, ‘The politics of Highland Land Reform, 1873—1895’, Scottish Historical Review, L111 (1974), pp. 45—68; M . Keating and D. Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism (1979).

56.

See for example A. Campbell, The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of

their Trade Unions, 1775—1874 (Edinburgh, 1979); J. Foster and C . Woolfson, The Politics of the UCS Work-In (1986); A. McKinlay, ‘Depression and Rank—and-File Activity: the AEU, 1919—1939’, SLHS, 22 ( 1987), pp. 22—9. 57. R. Q. Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (1976). 58. Wood, ‘Drink’; Knox, ‘Religion’. 59. E. Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1850—1914 (Oxford, 1991); E. Breitenbach and E. Gordon (eds), The World is IllDivided: Women’s Work in Scotland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 1

60.

61.

Centuries (Edinburgh, 1992); E. Breitenbach and E. Gordon (eds), Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society, 1800-1945 (Edinburgh, 1992); E. Breitenbach, Women Workers in Scotland: A Study of Women’s Employment and Trade Unionism (Edinburgh, 1979). H . Corr, ‘The sexual division of Labour in the Scottish teaching profession, 1872—1914’, in Scottish Culture and Scottish Education, ed. W . M . Hume and H . M . Paterson (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 137—50. A. Tuckett, The Scottish Carter: A History of the Scottish Horse and Motormen’s Association, 1898—1964 (1964); W . Kenefick, ‘ A Struggle for Control: the importance of the great unrest at Glasgow harbour, 1911 to 1912’, in Roots of Red Clydeside, 1910—1914: Labour Unrest and Industrial Relations in West Scotland, ed. A. J. McIvor and W . Kenefick (Edinburgh,

1996), pp. 8—60.

62.

B. Collins, ‘Aspects of Irish immigration into two Scottish towns during the nineteenth century’, Irish Economic and Social History, V I (1979), pp. 71—4;

B. A. Aspinwall, ‘The formation of the Catholic community in the west of Scotland: some preliminary outlines’, Innes Review, XXXII (1982), pp. 44—57; I. S. Wood, ‘Irish Nationalism and Radical Politics in Scotland, 1880—1906’, JSLHS, 5 (1975), pp. 22—33; T . M . Devine (ed.), Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

(Edinburgh, 1991). 63. W . M . Sloan, ‘Employment opportunities and migrant group assimilation: Highlanders and the Irish in Glasgow, 1840—1860’, in Industry, Business and Society in Scotland since 1700, ed. A. J. C . Cummings and T . M . Devine (Edinburgh, 1994), pp. 197—217. 64. Keating and Bleiman, Labour; J. Hunter, ‘Land reform’. T . Clarke and T . Dickson, ‘The birth of class’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol 1 , 1760—1830, e d . T . M . Devine and R. Mitchison (Edinburgh,

66. 67.

1988), pp. 292—309 and ‘Class and class consciousness in early industrial capitalism: Paisley, 1770—1850’, in Capital and Class in Scotland, ed. T . Dickson (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 8—60; W . H . Fraser, Conflict and Class: Scottish workers, 1700—1838 (Edinburgh, 1988); Smout, Century, pp. 231—51; C . A. Whatley, ‘Royal Day, people’s Day: the monarch’s birthday in Scotland, c.1660—1860’, in People and Power in Scotland, ed. R. Mason and N . MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 170—88. L. Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Aberdeen, 1991). R. J. Morris, ‘Skilled workers and the politics of the “Red Clyde’”, JSLHS, 18 (1983), pp. 6—17; J. Foster, ‘Strike action and working class politics on Clydeside, 1914—1919’, I R S H , XXXV (1990), p p . 233—70; J . Melling, Rent

Strikes: People’s Struggle for Housing in West Scotland, 1890—1916 (Edinburgh, 1983), I. McLean, ‘Red Clydeside after 25 Years’, JSLHS, 29 (1994), p p . 98—111.

68. 69.

M . A. Golden, ‘Historical memory and ideological orientations in the Italian workers’ movement’, Politics and Society, 16 (1988), pp. 1—34. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (1992). Part1

CHAPTER 1 G. S. Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in Languages of Class. Studies in English

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Notes to Chapter 2 Working Class History (1983), pp. 95—6. R. Q. Gray, ‘The deconstruction of the English Working Class’, Social History, 11 ( 1 9 8 6 ) , pp. 363—73.

Jones, ‘Chartism’, pp. 106—7. T. Johnston, A History of the Working Classes in Scotland (1923), p. 250. CHAPTER 2 For a classic statement of the new orthodoxy see D. McCloskey, ‘The industrial revolution, 1780—1860: a survey’, in The Economic History of Britain since 1 700, Vol. 1, 1 700—1860, ed. R. Floud and D. McCloskey (Cambridge,

1981), pp. 103—27.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

P. Hudson (ed.), Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge, 1989). R. H. Campbell, ‘The landed classes’, in People and Society in Scotland. Vol 1, 1 760—1830, ed. T. M. Devine and R. Mitchison (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 93. T. M. Devine, ‘The making of industrial and urban society: Scotland 1780—1840’, in Why Scottish History Matters, ed. R. Mitchison (Tillicoultry, 1991), pp. 60—1. Devine, ‘Industrial and Urban’, pp. 60—1. T. Dickson and T. Clarke, ‘The making of a class society: commercialism and working class resistance, 1780—1830’, in Scottish Capitalism: Class, State and the Nation from Before the Union to the Present (1980), pp. 140—1. W. W. Knox, Hanging by a Thread: The Scottish Cotton Industry c.1850—1914 (Preston, 1995), p. 23; R. Rodger, ‘Employment, wages and poverty in the Scottish cities, 1841—1914’, in Perspectives of the Scottish City, ed. G. Gordon (Aberdeen, 1986), p. 3; R. Duncan, Conflict and Crisis.Monklands’ Miners and the General Strike of 1842 (1982), pp. 2—3. C. A. Whatley, The Industrial Revolution in Scotland (Cambridge, 1997), p. 2.6. Knox, Hanging, p. 30; R. Rodger, ‘Concentration and fragmentation: capital, labour and the structure of mid—Victorian Scottish industry’, journal of Urban History, 14 (1988), pp. 186—7. T. Clarke and T. Dickson, ‘Class and class consciousness in early industrial capitalism: Paisley, 1770—1850’, in Capital and Class in Scotland, ed. T. Dickson (Edinburgh, 1982), p. 14. A. Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland: 1750—1960 (1975), p. 98; Whatley, Industrial Revolution, p. 26. K. Burgess, ‘Workshop of the world: client capitalism at its zenith, 1830—1870’, in Scottish Capitalism, p. 195.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

N. Murray, ‘The regional structure of textile employment in Scotland in the nineteenth century’, in Industry, Business and Society in Scotland since 1 700, ed. A. J. G. Cummings and T. M. Devine (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 226. C. Gulvin, The Tweedmakers: A History of the Scottish Fancy Woollen Industry, 1600—1914 (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 64. Whatley, Industrial Revolution, p. 30. A. B. Campbell, The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of Their Trade Unions 1775—1884 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 36—7; Murray, ‘Textile employment’, p. 227. R. E. Tyson, ‘The economy of Aberdeen’, in Aberdeen in the Nineteenth Century: The Making of the Modern City (Aberdeen, 1988), p. 23. Rodger, ‘Employment’, p. 29.

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 3

Whatley, Industrial Revolution, p. 33. Slaven, Development, p. 123. Slaven, Development, pp. 125—34. Whatley, Industrial Revolution, p. 35. T . M . Devine, ‘Urbanisation’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol 1 1700—1830, ed. T . M . Devine and R. Mitchison (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 29. Slaven, Development, p. 145. Devine, ‘Urbanisation’, p. 41. H . Miller, M y Schools and Schoolmasters (Edinburgh, 1854), pp. 350—1.

M. Flinn, et al., Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 19305 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 476—9; Slaven, Development, p. 143. Devine, ‘Urbanisation’, p. 43. Devine, ‘Urbanisation’, p. 43. G. Walker, ‘The Protestant Irish in Scotland’, in Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. T . M . Devine

(Edinburgh, 1991), p. 49.

Flinn, et al., Population, p. 457. Devine, ‘Urbanisation’, p. 43. Whatley, Industrial Revolution, p. 6 8 . Walker, ‘Protestant Irish’, pp. 49—50. Flinn, et al., Population, p. 456. A. Durie, ‘Balanced and unbalanced urban economies: Aberdeen and Dundee, 1800—1914’, Scotia, VII (1984), p. 17. Campbell, Lanarleshire Miners, pp. 178—9. W M . Sloan, ‘Employment opportunities and migrant group assimilation: Highlanders and the Irish in Glasgow, 1840—1860’, in Industry, Business and Society in Scotland since 1700, ed. A. J. G. Cummings and T . M . Devine (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 201. Walker, ‘Protestant Irish’, pp. 49—50; J. T. Ward, ‘Some aspects of workingclass conservatism in the nineteenth century’, in Scottish Themes, ed. J. Butt and J. T . Ward (Edinburgh, 1976), p. 151. Walker, ‘Protestant Irish’, pp. 49—50. T . Ferguson, The Dawn of Scottish Social Welfare (1948), pp. 5 8—9. R. A. Cage, ‘The standard of living debate: Glasgow 1800-1850’, Journal of Economic History, 43 (1983), p. 159. Flinn, et al., Population, pp. 377—83. Burgess, ‘Workshop’, p. 196. I. Levitt and T . C . Smout, The State of the Scottish Working Class in 1843 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 101, 115—17; Gulvin, Tweedmakers, p. 167. Levitt and Smout, The State, p. 110.

Cage,‘Standard of living’, p. 181. Cage, ‘Standard of living’, p. 178.

CHAPTER 3 T . C . Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830-1950 (1986), p. 93. J. Myles, Rambles in Forfarshire (Dundee, 1851), p. 82. Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, pp. 24—5. M . Blair, The Paisley Shawl and the Men who Produced It (Paisley, 1904), pp. 46—8. Quoted in Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, p. 16. N . Murray, The Scottish Handloom Weavers, 1790—1850: a social history

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Notes to Chapter 3

59. so. 62: 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

(Edinburgh, 1978), p. 162. T. Dickson and T. Clarke, ‘The birth of Class’ in People and Society in Scotland Vol I, p. 167; J. Myles, Rambles, pp. 25—6. Duncan, Crisis, p. 5.

Miller, My Schools, pp. 180—1. C. R. Brand, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working Classes . . . of

Glasgow (Glasgow, 1841), p. 5. Miller, My Schools, pp. 181—2. Smout, Century, p. 18. Childrens Employment Commission, PPXVI (1842), p. 363.

A. Somerville, The Autobiography of a Working Man (1951 ed.), pp. 86—7; Anon, ‘Narrative of a miner’, The Commonwealth, 25 October 1856. For an extended discussion of this view see R. A. Houston, ‘Women in the economy and society of Scotland, 1500—1800’, in Scottish Society, 1500—1800, ed. R. A. Houston and I. D. Whyte (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 118—47; see also C. A. Whatley, ‘Women and the economic transformation of Scotland c.1740—1830’, SESH, 14 (1994), pp. 19—40.

68.

R. D. Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 1750—1918 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 106, 129, 132—3.

69.

70.

A. Wilson, The Chartist Movement in Scotland (Manchester, 1970), pp. 256—8; R. Duncan, ‘Artisans and Proletarians: Chartism and working class allegiance in Aberdeen’, Northern Scotland, 4 (1981), p. 61. W. H. Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol 11, 1832—1914, ed. W. H. Fraser and R. J. Morris (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 238.

71. 72. 73 .

E. King, ‘Popular culture in Glasgow’, in The Working Class in Glasgow,

1750—1914, ed. R. A. Cage, (1987), pp. 153—7. Fraser,‘Leisure’, p. 241.

Anon, ‘The life of a journeyman baker’, The Commonwealth, 13 December 1856.

74.

A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (1995), p. 76. J. Dunlop, The Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usage in Great Britain and Ireland (1839), pp. 7—8. Dunlop, Philosophy, p. 9. Miller, My Schools, p. 151. Dunlop, Philosophy, pp. 13—14; W. H. Fraser, ‘The Glasgow cotton spinners 1837’, in Scottish Themes, ed. J. Butt and J. T. Ward (Edinburgh, 1976), p. 86.

Dunlop, Philosophy, p. 50; Johnston, Working Classes, p. 248. Dunlop, Philosophy, pp. 15—16. Somerville, Working Man, p. 59. C. A. Whatley, ‘Labour in the city’, in Glasgow. Volume 1: Beginnings to 1830, ed. T. M. Devine and G. Jackson (Manchester, 1995), p. 367. T. Stewart, Among the Miners (Larkhall, 1893), pp. 4—5; Myles, Rambles, p. 93. Smout, Century, p. 196. Anon, ‘The social and moral condition of the manufacturing districts in Scotland’, Blackwood’s Magazine, 50 (1841), p. 668. C. G. Brown, The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 (1987), p. 165; P. Hillis, ‘I’resbyterianism and social class in mid-nineteenth century

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NOTES TO CHAPTERS 4 A N D 5

87. 88. 90.

' 91. 92. 93. 94.

95. 96.

Glasgow: a study of nine churches’, Journal of Ecclesiatical History, 32 (1981), pp. 56—7. Clark, Breeches, p. 83.

CHAPTER 4 Knox, Hanging, pp. 42, 48. A. Ure, The Cotton Manufacturers of Great Britain, Vol 1 (1836), p. 196. J. Watson, The Art of Spinning and Thread Making (Glasgow, 1878), pp. 254—5. Knox, Hanging, p. 49. M. Freidfeld, ‘Technological change and the “self—acting” mule: a study of skill and the sexual division of labour’, Social History, 11 (1986), p. 336. D. Landes, ‘What do bosses really do?’, Journal of Economic History, XLVI (1986), p. 602. Female Operative Union, Proceeedings of the Operatives (Aberdeen, 1834), p. 4; Glasgow Evening Post, 23 February 1833, quoted in Clark, Breeches, p. 207. Fraser, ‘Spinners’, p. 88. Fraser, ‘Spinners’, p. 88; W. H. Fraser, ‘Patterns of protest’, in People and

Society in Scotland, Vol 1, p. 287. 97.

101. 102. 103. 104.

Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 365. J. Myles, Chapters in the Life of a Dundee Factory Boy (Dundee, 1880), p. 85. R. Q. Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), pp. 40—2. K. Burgess, ‘The influence of technological change on the social attitudes and trade union policies in the British engineering industry, 1780—1860’, (Unpub. PhD, University of Leeds, 1970), pp. 143—4. Book of Trades (1862), pp. 31, 134. Smout, Century, pp. 18—19. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 233. J. Humphries, ‘Mines Regulation Act 1842’, Feminist Review, 7 (1981), pp.

105. 106.

PPXVI (1842), p. 441 quoted in Humphries, ‘Mines regulation’, p. 23. R. J. Morris, ‘Skilled workers and the politics of the Red Clyde’, jSLHS, 18

99. 100.

8—11.

(1983), p. 4.

107. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 35. 108. Select Committee on Combinations of Workmen, PPVIII (1837—8), p. 551. 109. E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Artisan or labour aristocrat?’, Economic History Review, 37 (1984), pp. 365—6. 110. Morris, ‘Skilled workers’, p. 8. 111. W. H. Fraser, Conflict and Class: Scottish workers 1700—1838 (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 99.

CHAPTER 5 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

E. Knox, ‘The petty bourgeoisie in Victorian Edinburgh’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1986), p. 530. E. Knox, ‘Petty bourgeoisie’, p. 530. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 67. Dunlop, Philosophy, p. 177. Webb Collection of Trade Unions, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London, Vol XI, f. 254.

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Notes to Chapter 6 117. 118. 119. 120.

Fraser, ‘Spinners’, pp. 84—5. Fraser, ‘Spinners’, p. 84. Fraser, ‘Patterns’, pp. 281—2; Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 365. A. B. Campbell, ‘The Scots colliers’ strikes of 1824—6: the years of freedom and independence’, in British Trade Unionism, 1780—1850: the formative years, ed. J. Rule (1988), p. 149. 121. Campbell, Lanarlzshire Miners, p. 72. 122. Campbell, Lanarlzshire Miners, p. 83. 123. Webb Collection, Vol XI, ff. 236—7. 124. W H. Marwick, A Short History of Labour in Scotland (1967), p. 18. 125. W H. Oliver, ‘The Consolidated Trades’ Union of 1834’, Economic History Review, 17 (1964—5), pp. 77—95; W

126. 127. 128. 129.

H. Fraser, ‘Owenite socialism in

Scotland’, SESH, 16 (1996), pp. 60, 68; W. Diack, History of the Trades Council and Trade Union Movement in Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1939), pp. 49—50. Combinations of Workmen, p. 86. Ure, Cotton, p. 286.

Fraser, ‘Spinners’, pp. 95—6. Fraser, ‘Spinners’, p. 97; J. Butt, ‘Labour and Industrial Relations in the

Scottish Cotton Industry during the Industrial Revolution’, in Scottish 130. 131. 132. 133.

Textile History, ed. J. Butt and K. Ponting, (Aberdeen, 1987), p. 159; for an opposing view see Knox, Hanging, pp. 148—9. R. P. Arnot, A History of the Scottish Miners from the earliest times (1955), p. 40. Duncan, Crisis, p. 29. Fraser, ‘Spinners’, p. 97. Webb Collection, Vol XXXIV, f. 412.

CHAPTER 6 134. Lord Cockburn, Memorials of his time (Edinburgh, 1856), p. 83. 135. Dickson and Clarke, ‘Birth’, p. 165 136. 134. Dickson and Clarke, ‘Birth’, p. 171. 137. Fraser, ‘Patterns’, p. 281. 138. Whatley, Industrial Revolution, p. 71. H. Pelling, A History of Trade Unionism (1976 ed.), pp. 25—9. 140: J. L. Gray, ‘The Law of Combination in Scotland’, Economica, VIH (1928), pp. 332—50; Fraser, Conflict and Class, p. 95. 141. Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, pp. 35—7. 142. Fraser, ‘Patterns’, pp. 281—2. 143. Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, pp. 38—40. 144. The classic nationalist perspective on these events is P. Beresford Ellis and S. MacA’Ghobhainn, The Scottish Insurrection of 1820 (1970); but see also J. D. Young, The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class (1979). 145. Smout, Century, p. 237. 146. Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, p. 41. 147. Smout, Century, p. 238. 148. Dickson and Clarke, ‘Birth’, p. 176. 149. C. A. Whatley, ‘Royal Day, People’s Day: the monarch’s birthday in Scotland, c.1660—1860’, in People and Power in Scotland, ed. R. Mason and N. MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 175. 150. Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, pp. 35—6.

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 6

151. 152.

153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158.

Whatley, ‘Royal Day’, p. 175. Whatley, ‘Royal Day’, p. 184; C. A. Whatley, “‘The privilege which the rabble have to be riotous”: canivalesque and the monarch’s birthday in Scotland, c.1700—1860’, in Labour and Leisure in Historical Perspective, ed. J. Blanchard (Milan, 1994), p. 99. See Smout, Century, pp. 237—9 and Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, pp. 37—41 for a discussion of these issues. Dickson and Clarke, ‘Birth’, p. 171. Dickson and Clarke, ‘Birth’, pp. 175—6. Whatley, ‘Monarch’s birthday’, pp. 97—8. Smout, Century, p. 27. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560—1832 (1972 ed.), pp. 413, 417.

159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165.

166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172.

173.

Fraser, Conflict and Class (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 90. Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 386. Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 388. 6 December 1832. F. A. Montgomery, ‘The unstamped press: the contribution of Glasgow, 1831—1836’, Scottish Historical Review, LIX (1980), p. 159. 27 November 1830. R. Sykes, ‘Trade unionism and class consciousness: the revolutionary period of general unionism, 1829—1834’, in British Trade Unions, 1780—1850: the formative years, ed. J. Rule, (1988), pp. 193—4. Aberdeen Council Register, 15 December 1830 (Aberdeen City Archives). F. A. Montgomery, ‘Glasgow and the struggle for parliamentary reform, 1830—1832’, Scottish Historical Review, LXI (1982), pp. 140—1. Somerville, Working Man, p. 93. 7 October 1831. Montgomery, ‘Glasgow’, p. 141. L. Wright, Scottish Chartism (Edinburgh, 1953), pp. 53—4. Evening Post, 14 June 1834; R. Duncan, ‘Chartism in Aberdeen: radical politics and culture, 1838—1848’, in Covenant, Charter and Party: Traditions of Revolt and Protest in Modern Scottish History, ed. T. Brotherstone (Aberdeen, 1989), p. 89. J. Hodge, ‘Owenism in Scotland’, Socialist Review (July—August, 1918), pp. 274—5; W. H. Fraser, ‘Owenite Socialism’, p. 78.

174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184.

J. Kinloch and J. Butt, History of the Scottish Wholesale Co—operative Society (Manchester, 1981), p. 2. Wilson, Chartist Movement, pp. 124, 127—9; Duncan,‘Chartism in Aberdeen’, p. 89. Hodge, ‘Owenism’, pp. 127—8. The Herald to the Trades Advocate, 19 March 1831; Fraser, ‘Owenite socialism’, p. 67. Hodge, ‘Owenism’, p. 129. E. Knox, ‘Petty bourgeoisie’, pp. 283—4. Fraser, ‘Spinners’, p. 92. Clarke and Dickson, ‘Class’, p. 30. Murray, Handloom Weavers, pp. 231—2. W. H. Marwick, ‘The beginnings of the working class movement in the nineteenth century’, IRSH, III (1938), p. 11. Marwick, ‘Beginnings’, p. 11.

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Notes to Chapter 6 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197.

198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208.

S. McCalman, ‘Chartism in Aberdeen’, ISLHS, 2 (1970), p. 8. Wilson, Chartist Movement, pp. 256—8. Marwick, ‘Beginnings’, p. 8. I. S. Wood, ‘Drink, temperance and the labour movement’, JSLHS, 5 (1972), p. 30. Wilson, Chartist Movement, pp. 137-8. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 140. Wilson, Chartist Movement, pp. 142—5. Northern Star, 16 January 1841. E. Yeo, ‘Robert Owen and radical culture’, in Robert Owen: Prophet of the Poor, ed. 5. Pollard and J. Salt (1971), pp. 104—5. Yeo, ‘Robert Owen’, p. 107; E. Yeo, ‘Christianity in Chartist struggle’, Past and Present, 91 (1980), pp. 109—39. I. C. G. Hutchinson, ‘Glasgow working class politics’, in The Working Class in Glasgow, 1750—1814, ed. R. A. Cage (1987), p. 107. Murray, Handloom Weavers, pp. 231—2. T. Clarke, ‘Early Chartism in Scotland: a moral force movement?’, in Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, ed. T. M. Devine (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 111. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 102. Northern Star, 30 October 1841. F. C. Mather, Public Order in the Age of the Chartists (1959) provides a full account of the Plug Riots. J. Hassan, ‘The landed estate, paternalism and the coal industry in Midlothian’, Scottish Historical Review, 59 (1980), pp. 80—1. Duncan, Crisis, p. 29; Duncan, ‘Artisans’, pp. 66—7. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 252.

Myles, Rambles, pp. 69—79; C. A. Whatley, et al., The Life and Times of Dundee (Edinburgh, 1993), p. 141. C. Behagg, ‘The democracy of work, 1820—1 85 0’, in British Trade Unionism, 1750—1850: the formative years, ed. J. Rule (1988), pp. 174—5. W H. Fraser, ‘The working class’, in Glasgow Vol II: 1830 to 1912, ed. W H. Fraser and I. Maver (Manchester, 1996), p. 315. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 121. F. A. Montgomery, ‘Glasgow and the movement for Corn Law Repeal’, History, 64 (1979), pp. 374—5.

209. 210. 211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216.

217. 218. 219.

Duncan, ‘Artisans’, p. 63. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 161. T. Dickson, et al., Scottish Capitalism ( 1980), p. 206. J. Mitchell, Poems, Radical Rhymes, Tales . . . (1840), p. 9. Murray, Handloom Weavers, pp. 235—6. Wright, Scottish Chartism, p. 172. Wright, Scottish Chartism, p. 173. On the relationship of the Irish to the Chartist movement see J. H. Treble, ‘O’Connor, O’Connell and the attitudes of Irish immigrants towards Chartism in the North of England, 1838—1848’, in The Victorians and Social Protest, ed. J. Butt and I. F. Clarke (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 63—9. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 234. W. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement (1894), p. 295. D. Croal, Early Reflections of a [ournalist in Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1898), pp. 76—7.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 7

220. 221.

222. 223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 228. 229. 230. 231. 232. 233. 234. 235. 236.

E. Knox, ‘Petty bourgeoisie’, pp. 291—3; Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 228. Scotsman, 8 March 1848, quoted in Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 218; J. F. McCaffrey, ‘Irish immigrants and radical movements in the West of Scotland in the early nineteenth century’, Innes Review, XXXIX (1988), pp. 56—7. E. Knox, ‘Petty bourgeoisie’, p. 290. Scotsman, 12 April 1848. Croal, Reflections, pp. 76—7. Smout, Century, p. 29. Duncan, ‘Artisans’, pp. 66—7; McCalman, ‘Aberdeen’, p. 11. Wilson, Chartist Movement, pp. 126—32. Wilson, Chartist Movement, pp. 25 6—7. Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, pp. 106—7. Fraser, ‘Owenite Socialism’, pp. 82—3. M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume II: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760—1914 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 524. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p. 226. Duncan, ‘Chartism in Aberdeen’, p. 80; Johnston, Working Classes, p. 248. Gammage, Chartist Movement, p. 57.

Northern Star, 15 January 1842. R. Price, Labour in British Society (1986), p. 50. Part H

CHAPTER 7 The classic statement on the labour aristocracy thesis is E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘The labour aristocracy in nineteenth century Britain’, in Democracy and the Labour Movement, ed. J. Saville (1954); but see also R. Q. Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), and J. Foster, Class

Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (1974). R. Q. Gray, The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth Century Britain, c.1850—1914 (1981); but see also E. J. Hobsbawm’s defence of the concept in ‘Artisan or Labour AristocratP’, Economic History Review, 37 (1984), pp.

355—72. E. F. Biagini and A. Reid (eds), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism,

Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850—1914 (1991), p. 5; see also M. C. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848—1874 (Cambridge, 1993).

A. Reid, ‘The division of labour in the British shipbuilding industry, 1880—1920: with special reference to Clydeside’ (Unpublished PhD, Cambridge, 1980), p. 200. P. Johnson, Saving and Spending. The Working Class Economy in Britain, 1870—1939 (1985).

Gray, Labour Aristocracy, pp. 111—20. S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (1920 ed.); but see R. Price, Labour in British Society (1986), p. 85 for a broader definition of organised labour. D. Nicholls, ‘The New Liberalism — after Chartism’, Social History, 21 (1996), p. 331.

A. Reid, Social Classes and Social Relations in Britain, 1850—1914 (1992),

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Notes to Chapter 8

10.

offers a perspective on stabilisation which is indicative of revisionist historiography. T. Clarke, ‘Early Chartism in Scotland: a moral force movement?’, in Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700—1850, ed. T. M. Devine

(Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 10—20. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

J. Hodge, Workman’s Cottage to Windsor Castle (1931), p. 7. T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1832—1950 (1986), ch.10. CHAPTER 8 A. Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland, 1750—1960 (1975), p. 123. Slaven, Development, p. 123. S. and O. Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832—1914 (1984), p. 25; Slaven, Development, p. 120. Checklands, Industry, p. 22; Slaven, Development, p. 178. W. Watt, ‘Forty years of progress’, Transactions of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, IV (April, 1903), p. 99. R. E. Tyson, ‘The economy of Aberdeen’, in Aberdeen in the 19thC: The Making of the Modern City, ed. J. S. Smith and D. Stevenson (Aberdeen,

1988), p. 33.

19. 20. 21. 23. 24.

C. A. Whatley, The Industrial Revolution in Scotland (Cambridge, 1997), p. 6. Checklands, Industry, p. 21; Slaven, Development, p. 121. Gray, Labour Aristocracy, pp. 38—9. Checklands, Industry, p. 22. M. Blair, The Paisley Shawl and the Men Who Produced it (Paisley, 1904); B. Lenman, et al., Dundee and its Textile Industry (Dundee, 1969), pp. 23—42. R. Rodger, ‘Concentration and fragmentation: capital, labour and the structure of mid—Victorian Scottish industry’, journal of Urban History, 14

(1988), pp. 186—7, 207. 25. 26.

Smout, Century, p. 87. J. H. Treble, ‘The occupied male labour force’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, 1832—1914, ed. W. H. Fraser and R. J. Morris (Edinburgh,

27.

R. Rodger, ‘Employment, wages and poverty in Scottish cities, 1841—1911’, in Perspectives of the Scottish City, ed. G. Gordon (Aberdeen, 1985), p. 29. E. Gordon, ‘Women’s spheres’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II,

1990), p. 195.

28. 29. 30.

31.

p. 208.

E. Roberts, Women’s Work, 1840—1940 (1988), p. 22. W. W. Knox, Hanging by a Thread: The Scottish Cotton Industry, c.1850—1914 (Preston, 1995), pp. 20—1; C. Gulvin, The Tweedmakers: A History of the Scottish Fancy Woollen Industry, 1600—1 914 (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 180. A. Campbell, The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of Their Trade

Unions, 1775—1884 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 109—13.

K. Burgess, ‘Workshop of the World: client capitalism at its zenith, 1830—1870’, in Scottish Capitalism: Class, State and Nation from Before the Union to the Present, ed. T. Dickson (1980), p. 223. Burgess, ‘Workshop of the world’, p. 222. Burgess, ‘Workshop of the world’, p. 196. Return of Wages, PPLXXXIX (1887), p. 145.

Burgess, ‘Workshop of the world’, p. 223.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 9

Return of Wages, pp. 384—5. Return of Wages, p. 31. Return of Wages, pp. 218—19. Return of Wages, pp. 284, 299. C. A. Whatley (ed.), The Diary of John Sturrock, Millwright, Dundee, 1864-65 (East Linton, 1996), pp. 16, 41.

Gulvin, Tweedmakers, p. 182. M. Anderson and D. Morse, ‘The people’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p. 15. Smout, Century, p. 110. Burgess, ‘Workshop of the world’, p. 224. Tyson, ‘Economy’, p. 33. Burgess, ‘Workshop of the world’, pp. 233—4. Smout, Century, p. 112. Smout, Century, p. 112. Gordon, ‘Women’s spheres’, p. 156. Knox, Hanging, p. 112. Knox, Hanging, p. 107. Gordon, ‘Women’s spheres’, p. 156. Rodger, ‘Employment’, pp. 27—8. T. Ferguson, The Dawn of Scottish Social Welfare (1948), p. 43. Smout, Century, p. 34 I. H. Adams, The Making of Urban Scotland (1978), p. 136. Ferguson, Social Welfare, p. 150. Ferguson, Social Welfare, p. 154. J. R. Symington, The Working Man’s Home (Edinburgh, 1886), pp. 15 8—9. Smout, Century, p. 119.

71.

Smout, Century, p. 119. Ferguson, Social Welfare, p. 90. Rodger, ‘Employment’, p. 29. Slaven, Development, p. 143. Slaven, Development, pp. 144—5. Slaven, Development, p. 145. I. C. G. Hutchinson, ‘Glasgow working class politics, 1750—1914’, in The Working Class in Glasgow, 1750—1914, ed. R. A. Cage (1987), pp. 129; E. MacFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 104. Hutchison, ‘Working Class’, pp. 171—8. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 163—4. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 208—9.

72. 73.

CHAPTER 9 M. Angus, Sheriff Watson of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1913), p. 20. E. King, ‘Popular Culture in Glasgow’, in The Working Class in Glasgow,

69.

74. 75. 77. 78.

1750—1914, p. 161.

7 June 1853 cited by Whatley, Sturrock, p. 20. Whatley, Sturrock, p. 20. J. D. Young, The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class (1979), p. 144. The Webb Collection on Trade Unions (British Library of Political and Economic Science), Vol XLIV, f. 122. D. C. Paton, ‘Drink and the Temperance Movement in nineteenth century

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Notes to Chapter 9 79. 80.

Scotland’ (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1977), p. 394. Monthly Report (April, 1881), p. 13.

Reports of the Commissioners on the Organisation and Rules of Trade Unions, Fourth Report, PPXXXII (1867), Q. 8745.

81. 82. 83.

Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 224; W. H. Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p. 241. E. King, Scotland Sober and Free: The Temperance Movement, 1829—1979 (Glasgow, 1979), p. 16. C. G. Brown, ‘Religion, class and the church’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p. 326.

84. 86.

A. S. Cook, Pen Sketches (Aberdeen, 1901), p. 230. King, ‘Popular Culture’, pp. 164—5. H. Corr, ‘An exploration into Scottish education’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p. 302.

87.

89. 90.

Aberdeen Ladies Union, Annual Reports (1884, 1888). E. Gordon, ‘Women, work and collective action: Dundee jute workers, 1870—1906’, journal ofSocial History, 21 (1987), p. 31. Gordon, ‘Women, work’, p. 31. P. Joyce, ‘Labour, capital and compromise: a reply to Richard Price’, Social History, 9 (1984), p. 75.

91.

92. 93.

Chartist Circular (No 3, 1841), quoted in A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (1995), p. 237; Glasgow Sentinel, 13 October 1860. Minute Book of Baxter Park, Vol I (1863—1901), cited in Whatley, Sturrock, p. 20. N. L. Tranter, ‘The social and occupational structure of organised sport in central Scotland, during the nineteenth century’, International journal of the History ofSport, 4 (1987), p. 303. Tranter, ‘Organised Sport’, pp. 310, 307. Fraser, ‘Leisure’, p. 245.

Fraser, ‘Leisure’, p. 247. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 224. I. Levitt and T. C. Smout, The State of the Scottish Working Class in 1843 (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 133; R. Q. Gray, ‘Thrift and class mobility in Victorian Edinburgh’, in Social Class in Scotland: Past and Present, ed. A. A. Maclaren (Edinburgh, 1976), pp. 130—1.

99. 100.

Knox, Hanging, p. 137.

J. Kinloch and J. Butt, History of the Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society Limited (Manchester, 1 9 8 1 ) , p. 121.

101. 102.

103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

Kinloch and Butt, Co-operative Society, p. 121. P. Hillis, ‘Presbyterianism and social class in mid-nineteenth century Glasgow: 3 study of nine churches’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 32 (1981), pp. 47—64. A. L. Drummond and J. Bulloch, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland, 1874—1900 (Edinburgh, 1978), p. 145. C. G. Brown, The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 (1987), pp. 147—8. Brown, ‘Religion’, p. 326. P. Taylor, The Autobiography of Peter Taylor (Paisley, 1903), p. 76. Brown, ‘Religion’, p. 327. J. Hutchison, Weavers, Miners and the Open Book (Cumbemauld, 1986), p.

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 1 0

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

66 cited in Brown, ‘Religion’, p. 324. MacFarland, Protestants, p. 111. R. D. Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 1750—1918 (Oxford,

1995), pp. 233—5.

J. Scotland, The History of Scottish Education, Vol II (1969), p. 53. Educational News, 19 March 1892 quoted in Anderson, Education, p. 201. Gray, ‘Thrift’, p. 138. D. Kirkwood, M y Life of Revolt (1935), p. 1. W . H . Fraser, ‘The working class’, in Glasgow Vol II: 1830—1912, ed. W H . Fraser and I. Maver (Manchester, 1996), p. 333. Taylor, Autobiography, p. 6 1 . B. Duncan, James Leatham, 1865—1945: Portrait of a Socialist Pioneer (Aberdeen, 1978), pp. 12—13. H . Crawfurd, Unpublished Autobiography (Marx Memorial Library, London, n.d.), p. 13. Kirkwood, M y Life, p. 60. W M . Walker, juteopolis: Dundee and its Textile Workers, 1885—1923 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 55—6. J. C . Holley, ‘The two family economies of industrialisation: factory workers in Victorian Scotland’, Journal of Family History, 6 (1981), p. 59. C H A P T E R 10

122.

W Thom, Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver (Aberdeen,

123.

W C . Steadman, ‘Shipbuilding’, in Workers on their Industries, ed. F. Galton (1895), pp. 62—3. R. Postgate, The Builder’s History (1923), p. 237. Book of Trades (1862), p. 31. Sir J. Clapham, An Economic History of Britain, Vol III (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 195—6. Book of Trades, p. 30. Gray, Labour Aristocracy, pp. 38—9. Proceedings of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (August, 1 874), cited in J. B. Jeffreys, The Story of the Engineers, 1800—1945 (1948), p. 53. W . W . Knox, ‘British apprenticeship, 1800—1914’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1980), p. 322. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 108—9. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 105—7. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 105—7.

1871), p. ix.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 105—7.

P. Joyce, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Late Victorian England (1980); H . I. Dutton and J. E. King, ‘The limits of paternalism: the cotton tyrants of northern Lancashire’, Social History, 8 (1982), pp. 59—74; M . Huberman, ‘The economic origins of paternalism: Lancashire cotton spinning in the first half of the nineteenth century’, Social History, 12 (1987), pp. 177—92. 136. For specific studies of paternalism at the level of the firms see H . Bradley, ‘Technological change, managerial strategies and the development of gender—based job segregation in the labour process’, in Gender and the Labour Process, ed. D. Knights and H . Wimlot (Aldershot, 1986), pp. 54—73; J. Lown, “‘Not so much a factory, more a form of patriarchy”: gender and

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Notes to Chapter 11

137. 138. 139. 140.

class during industrialisation’, in Gender, Class and Work, ed. E. Gamarnikov (Aldershot, 1985), pp. 28—45. H. Newby, et al., Property, Paternalism and Power: Class and Control in Rural England (Wisconsin, 1978), pp. 27—8. 8. G. Checkland, ‘The British industrial city as history: the Glasgow case’, Urban Studies, 1 (1964), pp. 34—54. Joyce, Work, p. 164. E. Johnston, Autobiography, Poems and Songs (Glasgow, 1867); J. Melling,

‘Scottish industrialists and the changing character class relations in the Clyde

150. 151. 152. 153.

region, c.1880—1918’, in Capital and Class in Scotland, ed. T. Dickson (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 85—9. Melling, ‘Scottish industrialists’, p. 90. Melling, ‘Scottish industrialists’, p. 101. J. A. Hassan, ‘The landed estate, paternalism and the coal industry in Midlothian, 1800—1880’, Scottish Historical Review, LIX (1980), pp. 83—4. Knox, Hanging, p. 124. Knox, Hanging, pp. 129—40. The Inauguration of the George Clark Town Hall (Paisley, 1882), pp. 49—52. Hassan, ‘Landed estate’, pp. 86—7. Hassan, ‘Landed estate’, pp. 88—9. D. Keir, The Coats’ Story, Vol I (Unpublished history, Coats Vyella, 155 St Vincent Street, Glasgow, 1964), p. 73. Builder, 10 October 1870. Taylor, Autobiography, p. 72. Knox, Hanging, pp. 67—8; Gordon, ‘Women, work’, p. 30. R. Duncan, Conflict and Crisis: The Monklands Miners and the General

154. 155.

Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 15 6—7. J. Lynch, ‘Skilled and unskilled labour in the shipbuilding trade’, in Report

141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

Strike 0/1842 (1982), pp. 6—7.

of the Proceedings of the Industrial Renumeration Conference (1885), pp. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164.

114—15. R. Smillie, My Life for Labour (1924), p. 20.

Lynch, ‘Skilled and unskilled’, p. 118. Labour Gazette (April, 1886), p. 111. Border Advertiser, 20 May 1874, quoted in Gulvin, Tweedmakers, p. 183. Joyce, ‘Labour, capital’, pp. 71—2. CHAPTER 1 1 S. and B. Webb, Trade Unionism, pp. 180-232. A. E. Musson, British Trade Unions, 1800—1875 (1975), pp. 50—1; Gray,

Labour Aristocracy, pp. 45—6. R. H. Campbell, Scotland Since 1707 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 313—15. K. Burgess, ‘New unionism for old? Amalgamated Society of Engineers in Britain’, in The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880—1914, ed. W. J. Mommsen and H. G. Husung, (1985 ), pp. 168, 174.

165. 166. 167. 168.

For the building and engineering industries see R. Price, Masters, Unions and Men (Cambridge, 1980), p. 62. Melling, ‘Scottish industrialists’, pp. 78—9; Gray, Labour Aristocracy, p. 147. Fraser, ‘Working class’, p. 312. E. Gordon, ‘Women, trade unions and industrial militancy, 1850—1890’, in

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 11

169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174.

175. 176.

Uncharted Lives: Extracts from Scottish Women’s Experiences, 1850-1982, ed. Glasgow Women’s Studies Group (Glasgow, 1985), pp. 56—8. Taylor, Autobiography, p. 83. Webb Collection, Vol XI, f. 277. Hassan, ‘Landed estate’, p. 82. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 281—3. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 184—5. G. M. Wilson, ‘The strike policy of the miners of the west of Scotland, 1842—1874’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, ed. I. MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 35. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, pp. 184—5. A. J. Youngson Brown, ‘Trade union policy in the Scots coalfields, 1855—1885’, Economic History Review, 6 (1953—54), p. 39.

177.

Evidence of A. MacDonald to the Select Committee on Coal, PPX (1873),

Q. 4637. 178.

A. Slaven, ‘Earnings and productivity in the Scottish coal mining industry

during the nineteenth century: the Dixon enterprises’, in Studies in Scottish Business History, ed. P. L. Payne (1967), p. 219. 179. J. E. Mortimer, History of the Boilermakers’ Society, Vol I, 1834—1906 (1973), p. 68. 180. P. S. Bagwell, ‘The new unionism in Britain: the railway industry’, in The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880—1914, ed. W J. Mommsen and H. G. Husung (1985), p. 185; D. C. Unger, ‘The roots of Red Clydeside: economic and social relations and work— ing class politics in the West of Scotland’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Texas, 1979), pp. 197—9.

181. 182. 183.

184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192.

193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198.

Fraser, ‘Working Class’, p. 312. Unger, ‘Roots’, pp. 186—7; A. Tuckett, The Scottish Trades Union Congress: The First Eighty Years, 1897—1977 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 30—1. W. H. Fraser, ‘Trades councils in the labour movement in nineteenth century Scotland’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, ed. I. MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 6—7. Gulvin, Tweedmakers, p. 182. Mortimer, Boilermakers, Appendix I, p. 200. E. J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men (1964), p. 320. Reid, ‘Division of labour’, p. 205.

Wilson, ‘Strike policy’, pp. 44—5. Hassan, ‘Landed estate’, pp. 81—2. Wilson, ‘Strike policy’, p. 32. Price, Masters, p. 80.

United Joiners of Scotland, ‘The improvements necessary for the more effectual working of trades unions’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1860), p. 763. I. MacDougall (ed.), The Minutes of the Edinburgh Trades Council, 1859—1873 (Edinburgh, 1968), p. 36. Glasgow Sentinel, 11 April 1863. Mortimer, Boilermakers, p. 6. T. Johnston, A History of the Working Classes in Scotland (Glasgow, 1929 ed.), p. 329. Johnston, Working Classes, pp. 366—7. Johnston, Working Classes, pp. 376—7.

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Notes to Chapters 12, 13 and 14 199. 200. 201.

Johnston, Working Classes, p. 369. Reid, ‘Division of labour’, p. 235. W. H. Fraser, ‘Trade unions, reform and the election of 1868 in Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, L (1971), p. 1 5 3 .

202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212.

Glasgow Sentinel, 30 September 1867. CHAPTER 12 Gray, Labour Aristocracy, pp. 156—7. Webb Collection, Vol XI, ff. 271—3. J. Fyfe, ‘Scotland and the Risorgiomento’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Guelph, 1976), pp. 85, 106. Fyfe, ‘Scotland’, pp. 326, 341; Hutchison, ‘Working class’, p. 107. Foster, Class Struggle, p. 254. Smout, Century, pp. 249—50. Hutchison, ‘Working class’, p. 112. T. Johnston, Working Classes, pp. 261—2. Gray, Labour Aristocracy, p. 159. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Slavery on Scottish Railways (Glasgow, 1888), p. 12. Part III CHAPTER 13 E. J. Hobsbawm, Lahouring Men (1964); H. Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (1968 ed.); R. R. James, The British Revolution: British politics 1860—1939 (1978). R. Price, ‘The New Unionism and the Labour process’, in The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880—1914, ed. W. J. Mommsen and H. G. Husung (1985), p. 147. P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971). A. Reid, Social Classes and Social Relations in Britain, 1850—1914 (1992), p. 56. Report of the Labour Party [Scotland] (1914), p. 264. M. Savage, The Dynamics of Working—Class Politics: The Labour Movement in Preston, 1880—1940 (Cambridge, 1987).

CHAPTER 14 A. Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland, 1750—1960 (1975), p. 167.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

R. H. Campbell, Scotland since 1 707 (1985 ed.), p. 231; Slaven, Development, pp. 178—9. Slaven, Development, p. 167. D. C. Unger, ‘The roots of Red Clydeside: economic and social relations and working class politics in the west of Scotland, 1900—1919’ (Unpublished PhD, University of Texas, 1979), p. 180. S. and O. Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832—1 914 (1984), p. 13; S. Checkland, The Upas Tree: Glasgow, 1875—1975 (Glasgow, 1976), p. 8. Slaven, Development, pp. 166—7. T. Dickson, et al., Scottish Capitalism: Class, Nation and State from Before the Union to the Present (1980), pp. 249—50. Slaven, Development, pp. 169—72. Slaven, Development, pp. 173—8.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 15

16. 17. 18.

Checkland, Upas, p. 7; see also W W Knox, Hanging by a Thread: The Scottish Cotton Industry, c.1850—1914 (Preston, 1995). R. H. Campbell, The Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry, 1707—1939 (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 64. A. J. McIvor, ‘Were Clydeside employers more autocratic? Labour management and the “labour unrest”, c1910—14’, in Roots of Red Clydeside 1910-1914: Labour Unrest and Industrial Relations in West Scotland, ed. A. J. McIvor and W. Kenefick (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 44. R. H. Campbell, Scottish Industry, ch.4. E. H. Hunt, Regional Wage Variations in Britain, 1850—1914 (Oxford, 1973). T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830—1950 (1986), p. 112. Smout, Century, p. 113. Unger, ‘Clydeside’, p. 169. R. Rodger, ‘The invisible hand: market forces, housing and the urban form in Victorian cities’, in The Pursuit of Urban History, ed. D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (1980), pp. 190—211. R. E. Tyson, ‘The economy of Aberdeen’, in Aberdeen in the Nineteenth

Century: The Making of the Modern City, ed. J. S. Smith and D. Stevenson (Aberdeen, 1988), p. 33. For insight into the position of homeworkers see A. J. Albert, ‘Fit work for women: sweated home—workers in Glasgow, c.1875—1914’, in The World is Ill—Divided: Women’s Work in Scotland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. E. Breitenbach and E. Gordon (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 15 8—77. J. Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage (1935), p. 4. A. Gaffron, A Patchwork of Memories (Aberdeen, 1986), pp. 20, 29. T. Ferguson, Scottish Social Welfare, 1864—1914, pp. 284—5. Smout, Century, p. 34. J. Butt, ‘Working class housing in Glasgow, 1900—1939’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, ed. I. MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1978), p. 152. M. A. Crowther, ‘Poverty, health and welfare’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, 1832—1914, ed. W H. Fraser and R. J. Morris (Edinburgh,

1990), pp. 283—4.

Checkland, Upas, pp. 18-19.

41. 42.

CHAPTER 15 F. McKenna, The Railway Workers, 1840—1970 (1980), pp. 52—3. R. Q. Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), p. 118. E. Knox, ‘Between capital and Labour: the petite bourgeoisie in Victorian Edinburgh’ (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1986), p. 442. Knox, ‘Petite bourgeoisie’, pp. 43 8—40. R. Stewart, Breaking the Fetters: The Memoirs of Bob Stewart (1967), p. 28. J. Kinloch and J. Butt, History of the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society Limited (Manchester, 1981), pp. 248, 269. G. Brown, ‘Some problems related to the rise of the Labour Party: a study of North Lanarkshire, 1885-1914’, (Undergraduate dissertation, Department of Economic History, University of Edinburgh, 1972), p. 41. Gray, Labour Aristocracy, p. 118. W. H. Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p. 253; R. M. Connell, ‘The Association game in Scotland’, in The Book ofFootball (1906), p. 45.

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Notes to Chapter 15

43. 44.

Fraser, ‘Leisure’, p. 2 5 5 .

A. Mason, Association Football and English Society, 1863-1915 (Brighton, 1980), Table 5.3. 45. Paton, Proletarian, p. 91; Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Betting, PPV (1902), Qs. 1873, 1885, 2107—9. 46. R. D. Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 1750—1918 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 168—70. PPXXIV (1900), CCES Report, p. 263 quoted in Anderson, Education, p. 202. Anderson, Education, p. 214. Anderson, Education, p. 219. J. H. Muir, Glasgow in 1901 (Glasgow, 1901), p. 199. Muir, Glasgow, pp. 188—91. Paton, Proletarian, p. 80. C. G. Brown, ‘Religion, class and church growth’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p. 238. D. C. Smith, ‘The failure and recovery of social criticism in the Scottish church, 1830—1950’ (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1964), p. 361. 55. F. Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday schools in Britain, 1892—1939’, IRSH, 11 (1966), pp. 29—30. 56. J. M. Craigen, ‘The Scottish Trades Unions Congress, 1897-1893: the study of a pressure group’ (Unpublished M.Litt, Heriot-Watt University, 1974), p. 87. 57. Gray, Labour Aristocracy, p. 96. 58. B. Moorhouse, ‘Football hooliganism: old bottle, new whines?’, Sociological Review, (1991); see also B. Murray, The Old Firm: Sectarianism, Sport and Scottish Society (Edinburgh, 1984). 59. A. Campbell, The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of their Trade Unions, 1775—1874 (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 157. 60. A. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 15 7. 61. H. McShane and J. Smith, No Mean Fighter (1978), p. 19. J. Foster and C. Woolfson, The Politics of the UCS Work—In: Class Alliances and the Right to Work (1986), pp. 144—5. 63. T. Gallagher, Glasgow, The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1987), p. 111. 64. J. H. Treble, ‘The market for unskilled labour in Glasgow, 1891-1914’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, pp. 121—2. 65. W M. Walker, Juteopolis: Dundee and its Textile Workers, 1885—1923 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 121—2. 66. E. MacFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 72. 67. I. C. G. Hutchinson, ‘Glasgow working class politics’, in The Working Class in Glasgow, 1750—1914, ed. R. A. Cage, (1987), p. 128. 68. A. B. Aspinwall, ‘The formation of the Catholic community in the west of Scotland: some preliminary outlines’, Innes Review, XXXIII (1982), pp. 44—57. 69. Walker, juteopolis, p. 129. Aspinwal, ‘Formation’, p. 53. 7 1 . I. S. Wood, ‘John Wheatley, the Irish and the Labour Movement in Scotland’, Innes Review, 31 ( 1 9 8 0 ) , p. 74.

72.

E. Gordon, ‘Women, work and collective action: Dundee jute workers,

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 16

73. 74. 75. 76.

1870—1914’, journal of Social History, 21 (1987), p. 32. M. Irwin, ‘Women’s industries in Scotland’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, XXVII (1895—96), pp. 72—3. Gordon, ‘Women’, p. 32. The Webb Collection on Trade Unions (British Library of Political and Economic Science, London), III, f. 233. J. H. Treble, ‘The characteristics of the female unskilled market and the formation of the female casual labour market in Glasgow, 1891—1914’, SESH, 6 (1986), p. 36.

77.

E. Gordon, ‘Women’s spheres’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol II, p.

78. 79.

Treble, ‘Characteristics’, pp. 34—5. Gordon, ‘Women’, p. 28; Walker, juteopolis, p. 47.

80.

M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol II: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760—1914 (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 17. R. H. Campbell, Rise and Fall, pp. 68—73. A. L. Levine, ‘Industrial change and its affects upon Labour, 1900—1914’ (Unpublished PhD, University of London, 1954), pp. 156—7. ASE Monthly journal (September 1906), p. 30. W. F. Watson, Machines and Men: An Autobiography of an Itinerant Mechanic (1935), pp. 12—13. Levine, ‘Industrial’, pp. 462—3. McShane and Smith, Fighter, pp. 59—60. J. Zeitlin, ‘The Labour strategies of British engineering employers, 1890—1922’, in Managerial Strategies and Industrial Relations: An Histori-

208.

CHAPTER 16

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 87.

cal and Comparative Study, ed. H. F. Gospel and C. Littler, (Aldershot, 1983),

88.

pp. 27—8. A. Scott, ‘The training of youth: supervision of lads from their fourteenth till their seventeenth year’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow,

XXXVII (1906—07), p. 167. 89.

K. McClelland and A. Reid, ‘Wood, iron and steel: technology, labour and trade union organisation in the shipbuilding industry, 1840—1914’, in Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nine— teenth Century Britain, ed. R. Harrison and J. Zeitlin, (Brighton, 1985), pp.

173-4. 90. 91.

W. W. Knox, ‘British apprenticeship, 1800—1914’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1980), p. 176. Levine, ‘Industrial’, p. 431. J. M. Smith, ‘Commonsense thought and working class consciousness: some aspects of the Glasgow and Liverpool labour movements in the early years of the twentieth century’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh,

1980), p. 324. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

McClelland and Reid, ‘Wood’, p. 170. Slaven, Development, p. 168. Brown, ‘Some problems’, p. 61. I. MacDougall, Militant Miners (Edinburgh, 1981), p. 6. N. Dearle, Problems of Unemployment in the London Building Trades

(1908), pp. 46—8. 98.

Dearle, Unemployment, pp. 50-1.

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Notes to Chapter 16 99. Working Man, Reminisences of a Stonemason (1908), p. 255. 100. Webb Collection, XVII, f. 115. 101. J. Zeitlin, ‘Craft control and the division of labour: engineers and compositors in Britain, 1890—1930’, Cambridge [ournal of Economics, 3 (1979), pp. 2.67-8.

102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

116. 117.

P. Thompson, Living the Fishing (1983), pp. 116—18. P. S. Bagwell, ‘The New Unionism in Britain: the railway industry’, in The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, p. 190. ASRS, Slavery on Scottish Railways (Glasgow, 1888), p. 6. R. Price, ‘Structures of subordination in nineteenth century British industry’, in The Power of the Past: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. P. Thane, et al., (1984), pp. 134—5. Zeitlin, ‘Labour’, p. 38. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men, p. 320. Watson, Machines, pp. 90—1. C. Littler, The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies: A Comparative Study of Work Organisation in Britain, japan and the USA (1982), p. 85. A. Williams, Life in a Railway Factory (1915), p. 267. A. Gilchrist, Naethin’ a t A’ (Glasgow, 1940), p. 21. Paton, Proletarian, p. 57. W. W. Knox, ‘Apprenticeship’, pp. 190—1. W W Knox, ‘Apprenticeship’, pp. 192—3. A. Reid, ‘The division of Labour in the British shipbuilding industry, 1880—1920: with special reference to Clydeside’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Cambridge, 1980), pp. 207—8; Littler, Labour Process, pp. 73—6. Littler, Labour Process, p. 83. K. Burgess, ‘Authority relations and the division of labour in British industry, with special reference to Clydeside, c.1860—1930’, Social History, 11 (1986), pp. 266—7; Littler, Labour Process, p. 88.

118. Littler, Labour Process, pp. 87-8. 119. A. McKinlay, Making Ships, Making Men (Clydebank n.d.), pp. 9—10. 120. J. A. Hassan, ‘The Landed estate, paternalism and the coal industry in Midlothian, 1800—1880’, Scottish Historical Review, LIX (1980), p. 90. 121. Price, ‘Structures’, p. 136. 122. T. Bell, Pioneering Days (1941), p. 29. 123. Bell, Pioneering, p. 30. 124. Board of Trade, Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding (1916), evidence of T. Bell, John Brown’s, pp. 25—7. 125. M. Blair, The Paisley Thread (Paisley, 1907), pp. 182—3. 126. Knox, Hanging, pp. 159—61. 127. B. Jones, ‘Destruction or redistribution of engineering skills? The case of numerical control’, in The Degradation of Work?, ed. S. Wood (1982), p. 199. 128. S. Pollard and P. Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870—1914 (Brighton, 1979), pp. 165—6; Reid, ‘Division of Labour’, p. 199. 129. C. K. Harley, ‘Skilled labour and the choice of technique in Edwardian industry’, Explorations in Economic History, II (1973—74), pp. 391—414. 130. P. Joyce, ‘Labour, capital and compromise: a response to Richard Price’, Social History, 9 (1984), p. 69; see also C. More, Skill and the English

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 17 Working Class, 1870—1914 ( 1 9 8 0 ) , p. 120.

131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136.

Price, ‘Structures’, p. 127. A. Touraine, et al., Workers’ Attitudes to Technical Change (Paris, 1965), p. 4 1 . CHAPTER 17 Campbell, Scotland, p. 315 . H. Southall, ‘Unionization’, in Atlas of Industrializing Britain, ed. J. Langton and R. J. Morris, (1986), pp. 189—93. Campbell, Scotland, p. 313. Webb Collection, XXIII, ff. 209—13; quoted in W . H. Fraser, ‘The working

class’, in Glasgow Vol II: 1830—1912, ed. W. H. Fraser and I. Maver (Manchester, 1996), p. 333. 137. Webb Collection, III, f. 235. 138. Webb Collection, XXIII, ff. 230—2. 139. R. C . on Labour, PPXXXVI, Pt 1 (1892), p. 92. 140. Webb Collection, III, ff. 233—7. 141. A. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 170. 142. R. P. Arnot, A History of the Scottish Miners From the Earliest Times (1955), p. 7 8 . 143. Arnot, Scottish Miners, p. 89. 144. C . Gulvin, The Tweedmakers: A History of the Scottish Fancy Woollen Industry, 1600—1914 (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 184. 145. Walker, juteopolis, p. 15. 146. Gordon, ‘Women’, pp. 40—1. 147. E. Gordon, ‘Women, trade unions and industrial militancy, 1850—1890’, in Uncharted Lives: Extracts from Scottish Women’s Experiences, 1850—1982, ed. Glasgow Women’s Studies Group (Glasgow, 1983), pp. 70—1. 148. Gordon, ‘Women’, p. 4 1 . 149. Gordon, ‘Women’s spheres’, pp. 222—3. 150. Webb Collection, XXIII, ff. 220—2. 151. W . H. Fraser, ‘Trades councils and the Labour movement in nineteenth century Scotland’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, pp. 23—4. 152. Foster and Woolfson, UCS, p. 146; Dickson, Scottish Capitalism, pp. 266—7. 153. W . Kenefick, ‘ A struggle for control: the importance of the great unrest at Glasgow harbour, 1911 to 1912’, in Roots of Red Clydeside 1910—1914, p. 133. 154. Webb Collection, XLI, f. 228. 155. Brown, ‘Some problems’, p. 46; Craigen, ‘STUC’, p. 43. 156. Unger, ‘Clydeside’, pp. 257—8. 157. Arnot, Scottish Miners, p. 74. 158. P. L. Robertson, ‘Demarcation disputes in the British shipbuilding industry before 1914’, IRSH, XX (1975), pp. 220—35. 159. Webb Collection, XXIII, ff. 209—14. 160. Webb Collection, X, ff. 82—3. 161. W Stewart, Keir Hardie (Glasgow, 1921), pp. 11—12. 162. A. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, p. 301. 163. K. Lunn, ‘Reaction and responses: Lithuanian and Polish immigrants in the Lanarkshire coalfields, 1880—1914’, ]SLHS, 13 (1979), pp. 23—38. 164. Webb Collection, XXIII, ff. 209—13. 165. McIvor, ‘Employers’, pp. 45—6.

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Notes to Chapter 18 166. 167. 168. 169.

Foster and Woolfson, UCS, p. 144. McIvor, ‘Employers’, pp. 45—6. Joyce, ‘Labour’, pp. 69—70. A. Tuckett, The Scottish Trades Union Congress: The First Eighty,

170. 171.

J. H . Smith, Joe Duncan: The Scottish Farm Servant and British Agriculture (Edinburgh, 1973), p. 34. I. Maver, ‘Glasgow’s municipal workers and industrial strife’, in Roots of

172.

Red Clydeside 1910—1914, p. 227. W . Knox and H. Corr, "’Striking women”: cotton workers and industrial

173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178.

179. 180.

181. 182. 183. 184. 185.

1897—1977 (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 43.

unrest, c.1907—1914’, in Roots of Red Clydeside 1910—1914, p. 116. Brown, ‘Some problems’, p. 62. STUC, Report (1900, 1910). Knox, ‘Apprenticeship’, p. 373. Fraser, ‘Working class’, p. 334. Hobsbawm, Lahouring Men, ch. 10. R. Hyman, ‘Mass organisation and militancy in Britain: contrasts and continuities’, in The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, p. 253. Glasgow Labour History Workshop, ‘The labour unrest in West Scotland, 1910—1914’, in Roots of Red Clydeside 1910—1914, p. 22. K. Burgess, ‘New unionism for old? The Amalgamated Society of Engineers in Britain’, in The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, p. 176. K. Buckley, Trade Unionism in Aberdeen, 1878—1900 (Edinburgh, 1955), p. 32. Price, ‘Structures’, p. 127. A. J. McIvor and W . Kenefick, ‘Roots of Red Clydeside, c.1910—1914P’, in Roots of Red Clydeside 1910—1914, p. 12. P. Joyce, ‘Languages of reciprocity and conflict: a further reponse to Richard Price’, Social History, 9 (1984), pp. 225—31. W Knox, “‘Down with Lloyd George”: the apprentices’ strike of 1912’,

jSLHS, 19 (1984), pp. 20—35.

CHAPTER 18

186.

J. Mavor, M y Windows on the Street of the World (1923), p. 177; W . M . Haddow, Socialism in Scotland: Its Rise and Progress (Glasgow, 1920), pp.

187. 188.

Commonweal, Feb 1885. J. B. Glasier, William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement

189. 190.

Buckley, Aberdeen, p. 14. J. D . Young, ‘Changing images of American democracy and the Scottish

191. 192.

Glaser, Morris, pp. 67—8. B. Duncan, james Leatham, 1865—1945: Portrait of a Socialist Pioneer (Aberdeen, 1978), p. 13. Letter from J. B. Glasier to Socialist League, 11 February 1887 (Socialist League Collection (SLC), International Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam). Hutchinson, ‘Glasgow’, p. 114.

13—14.

(1921), p. 40.

Labour movement’, I R S H , XVIII (1973), p p . 179—80.

193.

1 94.

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 1 8

195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204.

205. 206. 207. 208.

Letter from J. L. Mahon to Andreas Scheu, 12 August 1887 (SLC). Letter from A. Scheu to Socialist League, 20 February 1885 (SLC). Letter from J. Tait to Mr Sparling of Socialist League, 21 December 1885 (SLC). Letter from D. K. MacKenzie to Socialist League, 30 July 1888 (SLC). Letter from A. Howie to Socialist League, 18 July 1888 (SLC). Commonweal, 9 February 1889. Smout, Century, pp. 245—6. Smout, Century, p. 241. R. K. Middlemas, The Clydesiders (1965), p. 17. See J. G. Kellas, ‘The Mid—Lanark by-election and the Scottish Labour Party (1888—1894)’, Parliamentary Affairs, 18 (1964—65), pp. 318—29 for detailed discussion of the election. The Democrat, 1 September 1888. M. Keating and D. Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism (1979), p. 51. P. H. Liddell, ‘The role of the Trades Council in the political and industrial life of Glasgow’, (Unpublished MSc, University of Strathclyde, 1977), p. 18. D. Howell, British Workers and the ILP, 1888—1906 (Manchester, 1983), pp. 149—50. For the situation in Edinburgh see also J. Gilray, ‘Early days of the Socialist movement in Edinburgh’, (Unpublished typescript, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 4965), pp. 15-17; and P. Vestri, ‘The rise of

Reformism’, Radical Scotland (April/May, 1984), pp. 21—3. 209. 210. 211.

F. Reid, Keir Hardie: The Making of a Socialist (1978), for discussion on social values of Hardie. I. S. Wood, ‘Drink, temperance and the Labour movement’, ISLHS, 5

(1972), pp. 126—7. D. Lewis, The Drink Traffic in the Nineteenth Century: Its Growth and Influence (1885); J. Kirk, Social Politics (1870), quoted in D. C. Paton,

‘Drink and the Temperance movement in nineteenth century Scotland’ (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1977), pp. 281, 287.

212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218.

Ardrossan and Salcoats Herald, 12 November 1886. McShane and Smith, Fighter, p. 25. Paton, Proletarian, p. 200. E. King, Scotland Sober and Free: The Temperance Movement, 1829—1979 (Glasgow, 1979), p. 23. Walker, juteopolis, p. 68. Bell, Pioneering, pp. 42—3. See J. S. Roberts, Drink, Temperance and the Working Class in Nineteenth Century Germany (1984).

219. Reid, ‘Sunday Schools’, p. 241. 220. J. K. Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 26. 221. p. 550. 222. C. Harvie, ‘Tom Johnston: a patriot’s progress’, Scotsman, 16 May 1981. 223. I. Jack, Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain 1977—86 (1987), p. 33. 224. J. Ferguson, An Address to the Citizens of 25 Wards (Glasgow, 1902), p. 6. 225. J. Glasse, The Relation of the Church to Socialism (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 19. 226. K. 0. Morgan, ‘The Merthyr of Keir Hardie’, in Merthyr Politics, ed. G. Williams (Cardiff, 1966), p. 67. 227. p. 77. 228. 1 May 1895. 229. Scottish Pulpit, 4 November 1891.

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Notes to Chapter 18 230.

D. C. Smith, ‘Failure and recovery’, pp. 373—6; C. G. Brown, ‘Religion and

the development of an urban society: Glasgow, 1780—1914’ (Unpublished PhD, University of Glasgow, 1981), Vol 1, pp. 517—18. 231. Reid, Hardie, p. 139. 232. Brown, ‘Religion’, p. 484. 233. Brown, ‘Religion’, p. 524. 234. pp. 9, 13. 235. D. C. Smith, ‘Failure and Recovery’, pp. 431—3. 236. D. C. Smith, ‘Failure and Recovery’, p. 363. 237. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 60. 238. McShane and Smith, Fighter, pp. 34—5. 239. P. J. Dollan, jubilee History of the Kinning Park Co-operative Ltd (Glasgow, 1923), p. 48. 240. J. Smyth, ‘Women, socialism and the suffrage’, Radical Scotland, June/July 1984. 241. J. McCaffrey, ‘Politics and the Catholic community since 1878’, in Modern Scottish Catholicism, 1878—1978 (Glasgow, 1979), p. 36. 242. 8 June 1892. 243 . Craigen, ‘STUC’, p. 93. 244. Ardrossan and Salcoats Herald, 8 September 1892. 245. Howell, ILP, p. 142. 246. I. C. G. Hutchinson, A Political History of Scotland, 1832—1924: Parties, Elections and Issues (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 182. 247. Wood, ‘John Wheatley’, pp. 85—6. 248. Wood, ‘John Wheatley’, p. 78. 249. Hutchinson, ‘Glasgow’, p. 140; J. McCaffrey, ‘The origins of Liberal Unionism in the west of Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 50 (1971), pp. 68—9. 250. F. Reid, ‘Keir Hardie’s conversion to Socialism’, in Essays in Labour History, ed. A. Briggs and J. Saville (1971), p. 33. 251. W. Knox (ed.), Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918-1939: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 22.

252. 253. 254. 255. 256.

Forward, 16 December 1911. Glasse, Church, pp. 10—11. Reid, Hardie, p. 86. J. M. Smith, ‘Labour tradition in Glasgow and Liverpool’, H W], 17 (1984), p. 35. E. Gordon, ‘Working class politics, feminism and women workers, 1900—1914’, in State, Private Life and Political Change, ed. L. Jamieson and H. Corr (1989), p. 4.

257. 258. 259. 260. 261.

J. M. Smith, ‘Commonsense’, p. 307. J. B. Glasier, The Meaning of Socialism (Manchester, 1924), p. 164. Glasier, Meaning, pp. 78—9. Middlemas, Clydesia'ers, p. 47. J. Melling, ‘Clydeside rent struggles and the making of labour politics in Scotland’, in Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century, ed. R. Rodger

262.

W. H. Fraser, ‘The Labour Party in Scotland’, in The First Labour Party, ed.

263. 264.

Hutchinson, Political History, p. 181. J. Smyth, ‘The [LP in Glasgow, 1888—1906: the struggle for identity’, in The

(Leicester, 1 9 8 9 ) , p. 77. K. D. Brown ( 1 9 8 5 ) , p. 46.

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NOTES T O CHAPTERS 1 9 A N D 2 0

265.

266.

ILP on Clydeside, 1893—1932: From Foundation to Disintegration, ed. A. MacKinlay and R. J. Morris (Manchester, 1991), p. 37. C. Harvie, ‘Before the breakthrough, 188 8—1922’ in Forward! Labour Politics in Scotland 1888—1988, ed. I. Donnachie, et al., (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 13, 16. J. Smyth, ‘From industrial unrest to industrial debacle? The Labour left and industrial militancy, 1910—1914’, in Roots of Red Clydeside 1910—1914,

p. 245.

267. 268. 269.

Hutchinson, Political History, p. 249; Haddow, Socialism, p. 47. G. Brown, ‘The Labour Party and political change in Scotland: the politics of five elections’, (Unpublishd PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 36—7. Smyth, ‘Industrial unrest’, p. 251; J. Holford, Reshaping Labour: Organisation, Work and Politics - Edinburgh in the Great War and After (1988), p. 149.

270. 271. 272.

273. 274.

The Socialist, May/November 1910. Smith, ‘Commonsense’, p. 330. R. Penn, ‘The contested terrain: a critique of R. C. Edwards’ theory of work— ing class fractions and politics’, in Diversity and Decomposition in the Labour Market, ed. G. Day (Aldershot, 1982), pp. 100—1. Hutchinson, ‘Glasgow’, p. 137. Fraser, ‘Labour Party’, p. 46. PartIV CHAPTER 19

.°°.\‘?\

J. Smith, ‘Taking the leadership of the labour movement: the ILP in Glasgow, 1906—1914’, in The ILP on Clydeside 1893—1932: from foundation to disintegration, ed. A. McKinlay and R. J. Morris (Manchester, 1991), p. 79. CHAPTER 20 W. W Knox, "’Our’s is not an Ordinary Parliamentary Movement”: 1922—1926’, in ILP on Clydeside, p. 193. A. Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland, 1 75 0—1 960 (1975), pp. 187—8. Slaven, Development, p. 193; D. Charman (ed.), Glengarnock: A Scottish Open Hearth Steelworks — The Works, The People (1981), pp. 194—5. R. Saville, ‘The industrial background to the post—war Scottish economy’, in The Economic Development of Modern Scotland, 1950—1980, ed. R. Saville (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 10.

Slaven, Development, p. 184. T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830-1950 (1986), p. 114. R. Duncan, Steelopolis: The Making of Motherwell c.1750—1939 (Motherwell, 1991), p. 165; A. M. Carstairs, ‘The nature and diversification of employment in Dundee in the twentieth century’, in Dundee and District, ed. 5. J. Jones (Dundee, 1968), p. 326. Slaven, Development, p. 199. J. McGoldrick, ‘Crisis and the division of labour: Clydeside shipbuilding in the inter—war period’, in Capital and Class in Scotland, ed. T. Dickson

(Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 164—5. 11. 12.

Slaven, Development, p. 194. P. Long, ‘The economic and social history of the Scottish coal industry, 1925—1939, with particular reference to industrial relations’, (Unpublished

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Notes to Chapter 21 PhD, University of Strathclyde, 1978), p. 260. D. J. Robertson, ‘Population Growth and Movement’, in The Scottish Economy, ed. A. K. Cairncross (Cambridge, 1954), p. 14. Report of the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for Aberdeen (195 8), p. 14. MOH Aberdeen (1958), p. 46. Sir J. Brotherton, ‘Introduction’, Improving the Commonweal, ed. G. McLachlan (1987), p. 80. P. McGeown, Heat the Furnace Seven More Times (1967), p. 33. J. Lee, Tomorrow is a New Day (1939), p. 98.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

A. Gaffron, A Patchwork of Memories (Aberdeen, 1986), p. 63. James Stewart, Labour MP, quoted in G. Brown, ‘The Labour Party and political change in Scotland: the politics of five elections’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1982), p. 17. W Campbell, Villi the Clown (1981), p. 15. MOH Aberdeen (1953), pp. 8—9. Duncan, Steelopolis, p. 179; A. Gibb and D. MacLennan, ‘Policy and process in Scottish housing, 1950—1980’, in Modern Scotland, p. 273. Gaffron, Patchwork, p. 64. W. Edgar, et al., ‘Dundee’s housing: 1915—1974’, in The Re—Making of juteopolis, ed. C. A. Whatley (Dundee, 1992), p. 43; MOH Edinburgh, Annual Report (1924), p. v quoted in J. Holford, Reshaping Labour: Organisation, Work and Politics — Edinburgh in the Great War and After (1988), p. 49. E. Milne, No Shining Armour (1976), p. 9; J. Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage

(1935), pp. 69—70. 27. 28.

30:

Levitt, ‘Scottish Poverty: the historical background’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, ed. G. Brown and R. Cook (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 69. K. MacKenzie, Been Places and Seen Things (1935), p. 255. Slaven, Development, p. 197. D. MacKenzie, ‘Labour conditions and industrial relations’, in Third Statistical Account of Scotland: Glasgow, ed. J. Cunnison and J. B. S. Gilfillan (Glasgow, 1958), p. 592.

31.

Brown, ‘Labour Party’, p. 13; G. Routh, Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906—1979 (1980), pp. 101, 107, 114-15; see also Halford, Reshaping Labour, p. 31.

CHAPTER 21 D. Phillips, I Never Fell into a Midden (Dundee, 1978), p. 38. Forward, 16 June 1928. Labour Standard, 8 February 1930. Smout, Century, p. 158. Phillips, Midden, p. 38. MacKenzie, Been Places, p. 256. McGeown, Heat, p. 25 . For a discussion of the Glasgow gang scene in the 1930s see A. McArthur and H. K. Long, No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums (1935). Smout, Century, p. 147. E. Muir, Scottish journey (1985 ed.), p. 14. J. Drawbell, The Sun Within Us (1963), p. 25. McGeown, Heat, p. 41. W W. Knox (ed.), Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918—1939: A Biographical

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 2 2

Dictionary (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 25; Forward, 9 June 1928. Forward, 10 January 1925. For a fuller discussion of these activities see Knox, Labour Leaders, pp. 39—40, 234—8. I. MacLean, ‘Mountain men’, in Odyssey, ed. B. Kay (Edinburgh, 1980), pp. 79—87. Phillips, Midden, p. 41. Forward, 3 April 1926. M. Brooksbank, No Sae Lang Syne: A Tale of a City (Dundee, 1971), p. 29. L. Jamieson, ‘Growing u p in Scotland in the 19005’, in Uncharted Lives: Extracts from Scottish Women’s Experiences, 1850—1982, ed. Glasgow Women’s Studies Group (Glasgow, 1985), pp. 26-7. H. McShane and J. Smith, No Mean Fighter (1979), pp. 34—5. Forward, 22 September 1934. Knox, Labour Leaders, p. 33; Forward, 27 March 1926; E. Hughes, Rebels and Renegades (heavily amended and unpublished typescript of an autobi— ography, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Dep 176, File 13), p. 8. 55.

56. 57.

58.

C. Brown, ‘Religion and secularisation’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, 1914—1990, ed. A. Dickson and J. H. Treble (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 51—2; Forward, 30 September 1922. Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, Disinherited Youth: A Survey, 1936—1939 (Edinburgh, 1943), pp. 31—2. McGeown, Heat, p. 29; A. Campbell, ‘The social history of political conflict in the Scots coalfields, 1910—1939’, in Miners, Unions and Politics,

1910—1947, ed. A. Campbell, et al. (Aldershot, 1996), p. 155. T. Gallagher, Glasgow. The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1986), p. 137.

59.

Gallagher, Glasgow, pp. 170—1; S. J. Stewart, "’Outside the covenant”: the

60.

Scottish presbyterian churches and Irish immigration, 1922—1938’, Innes Review, Vol 42 (1991), pp. 19—45. T. Gallagher, ‘Protestant extremism in urban Scotland: its growth and con— traction, 1930—1939’, Scottish Historical Review, XXXVII (1988), p. 151.

61. 62.

63.

See T. Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided (Edinburgh, 1987) for a detailed dis— cussion of this phenomenon. H. M. Paterson, ‘Incubus and ideology: the development of secondary schooling in Scotland, 1900-1939’, in Scottish Culture and Scottish Education, 1800—1980, ed. W M. Humes and H. M. Paterson (1983), pp. 197—215; Smout, Century, p. 228. Smout, Century, p. 180.

CHAPTER 22 Long, ‘Coal industry’, pp. 84—5, 489; G. Noriel, Workers in French Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1990), p. 116. Long, ‘Coal industry’, p. 124. Slaven, Development, p. 197. W. D. Stewart, Mines, Machines and Men (1935), pp. 34—6. S. Maclntyre, Little Moscows: Communism and Working Class Militancy in Inter-War Britain (1980), p. 63.

B. Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol 4, 1913—1946: The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford, 1987), pp. 437—8. Long, ‘Coal industry’, p. 128.

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Notes to Chapter 22 Supple, British Coal, pp. 437—8. J. N . Morris, ‘Coalminers’, Lancet, CCLII (1974), p p . 341—6.

MacIntyre, Moscows, pp. 63—4; Long, ‘Scottish coal’, p. 138. Long, ‘Scottish coal’, p. 129. MacIntyre, Moscows, pp. 114—15. Mat/or and Coulson Magazine, December 1918, pp. 160—1. J. Zeitlin, ‘Craft control and the division of labour: engineers and compositors in Britain, 1890—1930’, Cambridge journal of Economics, 3 (1979), p. 270; Noriel, Workers, pp. 118—19. A. McKinlay, ‘Employers and skilled workers in the inter-war depression:

engineering and shipbuilding on Clydeside, 1919—1939’ (Unpublished D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1986), p. 137. McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 142. M . L. Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions in British Engineering (1937), p. 23. Yates, Engineering, pp. 18—19. Labour Standard, 8 January 1927; North West Engineering Trades Employers’ Association (NWETEA), Circular Letter, 11 July 1928. R. Penn, ‘Trade union organisation and skill in the British cotton and engineering industries, 1850—1960’, Social History, 8 (1983), p. 5 0 .

Challenge, 8 April 1937, quoted in A. MacKinlay, ‘From industrial serf to wage labourer: the 1937 Apprentice Revolt in Britain’, IRSH, XXXI (1986), p. 18. McKinlay, ‘Industrial serf’, p. 7 . McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 131. McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 137. McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, pp. 140—1; Labour Standard, 9 May 1925 quoted in Holford, Reshaping Labour, p. 69.

Charles Crawford in A. Davidson, Leith Lives — Memories of Work (Edinburgh, 1985, unpaginated). J. Sheriff, ‘Engineering’, Oral History, Vol 1 (1983), p. 2 . McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, pp. 140—1. E. Kibblewhite, ‘The impact of unemployment on the development of trade unions in Scotland, 1918—1939’, (Unpublished PhD, University of Aberdeen, 1979), p. 269; W . McLaine, ‘Payments by results in British engineering’, International Labour Review, Vol 4 9 (1944), p. 630.

McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 132. Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, p. 287. I. E. P. Menzies and D. Chapman, ‘The jute industry’, in Studies in Industrial Organisation, ed. H. A. Silverman (1946), p. 243; Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 252—4. Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 252—4. Menzies and Chapman, ‘Jute’, p. 243. Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 252—4. A. Tuckett, The Scottish Carter: The History of the Scottish Horse and Motormen’s Association, 1898—1964 (1967), p p . 197—8.

100. Tuckett, Scottish Carter, p. 209. 101. McGoldrick, ‘Crisis’, pp. 157—8. 102. McGoldrick, ‘Crisis’, pp. 159—60. 103. McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 279. 104. McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 279.

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 2 3

105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111. 1 12.

McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, pp. 280—1. McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, p. 144. R. Price, Labour in British Society (1986), p. 181.

J. McGoldrick, ‘ A profile of the Boilermakers’ Union’, in Scottish and Scandanavian Shipbuilding Seminar: Development Problems in Historical Perspective, ed. J. Kruse and A. Slaven (Glasgow, 1980), p. 200. P. Pagnamenta and R. Overy, All Our Working Lives (1984), p. 77. Charman, Glengarnock, p. 7 6 . J. Melling, "’Non-commissioned officers”: British employers and their supervisory workers, 1880—1920’, Social History, 5 (1980), p. 215. K. Burgess, ‘Authority relations and the division of labour in British indus— try, with special reference to Clydeside, c.1860—1930’, Social History, II ( 1 9 8 6 ) , p p . 228—9.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

Burgess, ‘Authority relations’, p. 230; Melling, ‘NCOs’, p. 218. A. McKinlay, Making Ships, Making Men: Working for ]ohn Browns Between the Wars (Clydebank, 1989), pp. 18—19. Adam Davidson in Davidson, Leith Lives, n.p. pp. 33—4. For shipbuilding see McKinlay, ‘Thesis’, pp. 242—3. J. Reid, Reflections of a Clyde-Built Man (1976), pp. 225—6; J. McAdam, The MacAdam Road (1955), p. 23. I. MacDougall, ‘Mungo McKay and the green table’, in Odyssey: Voices from Scotland’s Recent Past, ed. B. Kay (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 24. MacDougall, ‘Mungo McKay’, p. 27. R. J. Morris and J. Smyth, ‘Paternalism as an employer strategy, 1800—1960’ (Unpublished paper, November 1988), p. 22. CHAPTER 23

122. 123.

J. E. Mortimer, History of the Boilermakers, Vol II, 1906—1939 (1982), p. 194. There is a voluminous literature on the subject of Red Clydeside. Among the best pieces in chronological order are: W . Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde (1936); J. Hinton, The First Shop Stewards Movement (1973); I. MacLean, The Legend of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh, 1983); R. J. Morris, ‘Skilled workers and the politics of Red Clyde’, ]SLHS, 19 (1984), pp. 6—17; J. Melling, Rent Strikes: People’s Struggle for Housing in West Scotland, 1890—1916 (Edinburgh, 1983); J. Foster, ‘Strike action and working class politics on Clydeside, 1914—1919’, IRSH, XXXV (1990), pp. 33—70. 124. D. Kirkwood, M y Life of Revolt (1935), p. 97. 125. N . Milton, ]ohn Maclean (1973), p. 114. 126. Hinton, Shop Stewards, for a full discussion of this. 127. Kirkwood, M y Life, p. 101. 128. J. Broom, ]ohn Maclean (Loanhead, 1973), p. 178. 129. W . Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900—21 (1969), pp. 126-7. 130. Kirkwood, M y Life, p. 168. 131. Foster, ‘Strike action’, p. 53. 132. Foster, ‘Strike action’, p. 54—6. 133. Foster, ‘Strike action’, p. 38. 134. Foster, ‘Strike action’, p. 54. 135. Knox, Labour Leaders, p. 95. 136. Knox, Labour Leaders, p. 167.

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Notes to Chapter 23 W. Knox, ‘Class, work and trade unionism in Scotland’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, p. 133. 138. J. D. M. Bell, ‘Trade unions’, in The Scottish Economy, ed. A. Cairncross (Cambridge, 1954), p. 284. 139. Bell, ‘Trade unions’, p. 282. 140. E. Kibblewhite and A. Rigby, Aberdeen in the General Strike (Aberdeen, 1977), p. 6. 141. Brown, ‘Labour Party’, p. 10. 142. T. Johnston, ‘Trade unionism in Scotland’, in British Trade Unionism Today: A Survey, ed. G. D. H. Cole (1939), p. 230. 143. Cole, Trade Unionism, pp. 220—1. 144. Forty Hours Strike Bulletin, 12 February 1919. 145. Penn, ‘Trade union organisation’, p. 50. 146. McKinlay, Thesis, p. 143; Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 373—9. 147. A. McKinlay, ‘Depression and rank and file activity: the Amalgamated 137.

Engineering Union, 1919—1939’, ISLHS, 22 (1987), p. 24.

148. 149. 150. 151.

152. 153.

154. 155. 156. 157. 158.

E. Lancaster, ‘Shop stewards in Scotland: the Amalgamated Engineering Union between the wars’, ISLHS, 21 (1986), p. 31. McKinlay, ‘Depression’, p. 24. Penn, ‘Trade union organisation’, p. 50; Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, p. 317; Yates, Engineering, p. 160. R. Church, et al., ‘British coal mining strikes, 1893—1940: dimensions, distribution and persistence’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 28 (1990), p. 333. For biographical details of Adamson see Knox, Labour Leaders, pp. 5 8—61. A. B. Campbell, ‘From independent collier to militant miner: tradition and change in the trade union consciousness of Scottish miners, 1874—1929’ (Unpublished paper delivered to the British Sociological Association Conference, Edinburgh (1988)), p. 13 and ‘Political conflict’, p. 162. R. Duncan, Shotts Miners: Conflicts and Struggles, 1919—1960 (Motherwell, 1985), pp. 5—9, 11—12. B. Gilbey and M. Sime, ‘Unofficial trade union militancy among the Fife miners in the 19205 and 19305’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 38 (1971), p. 12; Long, ‘Scottish coal’, p. 337. Long, ‘Scottish coal’, p. 338; Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 373—9. Long, ‘Scottish coal’, p. 286; Campbell, ‘Political conflict’, pp. 163—4. H. A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, Vol II, 1911—1933 (Oxford, 1985), p. 266.

159. 160. 161. 162. 163.

Clegg, Trade Unions, pp. 249—51. C. Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland during the Second World War’, Historical journal, 26 (1983), p. 921. J. Cronin, Labour and Society in Britain, 1918—1970 (1984), p. 46. G. W. MacDonald and H. F. Gospel, ‘The Mend—Turner Talks, 1927—1933: a study in industrial co-operation’, Historical Journal, XVI (1973), pp. 15—16. A. Tuckett, The Scottish Trades Union Congress: The First Eighty Years, 1897—1977 (Edinburgh, 1 9 8 6 ) , p. 2.32.

164. 165. 166. 167.

R. P. Arnot, A History of the Scottish Miners from the Earliest Times (1955 ), p. 31. Annual Report of the STUC (1930), p. 126. Forward, 13 May 1933. Annual Report of the STUC (1935), p. 119.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 24

168. 169.

Annual Report of the STUC (1939), p. 155. M. Fry, Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland (Aberdeen, 1987), p. 183. Harvie, ‘Labour’, p. 924. Harvie, ‘Labour’, p. 924. M. Keating and D. Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism (1979), p. 160. Annual Report of the STUC (1931), pp. 141—2. Tuckett, STUC, pp. 193—4. Tuckett, STUC, pp. 250—1. Tuckett, STUC, p. 250.

170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. J. M. Craigen, ‘The Scottish Trades Union Congress, 1897—1973: a study of a pressure group’, (Unpublished M.Litt Thesis, Heriot-Watt University, 1974), p. 181. 178. For examples of overtime bans by trade unions see Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 90—107. 179. Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 108—16. 180. Minutes of the Executive of the NUSMW (National Library of Scotland, PDL 45/7), 30 August 1929. 181. Knox, ‘Class’, p. 132. 182. Tuckett, Scottish Carter, p. 191. 183. A. Campbell, ‘The Communist Party in the Scots coalfields in the inter-war period’, in Opening the Books: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of British Communism, ed. G. Andrews, et al., (1995), pp. 53—4. 184. A. Moffat, My Life with the Miners (1965), p. 61. 185. Minutes of the Executive of the NUSMW, 27 July 1938. 186. Lancaster, ‘Shop stewards’, p. 31; Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 373—9. 187. Kibblewhite, ‘Unemployment’, pp. 373—9. 188. Tuckett, Scottish Carter, p. 244. 189. B. \W. Robertson, ‘The Scottish farm servant and his union: from emancipation to integration’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, ed. 1. MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 101. 190. Annual Report of the STUC (1931), pp. 141—2. CHAPTER 24

191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205 .

J. K. Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 33. Forward, 22 October 1927. Morris, ‘Skilled Workers’, p. 14.

Scottish Review, Spring 1917. J. Kinloch and J. Butt, History of the Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society (Glasgow, 1981), p. 278. Knox, Labour Leaders, p. 190. Forward, 16 June 1917. Forward, 8 January 1921. W. Knox, james Maxton (Manchester, 1987), p. 30. Knox, Maxton, p. 27.

Forward, 15 November 1922. Knox, Maxton, pp. 38—9; Aberdeen journal, 17 November 1922. See Knox, ‘Religion’, for a fuller discussion of tensions between Labour and the Catholic Church in this period. Brown, ‘Labour Party’, pp. 490—1. J. Paton, Left Turn! (1936), pp. 145—6, 110—11; W. Bolitho, Cancer of the

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Notes to Chapter 24 Empire (1923), p. 16.

Paton, Left Turn], pp. 145—6; P. J. Dollan, ‘Memories of 50 years’, Mercat Cross, 6 (July/December, 1953), p. 169. 207. R. E. Dowse, Left in the Centre (1966), p. 66. 208. Glasgow Herald, 17 August 1925. 209. Forward, 28 June 1924. 210. Forward, 14 June 1924. 21 1. W. Knox, ‘The Red Clydesiders and the Scottish political tradition’, in Covenant, Charter and Party: Traditons of Revolt and Protest in Modern Scottish History, ed. T. Brotherstone (Aberdeen, 1989), p. 96. 212. Knox, Maxton, p. 69. 213. Knox, Maxton, pp. 70—1. 214. Knox, Maxton, p. 79. 215. Glasgow Herald, 5 April 1932. 216. Brown, ‘Labour Party’, p. 400. 217. Times, 28 January 1922. 218. Times, 28 January 1922. 219. See section in chapter on working class culture for more examples. 220. Campbell, ‘Political conflict’, p. 161; Minutes of the Executive of the NUSMVV, 20 February 1926. 221 . Dollan, ‘Memories’, p. 170. 222. A. Woodburn, ‘Some recollections’ (heavily corrected and amended draft of an unpublished autobiography, National Library of Scotland, Acc.765 6, Box 4, file 1), p. 68. 223. Glasgow Herald, 9 August 1932. 224. Forward, 24 November 1934. 225. Forward, 2 July 1932. 226. Woodburn, ‘Recollections’, p. 68. 227. Knox, Labour Leaders, pp. 107—10. 228. Woodburn, ‘Recollections’, pp. 78—80; Scottish Executive Committee of the Labour Party (SECLP), Minutes, 4 March 1934. 229. Woodburn, ‘Recollections’, pp. 78—9. 230. Annual Report of the STUC (1938), p. 150. 231. J. Hinton, Labour and Socialism: A History of the British Labour Movement 1867—1974 (1983), p. 148; L. Minkin, The Contentious Alliance: Trade Unions and the Labour Party (1991), pp. 17—20; M. Shaw, Discipline and Discord in the Labour Party: The Politics of Managerial Control,

206.

1951—1987 (1988), pp. 19—30.

232. 233. 234. 235. 236. 237. 238. 239. 240. 241. 242. 243.

SECLP, Minutes, 19 September 1932; Aberdeen Press and Journal, 7 November 1935. Harvie, ‘Labour’, p. 925. Forward, 21 July 1934. J. Wheatley, Starving in the Midst of Plenty (Glasgow, 1923). J. R. MacDonald, Socialism and Society (1905), p. 73. Hansard, 4 February 1926. Woodburn, ‘Recollections’, p. 107. Forward, 14 April 1934. Forward, 31 December 1938. Woodburn Papers, Box 2, file 5, July/August 1932. Harvie, ‘Labour’, p. 933. Hansard, 9 May 1924.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 26

244. 245 . 246. 247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. 257. 258.

New Leader, 24 June 1932. C. Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish Government: the age of Tom Johnston’, Bulletin of Scottish Politics, 2 (1981), p. 12. Forward, 21 March 1936. Keating and Bleiman, Nationalism, pp. 115—16. Glasgow Herald, 9 March 1935. Forward, 30 March 1935. Forward, 11 February 1939. Forward, 29 April 1939. Election Address (1939). Glasgow Herald, 13 May 1935. Forward, 1 February 1936. Knox, Labour Leaders, p. 39. Forward, 9 November 1935. Forward, 3 November 1923. P. H. Liddle, ‘The role of the Trades Council in the political and industrial life of Glasgow’ (Unpublished MSc dissertation, University of Strathclyde, 1977), pp. 32—3.

259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264. 265. 266.

Forward, 20 June 1936. J. Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage (1936), p. 116. J. D. Young, ‘Totalitarianism, democracy and the British Labour movement before 1917’, Survey, 20 (1974), p. 41. Forward, 15 June 1929. Harvie, ‘Labour’, p. 925. Minutes of the Executive of the NUSMW, 28—29 June 1935 . Smout, Century, p. 274. C. Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland since 1914 (1981), pp. 85—7. Part V

CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26

P. Smith and J. Brown, ‘Economic crisis, foreign capital and working class response, 1948-1979’, in Scottish Capitalism: Class, State and Nation from Before the Union to the Present, ed. T. Dickson (1980), pp. 292—3. H. Begg and S. McDowall, Aberdeen Manufacturing Industry (Aberdeen, 1983), p. 14. H. M. Drucker and G. Brown, The Politics of Nationalism and Devolution

(1980), p. 35.

J. MacInnes, ‘Economic restructuring relevant to industrial relations in Scotland’ (Centre for Urban and Regional Research, University of Glasgow, Discussion Paper 26, 1987) p. 11. C. E. V. Leser, ‘Coalmining’, in The Scottish Economy, ed. A. K. Caimcross (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 116—17. P. Payne, ‘The decline of Scottish heavy industries, 1948—1983’, in The Economic Development of Modern Scotland (1985), ed. R. Saville, pp. 79—80. A. Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland, 1 750—1960 (1975), p. 219.

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Notes to Chapter 26

10.

Payne, ‘Heavy industries’, p. 83. C. Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland since 1914 (1987 ed.), p. 57. J. N. Randall, ‘ N e w towns and new industries’, in Economic Development

of Modern Scotland, pp. 247—8. 11. 12. 13.

15.

16.

17.

J. McLaren, Sixty Years in an Aberdeen Granite Yard: The Craft and the Men (Aberdeen, 1987), p. 21. J. R. Coull, ‘Fishing’, in The Grampian Book, ed. D. Ormand (Golspie,

1987), pp. 234—5.

Harvie, No Gods, p. 59. J. Butt, ‘The changing character of urban employment, 1901—1981’, in Perspectives of the Scottish City, ed. G. Gordon (Aberdeen, 1985), p. 232. A. M. Carstairs, ‘The nature and diversification of employment in Dundee in the twentieth century’, in Dundee and District, ed. 5. J. Jones (Dundee, 1968), p. 328. I. Dey and N. Fraser, ‘Scotland at Sea —— the government, the recession and Scottish unemployment’, SGYB 1982, ed. H. M. Drucker and N. L. Drucker (Edinburgh, 1982), p. 101. Drucker and Brown, Nationalism and Devolution, pp. 36—7; P. B. Beaumont and L. Cairns, ‘New towns — a centre of non-unionism?’, Employee Relations, 9 (1987), p. 1.q

18.

A. Sproull and J. MacInnes, ‘Trade union recognition, single union agreements and employment change in the electronics industry in Scotland’ (Discussion Paper 6, Department of Economics, Glasgow College of Technology, 1988), p. 140. Birth Control Campaign, The Benefits of Birth Control (1973), pp. 14—23. A. J. McIvor, ‘Women and work in twentieth century Scotland’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, 1914—1990, ed. A. Dickson and J. H. Treble (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 142. Engender, Gender Audit 1993 (1994), p. 17.

Engender, Gender Audit, p. 17. N. Bonney, ‘Female employment in the Aberdeen Labour market area, 1971—84’ in Women and Men in Scotland (Equal Opportunities Commission,

1985), p. 36.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

McIvor, ‘Women’, p. 142. McIvor, ‘Women’, p. 140. Slaven, Development, pp. 223—4. Scottish Council (Development and Industry), Inquiry into the Scottish Economy (1961), Appendix 11, p. XXIV. D. Livingstone, ‘Enterprise or service? Nationalised and state—owned indus— tries’, in Understanding the Scottish Economy, ed. K. Ingham and J. Love (Oxford, 1983), p. 11. Scottish Information Office (SIC), The Economy of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 8; Economic Trends (November, 1988), p. 132. SIC, Economy, p. 8 T. Harris, et al., ‘Oil and the Aberdeen economy: structural change and the response of the state’, in Global Restructuring. Local Response, ed. P. Cooke (1986), p. 49. F. Twine, ‘The low paid’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, ed. G. Brown and R. Cook (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 108. Twine, ‘Low paid’, p. 112.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 26

34.

35. 36.

37.

Institute of Fiscal Studies, What Has Happened to Wages? (1994); Scottish Trade Union Review (STUR), 83 (1997), p. 23; Engender, Gender Audit, p. 20. S. Clark, Paisley: A History (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 203. 36. D. McCrone, ‘We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns: social class in twentieth century Scotland’, in Scotland in the Twentieth Century, ed. T. M. Devine and R. J. Finlay (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 111. I. Levitt, ‘Poverty’, in The Red Paper on Scotland, ed. G. Brown (1975), p. 320. T. Davies and A. Sinfield, ‘The unemployed’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, pp. 92—4.

STUR, 83 (1997), p. 19. STUR, 83 (1997), p. 19. Davies and Sinfield, ‘Unemployed’, p. 97. Davies and Sinfield, ‘Unemployed’, p. 99. Davies and Sinfield, ‘Unemployed’, p. 101. G . M . Norris, ‘Poverty in Scotland’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, p. 29. Engender, Gender Audit, p. 42. A. Grimes, ‘Pensioners in poverty’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, pp. 136—7. A. J. McIvor, ‘Gender apartheidP: Women in Scottish society’, in Scotland in the Twentieth Century, p. 191. K . Carmichael, ‘Family poverty’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, p. 145. J. Allison, Guilty by Suspicion (Glendarrel, 1995), p. 32. D. McLennan, ‘Municipal housing: the long goodbye’, in Scottish Government Year Book 1989, ed. A. Brown and D. McCrone (Edinburgh,

1989), p. 104.

D. Niven, The Development of Housing in Scotland (1979), p. 88. Niven, Housing, p. 33; McLennan, ‘Municipal housing’, p. 105.

56.

McLennan, ‘Municipal housing’, p. 105 . T.Sheridan, A Time to Rage (1994), p. 6 R. Rodger, ‘Urbanisation in twentieth century Scotland’, in Scotland in the Twentieth Century, p. 146; M . Pacione, ‘Renewal, redevelopment and rehabilitation in Scottish cities, 1945—1981’, in Perspectives of the Scottish City, ed. G. Gordon, (Aberdeen, 1985), pp. 289—90. A. Gibb, ‘The development of public sector housing in Glasgow’ (Centre for Urban and Regional Research, University of Glasgow, Discussion Paper 6,

1982), pp. 17—18.

57. 58. 59.

W. Edgar, et al., ‘Dundee’s housing: 1915—1974’, in The Remaking of juteopolis, ed. C. A. Whatley, (Dundee, 1992), p. 49. J. English, A Profile of Ferguslie Par/z (Paisley, 1978), pp. 6, 9, 20.

S. Sklaroff, ‘The population and vital statistics’, in Improving the Common Weal: Aspects of Scottish Health Services, 1900—1984, ed. G. McLachlan (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 536—8.

60. 61. 62.

D. Cameron, ‘Public health in Scotland’, in The Red Paper on Scotland, pp. 352—3. D. Player, ‘A sickening waste’, in Scotland 2000, ed. K. Cargill (Glasgow, 1987), pp. 90—1. J. Hubley, ‘Poverty and health in Scotland’, in Scotland: The Real Divide, p. 209.

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Notes to Chapters 27 and 28 CHAPTER 27 63. 64.

G. S. MacGregor, Grit, Growth and Sometimes Groovy: Aberdeen in the 1960s (Aberdeen, 1990), p. 3. For working—class car ownership see N . Bonney, ‘Aberdeen and Dundee: a

tale of two cities in the era of oil’, in Global Restructuring. Local Response, 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 75.

p. 188. I. Jack, Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain 1977—86 (1987), p. 2. Figures for retail share of the co-operative movement supplied from R. Knox of the shop workers’ union — USDAW. G. Walker, ‘Varieties of Scottish Protestant identity’, in Scotland in the Twentieth Century, p. 264. J. Highet, ‘Church going in Scotland’, New Society, 26 December 1963. C. G . Brown, ‘Religion and secularisation’, in People and Society in Scotland,

Vol III, p. 54.

Brown, ‘Religion’, p. 62. T . Gallagher, Glasgow. The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1986), pp. 251—2. M . Henderson, ‘Born into a black and white world of orange and green’, Scotsman, 10 October 1997. Gallagher, Glasgow, pp. 252—3. Gallagher, Glasgow, p. 319. J. Bradley, ‘Secular, religious and political: the simple compexity of Orange Protestant identity in modern Scotland’, Caledonian Papers in the Social Sciences, 15 (1996), p. 5 .

Quoted in C . G. Brown, ‘Popular culture and the continuing struggle for rational recreation’, in Scotland in the Twentieth Century, p. 225. Brown, ‘Popular culture’, p. 217. J. Scotland, The History of Scottish Education, Vol II (1969), p. 211. A. MacPherson, ‘Schooling’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, p. 92. MacPherson, ‘Schooling’, p. 94. Scotland, Scottish Education, p. 249; MacPherson, ‘Schooling’, p. 97. Observer, 28 May 1989. CHAPTER 2 8

C . Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (1983), pp. 109—110. D. J. Robertson, ‘Labour turnover in shipbuilding’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 1 (1954), p. 13. Payne, ‘Heavy industries’, p. 104. P. Pagnamenta and R. Overy, All our Working Lives (1984), pp. 76—101. W . Ashworth, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol 5, 1946-1982.The Nationalised Industry (Oxford, 1986), pp. 74—8. C . Smith, Technical Workers: Class, Labour and Trade Unionism (1987), p. 91. Carstairs, ‘Employment in Dundee’, p. 323. Carstairs, ‘Employment in Dundee’, p. 331.

B. W . Robertson, ‘The Scottish farm servant and his union: from encapsulation to integration’, in Essays in Scottish Labour History, ed. I. MacDougall (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 101—2. G. Phillips and N . Whiteside, Casual Labour: The Unemployment Question in the Port Transport Industry, 1880—1970 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 261—3.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 9

93.

R. Crompton and G. Jones, White-Collar Proletariat: Deskilling and Gender in Clerical Work (1984), p. 16. 94.’ Crompton and Jones, White-Collar, p. 47. 95. R. Hyman, ‘White-collar workers and theories of class’, in The New Working Class? White-Collar Workers and their Organisations, ed. R. Hyman and R. Price (1983), p. 17; K. Marx, Capital, Vol III, pp. 288, 293—4. 96. See J. H. Goldthorpe, Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (1980) for an elegant articulation of this thesis. 97. Crompton and Jones, White-Collar, pp. 20—1. In 1951 over 59 per cent of clerical worker in Britain were female. 98. Crompton and Jones, White-Collar, pp. 19—20. Smith, Technical Workers, pp. 71, 77. 100: D. MacKenzie, ‘Labour conditions and industrial relations’, in The Third Statistical Acount of Scotland: Glasgow, ed. J. Cunnison and J. B. S. Gilfillan (Glasgow, 1958), p. 595. 101. R. J. Morris and J. Smyth, ‘Paternalism as an employer strategy, 1800—1960’ (Unpublished paper, University of Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 22—3. 102. P. Cressy, et al., Just managing: Authority and Democracy in Industry (Open University, 1985), p. 91; T. Dickson, et al., ‘The Big Blue: IBM, individual— ism and trade union strategy’, Work, Employment and Society, 2 (1988), pp. 506—20. 103. A. Sproull and J. MacInnes, ‘Trade union recognition, single union agreements and employment change in the electronics industry in Scotland’ (Discussion Paper No 6, Department of Economics, Glasgow College of Technology, 1988), p. 18. 104. A. Moffat, My Life with the Miners (1965), p. 122. 105. Pagnamenta and Overy, Working Lives, p. 190; 14th Report on the Motor Vehicle Industry, PPXXV (1974—75), Q.1498, p. 371. 106. Report on Motor Industry, Q.1498, p. 371. 107. Report on Motor Industry, Q.1501, p. 372; R. Price, Labour in British Society (1986), p. 235. 108. 7 Days, 17 March 1978. 109. SEF, ‘Organisation of labour in shipyards’, quoted in J. McGoldrick, ‘Industrial relations and the division of labour in the shipbuilding industry since the War’, British Industrial Relations Journal, XXI (1983), p. 200. 110. J. Walker, ‘The Scottish “electronics” industry’, in SGYB 1987, ed. D. McCrone (Edinburgh, 1987), p. 66. 111. R. Penn and R. Simpson, ‘The development of skilled work in the British coal mining industry, 1870—1985’, Industrial Relations Journal, 17 (1986), pp. 339—40. 112. Walker, ‘Scottish electronics’, p. 66. 113. See H. Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital (1974). 114. C. Routh, Occupations and Pay in Great Britain, 1906—1979 (1980), pp. 182—8. 115. McIvor, ‘Women’, p. 165; Engender, Gender Audit, p. 19. CHAPTER 29

116. 117.

J. M. Craigen, ‘The STUC, 1897-1973: the study of a pressure group, (Unpublished M.Litt, Heriot-Watt University, 1974), p. 150. J. D. M. Bell, ‘Trade unionism’, in The Scottish Economy, ed. A. K. Cairncross, (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 282, 284—6, 292—3.

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Notes to Chapter 29 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

L. Hunter, ‘The Scottish labour market’, in The Economic Development of Modern Scotland, ed. R. Saville (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 177. STUC, Annual Reports (1960, 1970, 1980, 1985). McIvor, ‘Women’, p. 161.

McIvor, ‘Women’, p. 159. R. Price, ‘White-collar unions: growth, character and attitudes’, in The New Working Class?, p. 155. STUC, Annual Reports (1969, 1978). Cressey, et al., just Managing, p. 91. McGoldrick, ‘Industrial relations’, pp. 207, 201. McGoldrick, ‘Industrial relations’, p. 202. R. Hay and J. McLaughlan, ‘The oral history of Upper Clyde shipbuilders’, Oral History, 2 (1974), p. 57. Cockburn, Brothers, p. 116. Gallagher, Glasgow, pp. 252—3. 14th Report on Motor Industry, Q2085, p. 83. S. G . Checkland, The Upas Tree: Glasgow, 1875—1975 (Glasgow, 1976), p. 5 3 . Craigen, ‘STUC’, pp. 358—9. C . Aldred, ‘Women workers in Scotland and the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts, or “at least we’ve got equal pay now“’, STUR (Winter, 1979), p. 9 . E. Breitenbach, ‘The impact of Thatcherism on women in Scotland’, SGYB 1989, ed. A. Brown and D. McCrone (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 170—1. Craigen, ‘STUC’, p. 153. E. Breitenbach, Women Workers in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1982), p. 50. Engender, Gender Audit, p. 46. An interview with Cath Cunningham and Margie Givens of the Dysart

Women’s Strike Committee published in Grit and Diamonds: Women in Scotland Making History, 1980—1990, ed. S. Henderson and A. McKay (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 38—9.

139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

150.

Hunter, ‘Labour market’, p p . 179—80.

Ashworth, British Coal Industry, p. 301. Pagnamenta and Overy, Working Lives, pp. 141—2. Pagnamenta and Overy, Working Lives, p. 147. Checkland, Upas Tree, p. 58. A. McKinlay and P. Taylor, ‘Outside the “gold fish bowl”: the experiences of temporary employment in microelectronics’ (Unpublished paper, 1997), p. 17. I am grateful to the authors for allowing me to use their findings. D. J. Robertson, ‘Labour turnover in shipbuilding’, Scottish journal of Political Economy, 1 (1954), p. 27. R. Price, Labour, pp. 215—16. Phillips and Whiteside, Casual Labour, p. 233. D. J. C . Forsyth, US Investment in Scotland (1972), pp. 205—6. Pagnamenta and Overy, Working Lives, p. 190; A. McKinlay and P. Taylor, ‘Privatisation and industrial relations in British shipbuilding’, Industrial Relations journal, 25 (1994), p. 297; D. Metcalf, ‘Water nots dry up: the impact of the Donovan reform proposals and Thatcherism at work on labour productivity in British manufacturing industry’, British journal of Industrial Relations, XXVII (1989), p. 8. Ashworth, British Coal Industry, p. 301; Metcalf, ‘Donovan’, p. 9 .

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NOTES T O CHAPTER 30

151.

For an insight into Conservative economic strategy see the following: N. Bosanquet, After the New Right (1983); M. Blaney, ‘Conservative economic strategy’ in The Politics of Thatcherism, ed. S. Hall (1983); A. Gamble, ‘Smashing the State: Mrs Thatcher’s radical crusade’, Marxism Today, 29 (June, 1985); W Keegan, Mrs Thatcher’s Economic Experiment (1984); R.

152. 153. 154.

155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.

161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172.

173. 174. 175. 176.

Skidelsky, ‘Britain under Mrs Thatcher’, Encounter, LXIV (January, 1985), pp. 55—62. D. Bell, ‘The changing labour market in Scotland’, SGYB 1983, ed. D. McCrone (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 202. Sproull and MacInnes, ‘Trade union recognition’, p. 14. B. C. Roberts, ‘Great Britain’, in Industrial Relations in Europe: The Imper— atives of Change, ed. B. C. Roberts (1985 ), pp. 100—36; Guardian, 30 June 1994. Times, 13 July 1987. Sproull and MacInnes, ‘Trade union recognition’, p. 20. G. Gall and S. Mckay, ‘Trade union derecognition in Britain, 1988—1994’, British journal of Industrial Relations, 32 (1994), p. 447. J. Leopold, ‘Trade unions in Scotland — forward to the 19905’, in SGYB 1989, ed. A. Brown and D. McCrone (Edinburgh, 1989), p. 78. ]. Garrahan, ‘Nissan in the north east of England’, Capital and Class, 27 (1986), pp. 5—13. Sproull and MacInnes, ‘Trade union recognition’, p. 20; P. Findlay, ‘Union recognition and non—unionism: shifting fortunes in the electronics industry in Scotland’, Industrial Relations Journal, 24 (1993), p. 39. STUR, 83 (1997), p. 21. CHAPTER 30 R. Rose, Politics in England (1965), p. 26. A. Brown, et al., Politics and Society in Scotland (1996), pp. 156—7. C. Harvie, ‘Scottish Politics’, in People and Society in Scotland, Vol III, p.

. 256. Labour polled 47.9 per cent of the popular vote in Scotland in the 1945 gen— eral election; a figure 2 per cent less than the party received in the UK. Election Address (1945). M. Keating and D. Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism (1979), p. 137.

W. W. Knox, Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918—1939: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 238. Gallagher, Glasgow, pp. 269—70. R. Levy, et al., ‘Glasgow Labour Councillors: an ideological profile’ (Strathclyde Papers on Government and Politics, 66, 1989), p. 24. T. Bell, Pioneering Days (1941), p. 33; T. Gallagher, ‘Catholics in Scottish politics’, Bulletin of Scottish Politics, 1 (1981), pp. 21—43. M. Fry, Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland (1987), pp. 217—20; Brown, et al., Politics, p. 153; Bradley, ‘Secular, religious and political’, p. 10. Drucker and Brown, Nationalism and Devolution, pp. 41—51. M. V. Kaippi, ‘The decline of the SNP, 1977—81: political and organizational factors’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 5 (1982), pp. 328—9. Allison, Gulity, p. 175 . H. M. Drucker, Breakaway.- The Scottish Labour Party (Edinburgh, 1978).

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Notes to Chapter 30 177. 178.

Scottish Labour Year Book (1946), p. 25. Letter from Glasgow City Labour Party (GCLP) to Phillips, 3 July 1952 (Labour Party Archives, Manchester). 179. F. Wood, ‘Scottish Labour in government and opposition: 1964-1979’, pp. 102—3; M. Keating, ‘The Labour Party in Scotland, 1951—64’, pp. 89—90, both in Forward! Labour Politics in Scotland 1888-1988, ed. I. Donnachie, et al. (Edinburgh, 1989). 180. Knox, Labour Leaders, p. 52. 181. J. McGovern, Neither Fear Nor Favour (1960), pp. 190—1. 182. Knox, Labour Leaders, pp. 91, 179. 183. Allison, Guilty, p. 40. 184. Allison, Guilty, p. 40. 185. Wood, ‘Scottish Labour’, p. 103. 186. Maryhill CLP, Report of Annual General Meeting (AGM), 5 February 1956; Maryhill Ward Party, Report of AGM, 5 January 1956 (Mitchell Library, Glasgow). 187. NEC Inquiry into Govan and Gorbals CLPs, 1 February 1962 (Labour Party Archives, Manchester). 188. NEC Inquiry into Party Organisation in Glasgow, February 1968 (Labour Party Archives, Manchester). 189. Allison, Guilty, p. 45. 190. Letter from F. Underhill to GCLP, 22 January 1974 (Labour Party Archives, Manchester). 191. H. Liddle, ‘European report to the NEC’, (n.d., Labour Party Archives, Manchester). 192. J. P. MacKintosh, ‘Labour and Scotland’, New Statesman, 16 January 1976. 193. A. Black and 8. Brooke, ‘The Labour Party, women and the problem of gender’, journal of British Studies, 36 (1997), pp. 430—2. 194. R. McCrae, ‘Women in the Scottish Labour Party’, in A Woman’s Claim of Right in Scotland, ed. Woman’s Claim of Right Group (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 51. 195. Times Guide to the House of Commons (1970, 1974, 1987, 1992); R. Levy, et al., ‘Labour councillors’, pp. 6—7. 196. MacCrae, ‘Women in Labour Party’, pp. 50—1. 197. Brown, et al., Politics, p. 184. 198. Brown, et al., Politics, p. 172. 199. Brown, et al., Politics, p. 173. 200. Brown, et al., Politics, p. 150. 201. J. Blochel and D. Denver, ‘The outlook’, in The Referendum Experience. Scotland 1979, ed. J. Blochel, et al., (Aberdeen, 1981), p. 143. 202. Brown, et al., Politics, pp. 150—1. 203. W. W. Knox and A. McKinlay, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour in the 1930s’, Twentieth Century British History, 6 (1995), p. 193.

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INDEX

Aberdeen car ownership in, 266 and cotton, 86 and council housing, 193 economy of, 86 employment structure of, 34, 87, 25 6—7 granite industry, 256 infant mortality rate, 191 and Irish, 38 and literacy, 42 poverty in, 135 restaurants in, 266

and shipbuilding, 36 and temperance, 94 trade unions in, 221 Aberdeen Charter Union, 69, 71 Aberdeen Commerical Literary Society, 102 Aberdeen Football Club, 141 Aberdeen Journal, 104 Aberdeen Ladies Union, 96 Aberdeen Town Council, 193 Aberdeen Trades Council, 160, 162 Aberdeen Working Men’s Association, 69, 71 Adamson, William (miners’ leader), 172, 178, 223 agriculture employment in, 36, 87 in Lowlands, 34 and mechanisation, 273 peasantry, 34 regulation of wages in, 230 Airdrie, 96, 116, 299 Airlie, james (trade unionist), 290 alcohol consumption of, 44, 197 impact on working—class lives, 44, 94—5, 197—8 licensed premises, 44 and masculinity, 197—8 and politics, 45 role in workplace, 44—5 Alison, Sir Archibald (Sheriff of Lanarkshire), 46, 66 Allan, William (miners’ leader), 229 Allison, Jimmy (Labour politician), 301—3 Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, 287 shop stewards in, 290 Amalgamated Engineering Union attitude to women, 222

and communists, 229 in Glasgow, 230 and industrial unionism, 222 1922 lock out, 222 membership of, 230 and sectarianism, 268 and shop steward organisation, 222, 230 Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 1 14 Amalgamated Society of Engineers and apprentices, 207 and blacklegging, 159 and branch autonomy, 115 Glasgow membership of, 117 and 1922 lock-out, 207 and new model unionism, 114 and sectarianism, 142, 283—4 and wages, 8 9 and the Webbs, 156 Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, 117,

125 Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, 272, 283 Anderson, Robert (historian), 92, 139 Annual Conference of Labour Women, 304 Anti Corn Law League, 71 anti-landlordism, 21, 24, 33, 182 apprentices limitation of, 50—1 socialisation of, 151 and strikes, 162 turnover rate among, 162 apprenticeship and alcohol, 45 and patrimony, 51 rationale for, 6 Arbroath, 35 artisans culture of, 43, 75 and independence, 51 and literacy, 42 notions of the trade, 50 politics of, 63 Ashworth, W. (historian), 291 Associated Colliers of Scotland, 52—4 Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff, 282 Association of University Teachers, 255 Attwood, Thomas (radical), 69

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Index Bairds of Gartsherrie, 70, 93, 95, 139 bakers, 120, 140 Ballantyne, Thomas (woollen manufacturer), 149 Ballantynes, of Walkerburn, 103 Bands of Hope, 96 Banking, Insurance and Finance Union, 282 Bannockburn, Battle of, 60

Barclay and Curle, of Glasgow, 99 Barnes, George (trade unionist), 178—9

Barony, parish of, 62 Barr, Rev. James (Labour MP), 244 Baxter, Dudley (statistician), 90 Beardmore, Issac (industrialist), 152 Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge, 218, 222 Behagg, Clive (historian), 70 Bell, Thomas (shipbuilder), 213 Bell, Tom (Communist), 152, 169, 299 Bell, Walter (activist), 217

Bertrams, of Edinburgh, 105 Betterton, H. B. (civil servant), 225 Bevin, Ernest (Labour politician), 226 Biagini, E. F. (historian), 12, 8 1

Binnie, Isobel (trade unionist), 287 Birmingham Political Union, 67, 69 blacksmiths, 53 Blair, Matthew (historian), 153 Blair, Tony (Labour PM), 306 Blanford, Oliver (industrialist), 289 Blantyre, 38, 223, 229 Bleiman, David (historian), 245 Boer War, 172

Boilermakers’ Society and amalgamation, 286 and apprenticeship, 283 collapse of, 117 and communists, 229 and conciliation, 118 dues, 120 executive/branch relations in, 15 8—9 and internal subcontracting, 214 recognition by employers, 160 and sectionalism, 283 song of, 118 and technology, 210, 277 and the Webbs, 156 Bonar, Dr Andrew (minister), 99 Bowhill, Fife, 223 Bradford, 168 Brady, Arthur (Labour politician), 241

NEC of, 241-2

New Labour, 252, 306—7

and occupational change, 2 origins of, 11, 129 and Scottish home rule, 245 and Scottish party, 242 and statism,187 and trade unions, 241 and the welfare state, 251 British Shipbuilders, 291 British Socialist Party, 179, 220, 234 Brooksbank, Margaret (jute worker), 199 Brown, Alice (political scientist), 305 Brown Brothers, of Leith, 208 Brown, Callum (historian), 46, 96, 99, 200, 267 Brown, James (miners’ leader), 172 Buchanan, George (Labour MP), 244 Buckman, Frank (Moral Rearmament Movement), 301 Burgess, Keith (historian), 89, 161, 212 Burns, Robert (poet), 47, 237 Burntisland Coal Trimmers’ Assocation, 112 by-elections Mid Lanark (1888), 124, 167

Hamilton (1968), 300 Cairns, John (Owenite), 76 Caledonian Railway Company, 108 Calhoun, Craig (historian), 3 Calico Printers’ Association, 134 Callaghan, James (Labour PM), 291 Campbell, Alan (historian), 70, 116, 157 Campbell, Alexander (Owenite), 54 Campbell, J. R. (Communist), 193 Campbell, Roy C. (historian), 114, 134 Campbell, William (Communist), 193

car industry and craft unionism, 284 and industrial discipline, 276—7 and measured working day, 291 strikes in, 284 Carlyle, Thomas (historian), 107, 165 Carpet weavers, 35 Carton Ironworks, 58, 61 Carson, George (trade unionist), 170 Catholic Irish attacks on, 201 and church attendance, 267 and communism, 235

Braverman, Harry (sociologist), 3 , 5, 7-8, 13, 23,

and community, 103

129 Breitenbach, Esther (historian), 286 Brewster, Rev. Patrick (radical), 67, 123 Bridgeton, Glasgow, 109 British Labour Party disaffiliation of ILP, 188 and gender, 304 and General Strike (1926), 238 icongraphy of, 25 and incomes policy, 251, 291 and incorporation, 10 and industrial relations, 291

and and and and and and

and the Labour Co—ordinating Committee, 304 and miners, 241 and nationalisation, 251

drunkeness, 41 employment, 38, 93, 142, 200 franchise, 174 handloom weaving, 37 home rule, 174, 235 immigration, 37, 93

a n d ILP, 174, 235

a n d labour historiography, 24 and labour movement, 173—4 and mixed marriages, 269 and racism, 102—3, 201 relation to Catholic Church, 103, 142—3 and Scottish nationalism, 299 Catholic Observer, 235

Catholic Socialist Society, 174

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INDEX Celtic Football Club, 141—2, 197 Central Labour Withholding Committee, 217 Chalmers, Rev Thomas, 99

a n d reductionism, 14, 16

Chartism in Aberdeen 69—70, 73, 75—6 and Anti Corn Law League, 71 and anti-landlordism, 33, 72 branches of, 6 9 and capitalism, 77 and 1839 Convention, 69 and co-operation, 75 and domesticity, 56 in Dundee, 70, 77 in Edinburgh, 73, 76 in Forfar, 70 in Glasgow, 70, 73 Glasgow leadership, 67

and Irish, 69, 73—4

and the language of politics, 12, 15—17, 32, 77 leaders in Scotland, 67

legacy of, 78 and miners, 70

moral versus physical force, 68—70, 73—4 and National Guard, 73 origins of, 11, 31, 66—7 and ‘plug riots’, 70 and relations with the middle classes, 66, 72, 74 and religion, 33, 67—8 and rioting, 69, 73 a n d Six Points, 66 and social change, 76 and social class, 16, 32, 67, 73, 75—7, 81 and the state, 74 and temperance, 33, 43, 6 7 and unemployment, 67 and young workers, 69 Chartist Churches, 33, 68, 71 Chartist Circular, 12, 16, 97 Checkland, Sydney (historian), 289 Cherrie, James (socialist), 164 Children’s Employment Commission, 42—3 Chisholm, Lord Provost Samuel (of Glasgow), 138 Christian Social Union, 141 Christian Socialism, 172, 175 Church of Scotland anti-ltishness in, 201 and disestablishment, 167 and Disruption, 99 membership of, 200, 267 and parliamentary grants, 54 and the poor, 140 and skilled workers, 46, 99 a n d social gospel, 171 and voting behaviour, 298 Clark, C. B. (land reformer), 167 Clark, Sylvia (historian), 259 Clarke, A. B. (miners’ leader), 248 Clarke, John 5. (Labour MP), 200 Clarke, P. F. (historian), 130 Clarke, Tony (historian), 69 class anglo-centric models of, 19 and history, 17 and labour history, 22 and post-modernism, 17

theory of, 19 Cleland, James (statistician), 37 Clyde Workers’ Committee, 217—20 Clydeside Shipbuilders’ Association, 210 Clynes, J. R. (trade unionist), 172 coalminers absences, 157 ages of, 224 and alcohol, 45 a n d communists, 229—30 and concilation, 118 a n d the darg, 106, 157 dual occupations of, 36 and emigration, 116 and the General Strike, 224—5 health of, 92, 205 and independence, 42, 50 and initiation ceremonies, 53 Lithuanian miners, 159 and local autonomy, 223 Polish miners, 159 Reform movement, 223 and temperance, 248 and trade unionism, 54, 116, 157, 159, 161, 223—5, 229—30 wages, 39, 8 9

and women, 287—8 coalmining abolition of serfdom, 59 and child labour, 50 contract system in, 157 Dalkeith Colliery, rules of, 118 decline of, 9, 255 and exports, 86, 133 in Fife, 223, 229 growth of, 36 and industrial discipline, 49, 106 and internal subcontracting, 111, 214 labour process, 147—8, 204—5, 278 in Lanarkshire, 49, 88, 157, 159, 204, 223, 229 and Longwall method, 49, 147, 181 and measured working day, 291 and mechanisation, 105—6, 147, 181, 204, 272 number of workers, 85, 88, 132, 255 output, 36, 85, 132, 189, 255 ownership, 49 and paternalism, 88, 109, 152 and pillar and stoop, 50, 147, 205 productivity in, 204 and sectarianism, 116, 159, 229 strikes in, 9, 55, 116, 119, 157, 223, 288 and unemployment, 191 and women, 9, 49—50, 287—8 Coatbridge, 93, 110, 142, 299 Coats, James (thread manufacturer), 110 Coats, Thomas (thread manufacturer), 123 Cockburn, Lord Henry (lawyer), 5 7 Colley, Linda (historian), 27

Committee for the Aiding the Emancipation of Italy, 123 Commonweal, 165 Communist Party of Great Britain from organisations, 229 and infiltration, 290

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Index and local government, 253 and Scottish miners, 229—30 and Scottish nationalism, 298 social fascist campaign, 241 and the United Front, 241 and working class, 271

Complete Suffrage Union, 72 Confederation of Health Service Employees, 287 construction

bricklayers, 51 carpenters, 105, 148, 221, 283 division of labour in, 49, 105 joiners, 54, 283

and limitation of apprentices, 50 masonry, 148 plumbers, 104, 148, 221 wages in, 39 Consultative Committee for Edinburgh Airport, 285 consumption of consumer durables, 265—6 politics of, 14, 89, 307 Cook, A. J. (miners’ leader), 238 Cook, Chris (historian), 13 Cook/Maxton Manifesto, 238 Cooperative Movement decline of, 266—7 dividend, 266 membership of, 138 and politics, 178 stores, 65, 98 and temperance, 169 and women, 173 coopering, 148 Cormack, John (Protestant extremist), 201 corporatism and employers, 225 and the state, 230, 291 a n d trade unions, 224—7, 285 Corn Laws, 31, 66 Corr, Helen (sociologist), 96

cotton industry collapse in Aberdeen, 86 collapse in Glasgow, 133 embezzelment of webs, 48 employers’ associations, 48, 53 employment structure, 34—5 factory, 48 handloom weavers, 35, 41, 45, 88, 104 and industrial discipline, 48 and informal apprenticeship, 47 and mechanisation, 47 ownership, 35 piece rates, 54,59 power-loom weaving, 35, 86, 88, 104, 111 relations between weavers and spinners, 40

self acting mule, 48, 104 sexual division of labour in, 111 spinners (female), 47—8, 53, 88, 104 spinners (male), 47, 53, 55, 8 8 strikes, 48, 53—5, 59 tenters, 1 1 1

and violence, 53 wages, 35, 48

Crawfurd, Helen (Communist), 103 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 124—5 Cullen, Matthew (Chartist), 67, 75 Cumbernauld, 293 Cunninghame-Graham, R. B. (novelist), 167, 174 Daily Herald, 304 Dalkeith, 110 Dalton, Hugh (Labour politician), 243, 245 Denny, William (shipbuilder), 110 dockwork containerisation, 7, 274 dockers, 24, 278 National Dock Labour Scheme, 278 workplace organisation, 290 Dollan, Lady Agnes (Labour politician), 301 Dollan, Sir Patrick (Labour politician), 173, 175, 198, 220, 234, 236, 239—40, 243, 245—7, 301 domestic service, 36 Doonan, James (miners’ leader), 229 Dumbarton, 1 1 0

Duncan, John (Chartist), 77 Duncan, Rob (historian), 41, 55, 70—1 Dundee

car ownership in, 266 economy of, 8 7 employment structure of, 87, 256 female workers in, 86, 144

Irish in, 38,40, 142—3

population of, 92 queen’s birthday riot (1853), 95 unemployment, 190 voting patterns in, 298 Dundee Advertiser, 95 Dundee Football Club, 141 Dundee and Lochee Weavers’ Union, 64

Dundee Mill and Factory Operative Union, 160 Dundee United Football Club, 141 Dundee’s Baxter Park, 95, 97 Dunfermline, 35, 144, 156 Dunlop, John (temperance reformer), 44—5 Dyer, Henry (educationalist), 164, 172 East Kilbride, 265, 293 East of Scotland Association of Engineers, 160 Edinburgh artisanal culture in, 23, 41—2 demonstrations, 64 employment structure of, 34, 87, 256 migration to, 37 mortality rates in, 39

population of, 92 Edinburgh Radical Association, 66 Edinburgh Society of Bookbinders, 52 Edinburgh Trades Council and apprentice restriction, 119 and Liberalism, 124 political programme of, 121, 125 and temperance, 95 Edminston, James (Owenite), 76 education attendance of Catholics, 100 comprehensive education, 270 and discipline, 100

Craigen, James (Labour MP), 285

drilling, 100—1, 139

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INDEX Education Act (1872), 96, 100, 138 Education Act (1918), 202 Education Acts (1945, 1946), 270 and Empire, 139 half-time, 139

(1867), 84, 122—3

(1884), 166, 181 Fraser, Hamish (historian), 51, 76, 102, 115, 117 Free Church St Mary’s FC, 99 and the Scottish labour movement, 171 Free Collier Movement, 116

higher education, 271 industrial relations in, 294 and inequality, 202, 270—1 and Labour Party, 139

Gallacher, William (Communist), 175, 217—18 Gallagher, Tom (historian), 299 Gallic, G. N. (trade unionist), 226 games, 43 Garro-Jones, G. M. (Labour MP), 242 gender and clerical work, 258 and contraception, 257 and domesticity, 56, 96—7, 143—4, 173 female employment, 88, 143—4, 257, 286 historical marginality of women, 23, 42, 181 and the labour process, 6 married women and work, 88, 199, 257 part-time work, 25 7 patriarchy, 97, 143, 199 wages for women and men, 91, 259, 279, 286 General Municipal and Boilermakers’ Union, 286 General and Municipal Workers Union, 221—2, 230 General Union of Operative Colliers, 54 George, Henry (land reformer) land tax scheme, 163 tour of Scotland, 163 George, David Lloyd (Liberal PM), 181, 217 Gibb, Andrew (Nationalist), 201 Gilroy, Agnes (trade unionist), 287 Gladstone, William Ewart (Liberal PM), 123, 182 Glasgow artisanal culture in, 42 brothels in, 94

leaving age, 139, 270 literacy, 42—3 ‘0’ levels, 270 school boards, 139 and sectarianism, 202, 271 streaming, 202 Educational News, 100 Edward VII, 246 electrical and electronics industries and anti-unionism, 293—4 and new towns, 293 and skill, 278 Eley, G. (historian), 14, 18 Elger, Tony (sociologist), 5 Elger, William (trade unionist), 225—6, 228, 240, 301 Elgin, Lord (industrialist), 228 Elliot, Walter (Tory politician), 226 engineering and apprenticeship, 105, 146, 207 apprentices’ strike in, 207 division of labour in, 7, 105, 146, 206—7 and exports, 86, 189 fitters, 206—7 intensification of work in, 150—1, 207—8 1922 lock out, 223 piece rate system, 149 premium bonus system, 149—51, 208 and sectarianism, 268 and semi-skilled labour, 146, 206 and specialisation, 105, 146 and wages, 8 9 women workers in, 206 English attitudes to Scots, 41 Enlightenment, 56, 75 Equal Pay Act (1975), 286, 304 Ewing, Winnie (Nationalist), 300

economy of, 86

factory reform, 64 Fairfields, of Clydeside, 289 Falklands War, 297 Ferguson, John (land reformer), 167 Ferguson, Robert (grandson of Robert Burns), 164 Ferry, Alex (trade unionist), 268 foremen and authority, 110—11, 213 decline of, 151-2, 211, 275 and gender, 111 managerial role, 110 and sectarianism, 142 Foremen’s Mutual Benefit Society, 212 Forward, 169, 172, 176, 199—200, 246—7 Foster,]ohn (historian), 15, 123—4, 142, 219—20 franchise reform (1832), 11, 31, 54, 58, 63—4

employment structure of, 34, 87, 256 evacuees, health of, 192 female employment in, 144 franchise reform, 63—4 infant mortality, 92, 136 Irish, 37-8, 62, 142 labour costs in, 289 mortality rates (all ages), 38—9 population of, 37 and poverty, 91, 194, 261 residential patterns, 289 and riots, 73 sectarianism in, 142, 197 shebeens, 94—5 and standard of living, 39 Glasgow Abstainers Union, 96 Glasgow and Ayr Miners’ Association, 54 Glasgow Causewaylayers’ Association, 117 Glasgow Green, 43, 60 Glasgow Labour Party, 178 Glasgow Liberal Working Men’s Electoral Union, 124 Glasgow Municipal Association, 160 Glasgow Municipal Housing Commission on the Housing of the Poor (1904), 170 Glasgow Observer, 174 Glasgow Operative Conservative Society, 38

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Index Glasgow Royal Volunteers, 60 Glasgow School Board, 139 Glasgow Sentinel, 97 Glasgow Socialist Art Circle, 198, 246 Glasgow Town Council, 73, 124, 174, 246 Glasgow Trades Council affiliates of, 159, 161 and communists, 229 and franchise reform, 121 and gradualism, 237 and politics, 121—2, 167 and Scottish Labour Party, 167 and unskilled workers, 117 Glasgow Trades and Labour Council, 247 Glasgow United Committee of Trades Delegates, 54 Glasgow Workingmen’s Fund for Garibaldi, 123 Glasier, Jock Bruce (socialist), 164—5, 167, 174, 177

Glasse, Rev. John (socialist), 172 Glenrothes, 265 Glover, Dr J. (Chartist), 67 Goldthorpe, J. H. (sociologist), 13 Gordon, Eleanor (historian), 96, 157—8, 176 Govan, 298 Govan School Board, 139 Gow, Neil (songwriter), 43 Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, 54, 65 Gray, R. Q (historian), 23, 32, 81, 101, 137 Great Depression (1873—96), 133

Greenock, 37—8, 93 Hardie, Keir J. (Labour politician), 102, 124, 167—9, 171—2, 174—6, 182, 232—3

Harley, C. K. (economist), 153 Hamey, Julian (Chartist), 71 Harvie, Christopher (historian), 178, 243—4 Hassan, J. A. (historian), 70—1, 152 Hawick, 117 Heart of Midlothian Football Club, 141 Heath, Edward (Tory PM), 291 Henderson, Meg (journalist), 268 Herald to the Trades Advocate, 63—5 Hibernian Football Club, 141 Highland Land League, 177 Hill, John (trade unionist), 147 Hillis, Peter (historian), 46 Hinton, James (historian), 218 Hobsbawm, Eric John (historian), 2—3, 12, 51, 81, 129, 1 6 1

Hodge, John (Owenite), 65, Hodge, John (trade unionist), 84, 172 Hodge, Phillip (miners’ leader), 223

Hoggart, Richard (sociologist), 3 Holley, John (historian), 103

housing in Aberdeen, 192—3, 262 amenities, 194, 262—3 comparisons with Eastern Europe, 262 comparisons with England and Wales, 262 Cross Act (1875), 125

density, 136 in Dundee, 92, 192, 262—3 in Edinburgh, 91, 192, 262

flitting, 194 in Glasgow, 136, 192—3, 262—3

Glasgow Presbytery’s investigation, 141 and health, 92, 136 high rise blocks, 263 housing estates, conditions in, 262 and the ILP, 170 and industrial relations, 289—90 local authority, 193, 262—3 New towns, 265 overcrowding, 263 owner occupation, 263

in Paisley, 262—3 rents, 193 and sectarianism, 137 and social class, 141, 263 and status, 137

and ticketing, 137 type of, 91, 192 unemployed households, 263 Howie, Alex (socialist), 166 Humphries, Jane (historian), 49—50 Hunt, E. H. (historian), 134 Hunter, Laurie (economist), 281, 288 Hutchinson, Iain (historian), 68, 73 Huxley, Julian (novelist), 243 Hyman, Richard (sociologist), 274 Hyndman, H. M. (socialist), 163 Independent Labour Party and activism, 239 anti-Irish attitudes, 174 and birth control, 199—200 and Bolshevism, 234 and capitalism, 175 and Catholic Church, 200, 235 and Communist Party, 237—8 and Cook/Maxton manifesto, 238 and disaffiliation, 188, 238—9 and elections, 178, 235 and electoral pacts, 174 elitism of, 247—8 and family life, 199 formation of, 168 and Highlands, 177 and housing, 175 importance of to the Labour Party, 239 and Liberalism, 178, 182 and Marx, 175—6 May Day manifesto (1918), 234 membership of, 178, 235 and municipalisation, 176 organisation in, 179 and pacifism, 234 and petite bourgeoisie, 171 and popular culture, 196 and religion, 171—2, 175—6, 200 and respectability, 170—1 and Scottish home rule, 177, 244 and self—improvement, 170, 198 and the slum vote, 170 and the state, 176—7 and suffragettes, 173 and temperance, 169, 171, 175, 198, 247 and unemployment, 180 values of, 168, 187, 236 Independent Order of Good Templars, 96

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INDEX Independent Order of Rechabites, 96 Industrial relations in American-owned plants, 290, 292 on Clydeside, 162, 217—20 and collective bargaining, 291

comparison of strike rates, 288 decline of trade unionism, 292 Donnovan Commission on, 282, 290—1 employers and anti-union legislation, 293 and the Employment Protection Act (1975), 282 and the Industrial Relations Act (1971), 282, 291 politicisation of, 9, 218—19, 291

and public housing, 290 working days lost in disputes, 292, 294 Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 105 inter—war depression, 13, 189 internal subcontracting, 111—12, 151, 213—14 iron industry decline of, 133 exports, 86 and internal subcontracting, 111

Labour Chronicle, 171 Labour Churches, 140 labour historiography, 10-11 Labour Leader, 172 Labour and Monopoly Capital critique of, 5—8 impact on historians, 3, 129 Labour Party in Scotland in Aberdeen, 303 branches of, 240, 300 a n d capitalism, 242—3, 248 and centralisation, 241 and communists, 240 and constituency labour parties, 240, 300—2 and economic planning, 243 electoral support for, 235—6, 296, 300 expulsions from, 241 and gender, 173, 303—5 in Glasgow, 300, 302—3 Gorbals CLP, 302 Govan CLP, 302

income of, 301 and local councils, 179, 300 Maryhill CLP, 302 membership of, 248, 300—3 and meritocracy, 248 and middle class, 248 and miners, 239 and the monarchy, 246 and Monklands affair, 299 and organisation, 301—2 in Paisley, 302 political programme of, 248, 302 Pollock CLP, 302 and the poor, 248

o u t p u t , 36, 85, 1 8 9 sectarianism i n , 142

technological change in, 36 Iron and Steel Confederation, 211, 221 Irwin, Margaret (trade unionist), 143 Italian Emancipation, 123 J & P Coats, of Paisley, 134, 153 Jack, Ian (journalist), 170, 266 Jesus Christ, 171 John Browns, of Clydebank, 210, 222 Johnston, Thomas (Labour politician), 22, 120, 177, 198—9, 233, 237, 240, 243, 301

Jones, Bryn (sociologist), 153 Jones, Ernest (Chartist), 76 Jones, Gareth Stedman (historian), 12, 15—16, 25, 32, 75—6

Jones, Lloyd (Owenite), 76 Jordan, Bell (trade unionist), 287 Jordan, Bill (trade unionist), 293 Joseph, Sir Keith (Tory politician), 292 Joyce, Patrick (historian), 3, 6—7, 12, 14—15, 17, 97, 107—8, 113, 154, 160

jute industry and mechanisation, 209, 273 status perceptions in, 91 strikes in, 157—8, 209 workforce, 86, 209, 273 Keating, Michael (political scientist), 245 Kenefick, William (historian), 24, 162 Kensit, John (Protestant extremist), 174 Kerr, George (trade unionist), 179 Kibblewhite, Elizabeth (historian), 222, 2 2 8 Kilmarnock, 38

Kilsyth, 99 Kirk, Professor J. (temperance reformer), 169 Kirk, Neville (historian), 15—16 Kirkwood, Baton David (Labour MP), 101—3, 217—20, 301

Knox, Ewan (historian), 137 labour aristocracy thesis, 11, 81—2, 124

r e m a k i n g of, 239—47

and school boards, 179 and Scottish home rule, 242, 244—5, 298, 306 and Scottish Labour Women’s Caucus, 305 and Scottish Women’s Action Committee, 304—5 and sectarianism, 299 and the SNP, 300 and social class, 236 and the Soviet Union, 243—4 and Spanish Civil War, 245 splits from, 300 subordination of, 242 and temperance, 247 and trade unions, 239 and trades and labour councils, 241 and votes from women, 173 and women candidates, 303—4 Young Socialists, 302 labour process contradictions in, 278 marxist theory of, 4—8 and radical Liberalism, 12 and revisionism, 6—8 and socialism, 129—30, 180—1 Labour Representation Committee, 11, 178 Lancashire, 60, 130 Landes, David (historian), 48 Lang, Rev. J. M., 172 Larkhall, 229 Lawrence, D. H. (novelist), 3

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Index Maclean, Neil (Labour MP), 236 McLelland, Keith (historian), 147 McManus, Arthur (Communist), 219 MacMillan, Harold (Tory PM), 2, 243 McPherson, Andrew (educationalist), 270 McShane, Harry (socialist), 142, 146, 169, 173, 199 Mahon, John L. (socialist), 165 Mann, Michael (sociologist), 15, 76, 145 Mann, Tom (socialist), 161 Martyn, Caroline (socialist), 170 Marxism

Leatham, James (socialist), 102, 165 Lee, H. W. (socialist), 169 Lee, Jenny (Labour MP), 192 leisure bingo, 265 cinema, 196, 265 computer games, 265 cycling, 199 dancing, 196, 265 eating out, 265 fairs, 43—4 gambling, 138, 196—7, 270 hill walking, 199 holidays abroad, 265 Penny theatres, 43 and the state, 270 television, 265 Leonard, William (Labour MP), 198, 236 Leopold, John (sociologist), 293 Levitt, Ian (historian), 39 Levy, Richard (political scientist), 299 Lewis, David (temperance reformer), 169 Liberal Party and Catholic vote, 235 electoral dominance of, 130 and Irish home rule, 175 and Scottish home rule, 177 and Scottish workers, 123—4, 126, 130, 166—7, 182—3 Liberal Unionists and Scottish workers, 174 Liberalism, 123, 166 Liberty and Democratic League, 243 Liddle, Helen (Labour politician), 303 linen weavers, 36 Lithgow, Sir James (industrialist), 228

i n Britain, 1 0

and the labour process, 4—5 revisionist distortions of, 14—15 and social class, 1, 10, 274 Masonic Order, 100, 116 Master and Servant Act, 124—5 Matheson, Jock Carstairs (socialist), 179 Mavor, James (socialist), 164 Mavor and Coulson, of Glasgow, 206 Maxton, James (Labour politician), 198, 218, 236—7, 244—5 Melling, Joe (historian), 108, 115 migration England a n d Wales, 37 general, 258 Highland, 37, 93 Miles, Andrew (historian), 18 Miliband, Ralph (political scientist), 15 Miller, Hugh (writer), 37, 41—2, 45 Millet, Leo (socialist), 164 Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, 224 Minority Movement, 229 Mitchell, James (journalist), 71 Moffat, Abe (miners’ leader), 229, 290 Moir, James (Chartist), 6 7 Mond/Turner talks, 216, 225 Monklands, 41, 55 Montgomery, Fiona (historian), 63—4

Liverpool, 21 Lochgelly, 192 London, 54 London Working Men’s Association, 66, 69 Lothian Coal Company, 152, 214 Lowe, David (socialist), 171 Lyon, Hugh (trade unionist), 220

Montrose, 35

McAdam, John (Chartist), 123 McArthur, John (miners’ leader), 147 McCallum, Sir Robert (Liberal MP), 175 McCaffrey, John (historian), 73 McCrae, John (Chartist), 67 MacDonald, Alexander (miners’ leader), 117 MacDonald, Ramsay (Labour PM), 234, 237, 243 McGahey, Mick (miners’ leader), 290 McGeown, Patrick (steel worker), 200 McGovern, John (Labour MP), 301 MacInnes, John (sociologist), 293 McIntyre, Elizabeth (trade unionist), 287 MacIntyre, Stuart (historian), 204—5 McIvor, Arthur (historian), 134, 160, 162 McKay, Mungo (industrialist), 214 MacKenzie, Peter (adventurer), 65 McKibbin, Ross (historian), 10 McKinlay, Alan (social scientist), 9, 206—7, 289 MacKintosh, J. P. (Labour politician), 303 McLaren, Duncan (Liberal MP), 124 Maclean, John (socialist), 180, 217—18, 234, 236

Moody and Sankey, 100 Moorhouse, Bert (sociologist), 141 More, Charles (historian), 3, 6 Morley, John (Liberal politician), 178 Morris, Robert John (historian), 17—18, 214, 233, 276

Morris, William (socialist), 163—5 Motherwell, James (Chartist), 76 Muir, Edwin (writer), 265 Muir, John (socialist), 217—18 Muirhead, R. F. (Nationalist), 164 Munitions Act, 217—18 Myles, James (author), 40—1, 45, 48—9 National Association of Local Government Officers, 282, 287 National Association of Master Builders, 160 National Charter Association, 6 8 National Coal Board, 255, 288 National Covenant, 298 National Economic Development Council, 285 National Federation of Women Workers, 160 National Industrial Council, 225 National Political Union, 63

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INDEX National Unemployed Workers Movement, 227—8, National Union National Union 239 National Union National Union National Union National Union National Union National Union 229 National Union 221

Pattison, William C. (Chartist), 67, 75

Pelling, Henry (historian), 129

241

of Clerks, 240 of Distributive and Allied Workers, of of of of of of

Dock Labourers, 159—60 Foundry Workers, 221 Manufacturers, 225 Mineworkers, 255, 290 Public Employees, 287 Scottish Mine Workers, 223,

of Tailor and Garment Workers,

Neild, Keith (historian), 14, 13

New Liberalism, 130 New Poor Law (1834), 11, 31, 71 Newby, H. (sociologist), 107 Newtongrange, 109 Next Five Years Group, 243 Nicholls, David (historian), 8 2 Niven, David (sociologist), 262 Nockles, James (Owenite), 76 Noriel, G. (historian), 206 North British Locomotive Company, 134 North British Mail, 94 North West Engineering Trades Employers’ Association, 160

O’Connor, Feargus (Chartist), 69—70 O’Hare, John (Irish politician), 174 Orange Order in Glasgow, 142 lodges, 38, 93, 142 membership of, 93, 142, 269 Orr, John (Chief Constable of Glasgow), 138 Orr, John Boyd (nutritionist), 192 Orwell, George (novelist), 3 Owen, Robert (socialist), 64—5, 76, 165 Paine, Tom (radical), 58 Paisley and economic decline, 259—60 employment structure of, 34—5 George A. Clark Town Hall, 109

population of, 37 and radicalism, 59 and riots, 59 and sectarianism, 38 and textiles, 40, 87 unemployment in, 263 Paisley Herald, 110

Paisley Savings Bank, 98 paternalism decline of, 152—3, 214, 275 in Glasgow, 108, 275 and household structure, 109 a n d housing, 110 in Lancashire cotton towns, 107 in Midlothian coal industry, 109—10, 152, 214 in Paisley thread industry, 109—10, 153 theories of, 106—8 weaknesses of, 107—8 Paton, John (Labour politician), 135, 140, 151, 169, 194, 236, 247

Penn, Richard (sociologist), 180 Peterloo Massacre (1819), 57, 59 petite bourgeoisie and skilled workers, 137 Phillips, David (author), 199 political radicalism and aristocracy, 59—60 class divisions in, 64 critique of class, 57 and English leaders, 60 and French revolution, 57 and middle classes, 58 and Scottish nationalism, 60—1 Pollard, Sidney (historian), 153 Postgate, Raymond (historian), 105 post-modernism, 1—2, 12 and language, 15 and social class, 1 7 poverty and Church of Scotland, 140 among Fife miners, 192 and low wages, 91 Means Test, 194—5 among old age pensioners, 261 Poor Law claimants, 194 Supplementary Benefit, 261 among women and children, 135, 261 Preston, 131 Price, Richard (historian), 115, 129, 131, 182, 211 Priestly, J. B. (novelist), 3 Prinlaws, of Kircaldy, 214, 276 printing, 148 Protestant Action Society, 201 Protestant Irish and cotton industry, 38 emigration of, 37, 93, 142 Protestant Truth Society, 174 Proudfoot, David (miners’ leader), 223 Quelch, Harry (socialist), 169 Radical Reformer’s Gaiette, 63 Radical War (1820), 24, 57—8, 62 Rainy, Professor Rev. Robert, 171 railways hours of work, 149 and paternalism, 152 railway lines, 35—6 strikes in, 171 and trade unionism, 117 Rangers Football Club, 141, 197 Ratcliffe, Alexander (Protestant extremist), 201 ‘reciprocity’, 7 Red Clyde anti-war movement, 234

and Bolshevik revolution, 234 dilution, 217 Forty Hours’ strike, 219—20 George Square riot, 218 historiography of, 25, 233 and housing market, 233 and ILP, 220 leaving ceritificates, 217

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Index shop stewards’ movement, 217—20 and the state, 218—19 trials of leaders, 218 Red Clydesiders and capitalism, 237 divisions in, 237 intellectual influences, 237 MacDonald group, 237 and marxism, 236 and parliamentary democracy, 237 values of, 236 Reid, Alastair (historian), 3, 7, 12—13, 81, 120, 130—1, 147, 153 Reid, jimmy (trade unionist), 290 Relief Synod, 68 Renault, 206 Revivalism, 99—100 Renfrewshire Volunteer Association, 60 Rents Restrictions Act (1915), 233, 235 Road Haulage Act (1938), 230 riots, 24, 60—1, 64, 95, 141 Robertson, D. j. (economist), 289 Roberton, Sir Hugh (conductor), 198 Robertson, john (Labour MP), 300 Robertson, P. (historian), 153 Rodger, Richard (historian), 87, 135, 263 Roman Catholic Church, 103, 142—3, 267, 269 Rosebery, Lord (Liberal politician), 139 Ross, George (Chartist), 67 Royal Commissions Housing (1884—5), 141 Labour (1892), 90 Poor Laws (1909), 135

Russell, Dora (birth control advocate), 200 Rutherford, Lord (scientist), 243 Samuel, Raphael (historian), 6 sanitation in Aberdeen, 92 in Dundee, 92 in Scotland, 9 2 Savage, Michael (historian), 18, 131 Saville, Richard (historian), 190 Scheu, Andreas (socialist), 164—5 Scone, Lord (Tory politician), 201 Scotch Reformer’s Gazette, 65 Scotland consumer goods, 190 and deindustrialisation, 254—5 distribution of employment, 87 economic change, 145, 252

emigration from, 132, 191 exports, 133 firm size, 87, 134 health, 191—2, 252, 263 infant mortality rate, 191, 263—4 and inter-war depression, 189 and Korean War, 254 and Labour Party, 253 and multinationals, 252, 256—7, 273 national income of, 90, 190, 258

peculiarities of, 19—20 population of, 37, 132, 258 and public sector, 252—3 and Second World War, 254

social structure of, 253, 260

unemployment, 189—91, 252, 254—6, 26041

Scotsman, 73 Scottish Council of the Labour Party, 301—2 Scottish Development Council, 227 Scottish Economic Committee, 227

Scottish Education Department, 139, 270 Scottish Farm Servants Union, 160 Scottish Horse and Motormen’s Association, 220, 229—30 Scottish Labour College, 240 Scottish Labour Party (1888) in Edinburgh, 168 electoral performance of, 168 formation of, 167 and Liberalism, 168 and nationalisation, 226 programme of, 167 and trade unions, 167—8 and workers’ control, 226 Scottish Labour Party (1975) foundation, 300 splits in, 300 Scottish Land and Labour League and atheism, 165 decline of, 166 and democracy, 164 formation of, 163 Scottish Liberal Association, 167 Scottish Miners’ Federation membership of, 157, 161 and Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, 159 structure of, 159 Scottish National Party and branch organisation, 300 and elections, 300, 305 and the Hamilton by~election (1967), 300 and the Labour Party, 300

and Red Clydeside, 306 social profile of, 306 and Tartan Toryism, 305 and working class, 305—7 Scottish Nationalism and Catholic vote, 299 and political radicalism, 60—1, 307 and 1979 Referendum, 305 resurgence of, 22, 300 Scottish Parole Board, 285 Scottish Prohibition Party, 169 Scottish Protestant League, 201 Scottish Radical Association, 66 Scottish Reform League, 121, 123 Scottish Reform Union, 12] Scottish Shopkeepers and Assistants’ Union, 172 Scottish Socialist Federation, 168 Scottish Socialist Party decline of, 246 formation of, 240 and pacifism, 245

and self—improvement, 198 and Spanish Civil War, 245 Scottish Trades Union Congress and communists, 227—8, 241 and corporatism, 285 and elections, 177—8

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INDEX founding of, 158

origins of, 36 output of, 36, 85—6, 132, 189, 254—5 and paternalism, 152—3 platers, 112, 147, 210—11, 283 and prefabrication, 210—11

General Council of, occupational profile, 285—6 membership of, 281 and miners, 224 and Scottish home rule, 227 and Scottish unions, 280 and secular education, 174 and temperance, 141, 198

profit margins, 133 and riveting, 7, 9, 89, 210—11, 272 sectarianism in, 142 shift from iron to steel, 147 shift from wood to metal, 104 Shipwrights, 104 and skill, 147, 210, 277 strikes in, 119

and the unemployed, 227—8 and war preparations, 245—6 and women, 231, 286—7 Scottish Typographical Association, 161 Scottish Wholesale Co—operative Society, 234 Scottish Workers Parliamentary Elections Committee, 1 77—8 Scottish working class

tanker building, 272

and anti-Englishness, 158 and Calvinism, 20 a n d class consciousness, 25 and community, 278 and consumerism, 271 culuture of, 20, 252 and deskilling, 278 expenditure patterns of, 90, 135 fragmentation of, 61—2, 182, 271 and free trade, 66, 125 and historians, 23, 25, 61—2 and ‘honourable’ and ‘dishonourable’ employers, 66 and independence, 101—2, 124 a n d Labour Party, 20, 252 and marriage, 46 and middle class radicals, 66, 123 and Owenism, 65—6, 76 and patriotism, 297 a n d religion, 20, 46, 99, 102, 1 4 0 , 200, 267-8,

299 and respectability, 94—103, 139—40 and sectarianism, 20, 38, 46, 142, 268—9 and self-improvement, 102 a n d sexism, 140 and sport, 97—8 and temperance, 101 and Tories, 297, 299 and unemployment, 62, 138 values of, 101, 126, 166—7, 180, 271, 306—7 Scrymgeour, Edwin (temperance MP), 169, 198 Selkirk, Robert (miners’ leader), 247 Service Sector employment in, 256 and GDP, 256 output of, 25 6 shopwork, 274 transport, 132, 209 Shackleton, David (Labour politician), 182 Shelly, Percy B. (poet), 165 Sheridan, Tommy (Labour activist), 262 Shinwell, Emanuel (Labour MP), 234, 237 shipbuilding and casual employment, 289 decline of, 255 employment in, 254—5 and internal subcontracting, 111—12, 151, 210, 213—14 labour process, 104—5, 147

and trade cycle, 86, 189, 210 and trade unionism, 117—18, 283 traditionalism in, 277 and UCS work-in, 283 and unemployment, 191 wages in, 89—90, 135, 283 and welding, 7, 211, 272, 283 Shipbuilding Employers’ Federation, 160, 211, 277 shoemaking, 48—9 Sillars, jim (Labour MP), 300 Silletoe, Alan (novelist), 3 Slaven, Anthony (historian), 258 Small, William (miners’ leader), 159, 168 Smillie, Robert (miners’ leader), 112, 167—8, 175, 1 82 Smith, Adam (economist), 51, 58 Smith, Chris (sociologist), 275 Smout, T. C. (historian), 22, 39, 60‘], 75, 98, 134—5, 248 Smyth, James (historian), 214, 276 Social Democratic Federation in Aberdeen, 179 formation of, 163 and gender roles, 173 membership of, 179 and self-improvement, 170 a n d temperance, 169 Socialist Labour Party formation of, 179 and Scottish nationalism, 179—80 Socialist League in Aberdeen, 164—5 and democracy, 164 in Edinburgh, 164 and foreign emigres, 164 formation of, 163 intellectual influences, 164-5 and marxism, 164—5 and middle class, 164—5 a n d Scottish politics, 179 Socialist Sunday Schools, 140, 170

Society of the Friends of Italy, 123 Somerville, Alexander (trade unionist), 42, 45, 64 Soviet Union, 243 sport athletics, 98 cricket, 97 football, 98, 138, 141 quoiting, 9 8

rowing, 97 and the state, 270

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Index Sproull, A. (social scientist), 293 Steadman, W. C. (trade unionist), 104 steel industry and competition, 133 decline of, 255 labour process in, 211, 272.3 ouput, 132, 189, 255 unemployment in, 191 Stephens, Rev. J. R . (Chartist), 77 Stevenson, John (historian), 13 Stewart, Eleanor (Labour activist), 248 Stewart, James (Labour MP), 193 Stewart, Thomas (poet), 45 Stewart, Willie (biographer), 232 stonemasons and independence, 50 Sturges, Joseph (radical), 72 Sturrock, John (engineer), 95 Suez crisis, 298—9

Sunday Schools, 140 Supple, Barry (historian), 204—5 sweated labour, 135 Taff Vale, 177 Tait, Henry (trade unionist), 125 Taylor, Frederick W. (social scientist), 5 Taylor, John (Chartist), 66 Taylor, John S. (Labour politician), 179 Taylor, Peter (engineer), 99, 102, 1 1 1 , 1 1 6

Taylor, Phil (social scientist), 289 Technical and Salaried Staffs Association, 7, 273 technical workers, 273 temperance Bands of Hope, 96 and concerts, 96 Forbes MacKenzie Act (1853), 96 friendly societies, 96

and ‘No Licence Campaign’, 198 and poverty, 169

and pressure group politics, 168 workplace societies, 95 textiles, 256 Thatcher, Margaret (Tory PM), 13, 251, 253, 291—2, 299

Thom, William (poet), 104 Thompson, David (trade unionist), 48 Thompson, Edward Palmer (historian), 3, 11, 22, 24

Thorne, Will (socialist), 161 Times, 167

Toothill Report, 258 Tories anti—inflation strategy, 292 attacks on trade unions, 292 and Catholic vote, 298 electoral success of, 251 and English nationalism, 297 and imperialism, 298—9 and individualism, 248 and industrial subsidies, 292 and Orange vote, 298 and Presbyterianism. 298 and public housing, 262 and the state, 252 vote in Scotland, 253, 299

and working class, 25 3, 296—8 Total Abstinence Societies, 43, 67 Touraine, Alain (sociologist), 154 Trades Councils and communists, 231 and politics, 121—2, 124—5 Trades Disputes Act (1927), 238 Trade Union Act (1984), 292 Trade Unionism in Scotland, 47—55, 114—21, 156—62, 216—31, 280—95 in Aberdeen, 221 a n d anti-Englishness of, 158, 220—1 and civil defence, 245 on Clydeside, 159, 162 and Combinations Acts, 59 and communists, 227—8, 231 comparisons of blue and white collar unions, 294 and Corn Laws, 63 decline of, 55 density, 280 dualism in, 52 and education, 174 in England and Wales, 156 and franchise reform, 54, 62 and the General Strike, 224-5 in heavy industry, 156, 161, 281 informal organisation, 115, 117 and initiation, 53 and Labour Party, 225 a n d laissez—faire, 63 and limitation of apprentices, 119 and localism, 159 and Mondffurners talks, 225 nationalisation of, 221, 280 new model, 82, 114 new unionism, 161 and Owenism, 54, 64—6 in public sector, 282 and respectability, 55 and Scottish home rule, 177, 227, 230—1 Scottish membership of, 114, 156, 221, 280—1 and service sector, 281—2 shop stewards in, 291 and skilled workers, 52, 162, 282—3 and the state, 125, 284—5 and temperance, 95, 114, 141, 198 and thrift, 98 ' and Tories, 2, 11, 292 and trade cycle, 120 UK density, 221 and the unemployed, 227—8 and violence, 53 weakness of, 156 and women, 120, 221, 231, 280—1, 286—8 women in the workplace, 97, 143—4 Trades Disputes Act, 224—5 Trades Union Congress, 224—5 Tranent, 92

Transport and General Workers Union and amalgamation, 221 female membership of, 222, 287 and Labour Party in Scotland, 239 membership of, 230 skilled sections, 286

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INDEX transport workers

and collective bargaining, 230 hours of work, 209 Tranter, Neal (historian), 97—8 Treble, James H. (historian), 144 Tuckett, Angela (historian), 24 Underhill, Fred (Labour politician), 302—3 Union of Shop, Distribution and Allied Workers, 287 United Association of Colliers, 118 United Free Church formation of, 172 and ILP, 172 and unemployment, 172 United Irish League, 143, 167, 174, 178—9 United Joiners of Glasgow, 53, 119 United Mineworkers of Scotland, 229—30 United Presbyterian Church, 99 United Scotsmen, 58, 61 United Succession Church, 68 United Turkey Red Dye Company, 134 Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists, 64—5 Universal Suffrage Association, 66 unskilled workers, 23—4 marriage patterns, 137 relations with skilled, 42, 138, 278—9 and trade unionism, 117, 161—2 wages of, 194, 278—9 urbanisation, 37 growth of major cities, 92—3 Volunteer Companies, 98 wages, 3 9 censuses, 134—5

compared with England, 90, 134, 194, 258 differentials, 194, 258—9, 279 fixing of by JPs, 51, 58 level of, 259 low wages, 91 measured day system, 276, 291 piece rate system, 112—13, 276—7 rates in: sugar industry, 89—90; paper manufacture, 90; tweed industry, 103 Scottish comparisons, 90, 135, 194, 25 8—9 sliding scale of, 119 and wages boards, 224 Walker, William A. (historian), 142 Watson, W. F. (engineer), 149—50, 155 Webb, Beatrice and Sydney (historians), 82, 114—15, 156—61 Webster, Rev. Alex (socialist), 172 Wellwood, Rev. John, 171 West of Scotland Female Power Loom Weavers’ Association, 48 Whatley, Christopher A. (historian), 36, 6 2

Wheatley, John (Labour politician), 174, 234, 237, 242 Whigs, 66, 123 white collar workers and collectivism, 275 and deskilling, 274 and feminisation, 275

neglect of, 23 proletarianisation of, 274—5 and strikes, 290 and trade unionism, 160, 281—2 white fishing, 148—9, 256 Whitelaw, Alexander (industrialist), 139 Wilkie, Alexander (trade unionist), 178, 182 Williams, Alfred (engineer), 150, 155 Williams, Francis (historian), 2 Wilson, Alexander (historian), 25, 73 Wilson, C. J. (tweed manufacturer), 90 Wilson, John (cotton spinner), 119 Women’s Advisory Committee, 231 Wood, Frances (Labour politician), 302 Woodburn, Arthur (Labour politician), 240, 243, 246, 298 Woolfson, Charles (social scientist), 142 woollen industry sexual division of labour, 88 and strikes, 157 and trade unionism, 117 The Worker, 217 Workers’ Birth Control Group, 200 working class composition of, 18 and consumerism, 2, 13, 265—6 divisions within, 18, 83, 271 and expenditure, 82 a n d ‘false consciousness’, 14—15

and free market, 8 3 and free masonry, 100 and language, 12 making and re-making of, 11, 17-19 and revisionist history, 82—3, 154 and social control, 271 and social mobility, 82 and socialism, 14 and Tories, 3, 13 transformation of, 13 values of, 83 workplace organisation, 71 Yates, M. L. (economist), 207 Yeo, Eileen (historian), 6 8 Yorkshire, 60 Young, Edward (diplomat), 91 Young, J. D. (historian), 22 Young Scots, 177 Youngson Brown, A. J. (historian), 116 Zeitlin, Johnathan (social scientist), 3

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