Labour in Glasgow, 1896-1936 (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

Labour and its Electorate

The continuing debate over the rise of the Labour Party and the concomitant demise of the Liberals shows little sign of abating. Each generation returns to the issue with new questions and fresh insights provoked by contemporary political developments. With the success of a militant right-wing Conservatism in the 1980s, Labour’s so-called ‘forward march’ appeared as a problematic, contingent phenomenon.1 Yet the whole notion of an uninterrupted progression hardly reflects the reality of an electoral journey that has been more of a circuitous route than it has been a straight line. It is only from the vantage point of 1945 that Labour’s progress appears certain or pre-ordained.2 Prior to this, of course, there had been the great debacle of 1931 and, after the high point of Attlee’s Government, successive electoral defeats in the 1950s encouraged fears of permanent opposition.3 As the current political situation changes – the success of ‘New Labour’ in England at the last general election, the creation of a Scottish Parliament elected under proportional representation – so new questions are posed about past events. For instance, was the Progressive Alliance between Liberals and Labour bound to dissolve? Can it be put together again?4

While there are a number of recent studies at both local and national levels which offer analyses and explanations of Labour’s rise there is, as yet, no widely accepted consensus. Was Labour already threatening the Liberals before 1914, or was Labour’s breakthrough after and due to the War? And, if so, was this the result of a radicalisation of, and increasing unity within, the working class, or was it due to a more moderate perception by trade unionists that war-time collectivism showed the State and state intervention in a more beneficial light? Did the massive rise in the electorate as a result of the 1918 Representation of the People Act explain Labour’s increased electoral support?5 On all of these questions there is no broad agreement and one recent overview offers the almost apologetic conclusion that, ‘the rise of the Labour party was still an event of considerable historical importance.’6

The emphasis in this study is upon Labour as a political entity and upon the changing electoral fortunes of Labour – at the parliamentary and especially the municipal level – in Glasgow over a forty year period. The start and end dates represent Labour’s first, tentative efforts at achieving representation in the mid 1890s, and its eventual capture of the Municipal Corporation in the 1930s. However, this was by no means a constant and steady progression but, rather, was halting and partial. Over this forty year period it went from apparent strength to almost complete annihilation and for many years appeared stuck at a level of local representation which, though significant, was well short of a majority. It is well known that Glasgow went ‘red’ in 1922 when Labour won ten of the City’s fifteen parliamentary seats. What is not so generally recognised was that the City Corporation remained resolutely ‘blue’ until 1953 when Labour only won a majority under very peculiar circumstances; the dramatic intervention of a militant Protestant party and the split within Labour’s Own ranks as the newly-disaffiliated Independent Labour Party (ILP) – the heart and soul of Labour in Glasgow – decided to stand its own candidates. Such were the conditions of Labour’s ultimate triumph. However, if securing a Labour majority in the Corporation’s palatial headquarters in George Square had been an elusive goal for Labour, once achieved it has proven to be more or less permanent.7

A study of Glasgow needs no justification. It was one of the major urban centres of the United Kingdom – the proudly proclaimed second city of the Empire – and the largest centre of population in Scotland by some way. In 1911 the population of the City of Glasgow, some 784,496 individuals, represented 16.5% of the total population of Scotland. The continuing physical expansion of the City saw the population rise to over one million after World War One and by 1931 Glasgow accounted for over one fifth of the Scottish population.8 The post-war expansion of the City’s constituencies to fifteen represented a similar proportion of Scotland’s total parliamentary seats.

Moreover, Glasgow was the ‘capital’ of industrial Scotland, where business and labour organisations tended to have their headquarters. Glasgow may have been the home of the skilled worker but, as a major urban centre, it had a complex social structure with all classes – from the very poorest to the super rich – living within its boundaries. As such it was the sort of place crucial to Labour’s long term prospects and an accurate barometer of its ambition and success. Gains made in single class constituencies like the mining seats and small towns may have provided the bedrock of Labour’s representation before 1914 but succeeding in a city with its mixed occupational and social structure was more problematic and much more significant.9

Furthermore, Glasgow has been the subject of the most intense debate within modern Scottish political historiography, the continuing ‘Red Clydeside’ controversy. The major monograph remains Iain McLean’s, The Legend of Red Clydeside, which argues that Glasgow’s radical war-time militancy was less of a reality and more the mythical construct of participants like Willie Gallacher who, as Communists, sought to bolster their own revolutionary reputations by exaggerating the significance of the industrial unrest of 1914–19.10 In addition, McLean asserts that the rise of Labour, as evidenced by its vote in Glasgow, occurred after the war and for reasons not directly related to the war – namely the politicisation of housing and rents under specific circumstances in 1922 and the shift in allegiance of Irish-Catholic voters from Liberal to Labour once the issue of Ireland appeared to have been resolved by the Treaty of 1921.

McLean’s thesis has proven remarkably influential and resilient Christopher Harvie’s history of Scotland in the twentieth century, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes, with its curt dismissal of Clydeside’s radical reputation, is clearly indebted to McLean.11 English historians of Labour, where they do pay attention to events in Scotland, also tend to rely on the same source.12 Political scientists and sociologists of modern Scotland also focus upon The Legend, even where they are in partial disagreement with it.13 Yet McLean’s revisionism has come in for sustained criticism by other historians who insist that the war-time unrest was both more prolonged and more significant than McLean allows and was also directly responsible for the post-war shift in political loyalties towards Labour.14

It is within that perspective that this study is located. However, the focus does not lie narrowly upon the war years of Red Clydeside and it is intended that, by taking a significantly longer time-span, the nature and complexity of Labour’s progress can be illustrated in sharper relief. At the same time and contrary to the arguments of McLean and McKibbin, the war can still be seen as a watershed in Labour’s political and electoral development.15 By 1914 it will be shown that, although Labour had secured itself a place in Glasgow’s political landscape, it remained very much a minor player with little prospect of becoming a majority party in either parliamentary or municipal affairs.16 Only after the War did Labour’s ambitions genuinely rise above this minority status.

Labour’s position before and after the war is also linked to the question of the suffrage. Against the now widely held view that there was no class bias in the suffrage, the study of the pre-war Glasgow electorate undertaken here indicates that the franchise system did clearly discriminate against the working class, as was intended.17 However, while supporting Matthew, McKibbin and Kay’s argument that it was the working class who suffered under the franchise restrictions, we do not accept that the passing of the 1918 Reform Act can be disentangled from the War itself.18 It may be that by 1914 a further reform of the franchise was likely but it was only as a consequence of the War that it became inevitable. Furthermore, while agreeing that the extension of the franchise was crucial to Labour’s post-war expansion, it is important not to interpret this in a mechanistic fashion, that the ‘new’ voters were simply waiting to fall into Labour’s lap, or that these electors on their own were able to completely transform the balance of political forces.19

While the basis of Labour’s appeal to voters after 1918 has been examined and debated, it is equally necessary and illuminating to examine Labour’s attitude towards the pre-war electorate. By looking at both parliamentary and local elections prior to 1914 it can be shown that Labour was ambivalent, indeed often hostile, to women and the poorer working class, the very groups most affected by the 1918 reform.20 While Labour was formally in favour of votes for all adult men and women, this did not translate into an active commitment. It is generally recognised that Labour shared a great deal of its ‘commonsense’ view of the world with Liberalism, and in many respects this shared value system was progressive and democratic.21 However, it was only partially democratic. It was based upon a view of the franchise as a qualification for citizenship rather than as a natural right. Both Liberals and...