Jimmy Reid and the UCS work-in
Not a yard will close – Not a man down the road
Glasgow in 1971 was an exciting place to be. Thousands of workers had occupied several shipyards on the Clyde to force the Tory Government of Edward Heath to change their decision to close the shipyards. At the forefront of that struggle were several shop stewards leaders and the most prominent of those was Jimmy Reid who died on 20th August 2010 aged 78.
Ronnie Stevenson – Glasgow
His fellow leaders were Jimmy Airlie, a fellow member of the Communist Party, Sammy Barr and Sammy Gilmore. Jimmy’s politics were determined by the poverty of his upbringing in the Gorbals and Govan, where the slums were poverty and disease ridden. His anger at the loss of millions of lives in such slums worldwide when there was [in the midst of plenty] plenty stayed with him till his death and he still seethed with anger at the fact many areas of Glasgow were amongst the poorest places in Europe.
His oratorical skills have left famous fragments in the minds of many workers. As the UCS occupation Jimmy famously stated to workers of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the watching world that “there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying”. He reminded them the whole world was watching and the whole world was watching and learning. Occupations to save jobs became a popular way of fighting against the bosses cuts.
In later speeches he could use a phrase which would stick. When elected Rector of Glasgow University in his acceptance speech he used the phrase ‘A rat race is for rats. We are not rats. We are human beings.’ The speech eloquently made the point of a morality superior to the selfish morality of capitalism but while it without doubt made its mark in the annals of great speeches emphasising the humanitarianism of the working class it unfortunately did not spell out democratic socialism as the alternative.
There is no doubt that the leading of the UCS struggle was the highlight of his life. It is unfortunate that the saving of the yards did not last for many years after 1971 and now all that is left of shipbuilding on the Clyde is the building of warships in the two yards of Govan and Yoker.
He was involved in the apprentices strike of 1960. In recent years he was a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq and warned that no good would come of military involvement in Afghanistan.
Although he became and remained to the end of his life a virulent critic of capitalism and what it did to working class people, his life in organised politics followed a revolutionary to reformist and nationalist route. In the late 50’s he had joined the League of Labour Youth and gravitated quickly towards the Communist party, at the time a major force in industrial Scotland.
Already a Communist councillor in Clydebank, he contested West Dunbartonshire, which included the town, in February 1974, and was widely expected, at least outside the area, to become the Communist Party’s first MP since Willie Gallagher. In fact, while polling creditably, he was soundly beaten and responded with a vehement speech in which he denounced some of his Labour opponents as Falangists. He left the CP in 1976 sadly not over the crimes of Stalin’s murderous regime and the CP’s support for it but over what it seems was its lack of flexibility.
He joined the Labour Party expressing terrible illusions about Kinnock, the Labour leader. He stood for Labour in Dundee East in 1979 but was beaten by Gordon Wilson, the then leader of the SNP. He was lauded as not being a slavish exponent of left wing politics. However, his bitter criticism of the conduct of the miners’ strike of 1984-85 and the leadership of Arthur Scargill was regarded by many of his old comrades as a terrible kick in the teeth to the thousand of brave miners who fought for their jobs and communities. Mick McGahey branded him “Broken Reid”. Nevertheless he fell out with Blairite New Labour and left in 1997 finally joining the Scottish National Party in 2005.
The famous Upper Clyde Shipyard occupation was a testimony to the determination of the working class to defend their livelihoods. Jimmy Reid’s role within it cannot be underestimated. It also had a major impact at the time on the consciousness of the Scottish and British working class. It bolstered the left inside the Labour party. Tony Benn, who was beginning to break from the right wing Labour establishment cited the UCS struggle as a defining moment in his political evolution to the left.
Jimmy Reid played his role in working class politics during the decline of capitalism in Scotland and in the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Europe. He was affected by those processes and despite his understanding of capitalism and its horrific effect on ordinary people throughout the world he moved away from arguing and organising for a socialist alternative. His political understanding and ability to encapsulate ideas in memorable phrases or speeches should have been welded to the fight for an alternative voice for the working class based on the idea of the democratic socialist transformation of society. That would have been a better epitaph for the working class fighter who had led the demonstration thought the streets of Glasgow stopping the city centre traffic in its tracks opposing capitalism and in support of the skills of the shipyard workers and the right to work.
When mass struggle won victories
The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders movement of 1971 was one of the most momentous in modern Scottish labour movement history. UCS was created by the amalgamation of five shipbuilders, who were brought under semi-public ownership under the Labour government of Harold Wilson in the 1960’s. But with the election of the Ted Heath led Tory government in 1970 the de-nationalisation of UCS was on the cards. The withdrawal of government support would have led to the decimation of the industry and the jobs of the 13,000 workers who relied on the yards. The government’s proposal was to slash the workforce to 2,500.
The UCS “work-in” – effectively the taking over of the yards by the workers, who continued to produce ships – began on July 29th 1971. All the men and materials entering or leaving the yards were under the control of the shop stewards – who were led by Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie, who were leading members of the Communist Party at the time. It was a marvellous example of the power of the working class – with the government and the state powerless to respond.
There was a huge mobilisation of support among the working class of the west of Scotland, across Scotland as a whole as well as England and internationally. Donations to the work in came from shipyard workers in the Soviet Union and even from John Lennon.
The scale of the movement was shown by the huge demonstration that marched from George Square to Glasgow Green on Wednesday August 18th. Such was the pressure from the working class that the STUC were forced to convene the first Special Congress in its history.
The demo on18th August was the biggest working class demonstration in Scottish history – 80,000 strong. With it being a Wednesday workers stopped work and an estimated 200,000 took part in what was effectively a partial general strike.
The USC struggle captured the imagination of millions – at a time when the post war boom was ending and the spectre of mass unemployment raised its ugly head. The work-in continued for 16 months until October 1972. In the end the Tory government was forced into a U-turn and had to come up with £35 million in public money to maintain 5,000 jobs at UCS, in conjunction with a US company. The UCS struggle still has echoes today. In 2010 it’s that type of mass struggle that’s needed to defend jobs and public services against another vicious anti-working class government.
