Early working class struggles in Glasgow – 850 year anniversary

Brian Smith Glasgow Socialist Party Scotland

There are many events and media articles this year commemorating the 850th anniversary of the founding of Glasgow as a town in 1175. Many of these have rightly focused on the working class history of Glasgow including several in this year’s May Day programme run by the Trades Union Council.

It is especially important that young people and the wider working class learn, investigate and discuss working class history. This short article highlights some key events and themes for further exploration.

By the 1750s, the British State had largely consolidated it’s rule in Scotland after years of religious, monarchical, feudal and national conflicts. The foundations of capitalism developed though mercantile profits, commodity trading and new sciences. Slavery played a central role in wealth creation with Glasgow’s most powerful merchants key beneficiaries from the horrific treatment of people from Africa. A triangle of “trade” saw slaves, raw materials and commodities move between West Africa, the Americas and Britian. The city’s tobacco lords had streets named after them and built huge city centre mansions including that which now houses the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Some of this wealth was also used to fund new industrial technologies and practices which saw the growth of artisan workers and then factories in the city to support the expansion of commodity production. The proletariat grew rapidly as the industrial revolution gathered pace, along with urbanisation as workers sought employment in the city. Modern capitalism was on its way.

Industrial conflicts

The first major industrial dispute in Scotland took place in Glasgow in 1787. Weaving was the main job in the city, often done in the worker’s home on hand looms. The textile companies moved to cut the payments made to the weavers by 25% in an effort to maintain their profits in the mist of international trade disruption and competition. Many weavers worked in the Calton area and on 30 June around 7,000 weavers held a mass meeting on Glasgow Green and began a strike that would last three months. On 3 September, the army were used to break-up a demonstration near Glasgow Cathedral. Six strikers were shot dead. The army commander was given the freedom of the city by Glasgow’s ruling politicians. The courts were then used, with one leader convicted for forming “illegal combinations” and sentenced to a public whipping and banishment from Scotland for seven years. The bravery of the Calton Weavers against a brutal state should be more wildly known.

The 19thC saw a massive increase in Glasgow’s population as workers from far and wide were pulled into the textile and locomotive industries, chemical and metal production and shipbuilding. Glasgow became one of the key industrial cities in Britian alongside Manchester and Sheffield.  Half of the industrial workforce were women and young people.  Glasgow’s population grew ten-fold in the 19thC, from 80,000 to 800,000. This expansion comprised those workers who had been in the city in the late 18thC plus migration from the Scottish Highlands, Eastern Europe and of course Ireland. In 1851, one in five people in Glasgow had been born in Ireland – an incredible level of immigration. There will be few Glaswegians today who don’t have Irish ancestors and many who also have generational connections to Poland, the Baltic states and the Scottish Highlands.

From the 1830s, Glasgow’s middle class began to concentrate themselves in West End of the city.  The East End was dominated by the working class along with areas south of the Clyde like Kinning Park, Govan and the Gorbals.

By 1880, life expectancy for a man was still only 47; a woman was 50. Child death rates were one in seven. Life expectancy actually fell between 1820 and 1880 due to the hazards of industrial work and poor housing. Poverty, overcrowding and poor sanitation were rife.  Women of all classes suffered domestic violence with little or no legal protection. Religious sectarianism was common in many Glasgow communities and workplaces. Territorial, violent gangs grew. The horrors of 19thC capitalism would have been obvious to those who cared to look.

Emergence of the trade union movement

But workers struggles to improve their lives also increased with the move from small, craft trade unions in the 1850s to mass trade unionism in the late 19thC. Local press reports suggest around 1,000 industrial disputes took place in Glasgow during the 19thC. The 1890s saw the highest rate at over 100 per year.  

In 1890, around 10,000 rail workers in Glasgow and surrounding areas employed by Caledonian Railways and North British Rail took strike action over working hours and pay. After six weeks on strike, the workers won the dispute. It was one of the biggest strikes of the 19thC.

Glasgow workers also played a part in Scottish and British struggles for political rights in the 19thC.

In 1820, the Scottish Radical War saw 60,000 workers in the West of Scotland go on strike for five days as part of a campaign for political and voting rights. This was in part inspired and a reaction to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester the year before. There was however also an anti-British tone to what was a working class campaign including a famous banner saying “Scotland Free or a Desert”. There were armed exchanges including at Bonnybridge and around what is now Cumbernauld. In Glasgow, on the High Street, there was a proclamation for a provisional government. There had previously been huge Radical meetings in places like Royston. Once again, the state was brutal and the leaders were beheaded. There is a monument to these heroic campaigners in Sighthill Cemetery, Springburn Road.

In 1838, during the growing Chartists movement, which fought for UK parliamentary reform and an extension of voting rights, there was a massive demonstration on the Glasgow Green. Up to 150,000 were in attendance. One of the leading speakers said “the House of Commons does not represent us; it represents those who live by profits and usury”.  The Caledonia Mercury newspaper patronisingly continued “the meeting was all the more impressive having been organised by working men without help from Glasgow’s middle class reformers”.   During the 19thC, voting rights went from 15% to 60% of men. It is not until after the First World War and the growth of independent working class political representation that all men and women win the right to vote in 1928.

Workers organise politically

In 1888, the Scottish Labour Party was formed by socialists who had been excluded from standing a Liberal Party candidates. In the 1892 general election they stood in two Glasgow constituencies and won 12% of the vote in both. This party dissolved itself into the Independent Labour Party in 1893. The ILP went on to play a central role in the establishment of the Labour Party in 1906. It is time to draw on the lessons of history and once again build a new workers party that truly represents the interests of the working class.

Please use the above to look further into the working class history of Glasgow and Scotland. And discuss with your family, friends and co-workers.