#red clydeside

[oh-glasgow]

[feebleplay]

Writing about ‘historical accuracy’ in battlefield 1, assassin’s creed et al. And I had a great thought:

Battlefield 1 dlc were you play as Mrs Barbour and instigate the rent strikes. It would be great as either a (mostly) peaceful protests that is ‘more accurate’ in the middle of a war game. But if they have to give Mrs Barbour’s army a bunch of guns to fit with the game’s tone? I’d be 100% okay shooting the rich landlords. 

Ball’s in your court dice. 

[hyperions-fate]

I have been enlisted in the socialist army for 15 years, the only army worth fighting for. God damn all other armies.

John Maclean, Glaswegian Socialist imprisoned and tortured for his opposition to the First World War. His treatment led to his early death in 1924, at the age of 44.

[hyperions-fate]

The Red Flag being raised at a rally in George Square, Glasgow, on the 31st January 1919.

[kommunizm-blog]

"Red Clydeside" era. George Square, Glasgow. During First World War. lasted from the 1910s until the early 1930s

[visiontracking]

Alistair Hulett sings a tribute he wrote to the mighty Mary Barbour: Mrs Barbour's Army

[revolutionaryeye]

HARRY McSHANE:CLYDESIDE REVOLUTIONARY

Harry McShane

Dear Comrades,

All your readers will remember the famous picture of Lenin, addressing an open-air meeting in Moscow. On the steps of the rostrum stood Trotsky. But, subsequently, when the picture was republished, Trotsky’s figure had been removed.

In my opinion, a similar re-writing of history has occurred to Harry McShane. In almost all the obituries of him, no mention whatsoever was made of a person who, for a quarter of a century, dominated his political life. Joseph Stalin has been completely blotted out.

In their leadership of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, Harry McShane and Wal Hannington became well known – one might say notorious – for the aggressive manner in which they enforced the Stalinist line. During the Third Period, they made it painfully clear that, within the NUWM's ranks, Trotskyists, ILPers and other independently-minded Socialists were unwelcome intruders.

Though abusive terms like ‘Social Fascist’ might be flung at those on the left, with the introduction of the Popular Front a much less critical attitude was adopted towards some die-hard Tories. Not an unkind word was uttered either by Harry McShane or the Communist Party about the Duchess of Atholl, a landowner who maintained semi-feudal conditions on her vast Highland estates. She could increase poverty and unemployment without being criticised. Why? Because she thought the interests of the British ruling class conflicted more with those of expansionist Germany than they did with the Soviet Union. This made her a ‘good’ capitalist whereas Neville Chamberlain was a ‘bad’ capitalist.

Similar pernicious nonsense abounded during the Second World War, Harry McShane was involved in a ludicrous demonstration in Glasgow. News of a change of Communist Party line came through from King Street while the march was taking place. What had started out as an anti-war demonstration ended up by being pro-war!

The German invasion of the Soviet Union transformed the Communist Party’s line. As the Daily Worker’s Scottish correspondent, Harry McShane was necessarily at the sharp end. His duty now was to write articles supporting the Churchill government, calling upon workers to make increased sacrifices and demanding that the authorities break strikes. He thought stern action should be taken against those who opposed the war. As Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson say in their book, Two Steps Back (p.16), “Harry McShane was particularly to the fore in this witch-hunting”.

By 1944, conditions were getting increasingly intolerable for Scottish miners. They had to do hard physical work on meagre food rations. Much of their equipment was antiquated and was always breaking down. The seams of coal wore becoming deeper and more difficult to mine. Men paid by the ton found their wages failing. But this, according to Harry McShane, was not the reason why workers at Cardowan colliery downed tools: he explained in the Daily Worker that the stoppage had been instigated by Anarchists, Trotskyists and – wait for it – the Duke of Bedford!

Such examples, taken almost at random, could easily be multiplied. Beyond doubt, they prove he was one of the hardest, most disciplined Stalinists in Britain. It is important to state this fact. To do so is not to denounce the man. Indeed, it is to do the precise opposite. Those who give Harry McShane’s life a spurious consistency are ironically his detractors. They fail to recognise his gargantuan achievement in 1953, the herculean effort he made, helped by Raya Dunayevskaya. He deserted the camp of counter-revolution and travelled along the revolutionary road for the rest of his life. Most of the traffic tends to be in the opposite direction. For instance, of the five members of the Iskra editorial board, in 1900, only one manned the barricade’s in 1917.

Yet, in a period of reaction, Harry McShane left his secure job as a CP functionary. At the age of 61, he returned to work in the shipyards, labouring until he was 69 years old to obtain entitlement to a full old-age pension. Remarkably, he remained more receptive than most young people to new ideas. Armed with a deep understanding of Hegel and the early Marx, he espoused, with considerable energy, for a further 36 years the cause of Socialist Humanism. Probably in the annals of the British working class movement, no other person has equalled in intensity and duration his degree of commitment.

I loved Harry McShane. It was always a joy to my wife Mabel and myself when he came to stay with us. Not only was he a kind ,and charming person, he was also a great man. Therefore, the truth, the whole truth, about his life should be told. Deliberately, this letter has bent the stick. But, I believe Harry’s portrait needs painting, Stalinist warts and all.

Yours fraternally, Raymond Challinor See also:-http://www.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/pubs/sr-js.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_McShane http://www.variant.org.uk/15texts/TheMarch.html http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/birchall/1997/xx/mcshane.htm

Harry was about 97 yrs when he died.He spent the last year in an Old Folks Home  during which time he persuaded the workers to take industrial action.A life well lived and an inspiration to us all.

[steinbeckian-historian]

"I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot." John Maclean

-his stamp was commissioned to honour the centenary of his birth by the Soviet Union in 1979. 

The quote above was is taken from oral accounts of John MacLean’s trial at the High Court of Edinburgh on the 9th May 1918, he was a Marxist educator and became the first Bolshevik representative for Scotland in  February 1918. One of the great “Red Clydesiders” his legacy amongst others has been appraised numerous times in both significance and impact. Specifically there was a polarisation of debate following the work of liberal revisionist Iain Mclean, the legend of Red Clydeside (1983). McLean’s thesis advocated the likely hood of a socialist revolution in Scotland during the First World War and post-war period had been a myth, and focused on the liberal progressive temper of the Rent Strikes of 1915 and the craft conservatism of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), sweeping socialism to an extent under the historical rug.  My own analysis concludes from various literature and personal accounts that Red Clydesider’s ultimate goal of revolution should not be a severed limb in the history of Britain. The overall contribution in campaigning for the 40 hour week, the improvement of housing, and female workers’ rights shows that their ferocity and willingness to use public protest moulded the Scotland we live in today. Recently its legacy has seen a revival after surviving without a doubt an accurate and meticulous study of fractures amongst the working class of Scotland. For example opinions on morality of the war, women’s rights, the divide between skilled and unskilled engineers are all valid examples of dissention in the ranks. However this should not detract from the success of revolutionary individuals who gained both support and unprecedented level of political organisation. The Independent labour party (ILP) for example was very successful in piecing together individuals’ criticisms of war time capitalism while not drawing out differences to the point of collapse. Their electoral success in 1922 is further testament to dampened momentum they gained when they recieved 10 out of 15 seats for Glasgow.  Subsequently they had shelved their revolutionary perspective for political patronage, choosing to defeat the liberal tradition without the revolutionary agitation of earlier years.