Table Of ContentREVOLT ON THE CLYDE
REVOLT ON THE
CLYDE
An
Autobiography
William Gallacher, M.P.
ORIENTAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
BENARES
Fi^st Pubtished in England, 193?
First Indian tepnnt, £945
Price R*. 3/8
-
Pointed by Fara Printing M/'orks* Benares and published by
the Socialist Literature Pubhshing Company Agra
,
CLYDE
CONTENTS
PAGE
11
Introduction - - 7
chapter
I Early Days - - 13
John McLean and some Others 26
III The February Strike - 37
IV “We Are Not Paying Increased
Rent” - - 52
V The “Jingoes* try their Hands - 65
VI The Clyde in Wartime - 73
VII Conscription and Prison - 103
VIll Workers' and Soldiers'
Councils - - 131
IX Last Days of John McLean - 172
X The Battle of George Square 187
XI I Meet Lenin - - 212
XII After The General Strike 230
-
Appendix - 245
INTRODUCTION
R
evolt on the Clyde is a story of the Clyde
workers and of how they carried on the struggle
against employers, landlords, and warmakers from
August, 1914, till the great ‘‘40 hours55 strike •in
January, 1920. Now, after twenty years, we are
facing all the horrors and privations of a new
—
imperialist war a war more terrible than anything
ever known before. In such a situation there are
many lessons to be learned from the past, and it is
with the hope that Revolt on the Clyde may contribute
towards this end that this new Edition is being
published.
The present war could have been avoided.
supporting the forces of peace and progress throughout
the world Britain could have made war impossible •
but because of their class interests the British ruling
class was not prepared to work for peace. To have
sought the support of the millions of working people
through Europe who have a loathing for war would
have led to friendship with the U.S.S.R., the strength-
ening of the international working class movement
and, thus, towards the overthrow of capitalism.
Since the Russian workers in 1917 seized and
maintained powTer, the British ruling class has pursued
a consistent policy of provocation against the first
socialist state. Intervention, blockade, the Curzon
Ultimatum, the Arcos Raid, the breaking off of trade
relations, all these, and other incidents during the
last twenty-three 3ears, have demonstrated the
undying hatred of the monopoly capitalists for an
e mancipated working class.
It was this fear of losing power to the workers
which made war inevitable. In Hitler’s advent to
power the rulers of this country imagined they saw’
s INTRODUCTION
-heir saviour horn “Bolshevism.” “Strengthen him,
support him,”—they said, “and let him attack the
Soviet Union the Soviet Union whose growing
prosperity is an increasing incitement to the workers
of all lands to overthrow the capitalists system ” But
the Soviet Union was too powerful for Hitier to try
conclusions. The British ruling class in its hatred and
fear of socialism sabotaged the opportunity of a
Russian pact, and now our people have to pay in
blocd and tears.
Night after night bombs are crashing down on
London and other towns and cities throughout the
country, yet no adequate shelter has been provided.
Money for Hitler to make the bombs was forthcoming
before the war, but there was no money to protect
the people from the bombs Such is the policy of
our ruling class, who now would have us believe that
they are engaged in a great crusade for freedom and
democracy. But not for India and the Colonial
peoples. The\r must still remain in fetters to the
Imperialists. And not for Spain, so shamefully
betrayed in its epic struggle, when German and
Italian bombers were raining death and destruction
on the people of Spain. “The defence of Madrid is the
defence of London55 declared the Communist Party.
How true that was is now obvious to all.
Nor does the sole responsibility rest with the
Tory party. The Labour leaders kept the National
Government in existence. Mr. Greenwood, Deputy
leader of the Labour Parlv, boasted that the Govern-
ment “couldn’t last a day without the support of the
Lobour Party.” They pursue the same policy in
1940 as in 1914, a policy of collaboration in the
militaristic adventures of the ruling class and the
destruction of trade union rights and personal liberty.
At Basle in 1912 the International Socialist Congress
affirmed its determination to give no support for
imperialist war, and to utilize the crisis caused by
INTRODUCTION
such a war for the destruction of capitalism. At tne
Hastings Conference of the Labour Party (1933) the
Labour Leaders welcomed a resolution “to take no
part in war and to resist it with the whole force of
the Labour movement including a General
. . .
Strike/5 In 1914, just as at the present day, the
workers were not onW deserted, but actively repressed
by their own leaders.
Yet there never was a time when there was greater
need of a strong independent working class move-
ment. From the earliest days of the war the ruling
class sought to deprive the workers of all their hard-
won rights and liberties. Ministers are given powers
to destroy the free press, to stop public meetings, tc
make conversations in the workshop a crime, to enter
and search homes or arrest the occupants without
s.
charge of any kind. Among the many that have
taken place there is the case of John Mason, the
Mexborough Trade Unionist, who has been for several
months in an internment camp with no charge of
any kind preferred against him.
But despite the regulations and the servility of
the Labour Leaders, the movement in the country
expresses itself in many forms. Most important of
all is the powerful shop-stewards’ movement that is
once more coming to the fore. True, the conditions
confronting the workers in this war are different in
many respects from the last war, but, nevertheless,
shop-stewards will now, as on the Clyde, constitute
a most powerful factor in determining the course of
working class history.
Attempts have already been made to hinder the
work of the shop-stewards by compulsory transfer,
but the decision of the workers in certain factories
to take a “prolonged holiday” has for the time being
checked this form of attack. At the same time, the
Purchase Tax and the Means Test, operating as they
do against the parents of the soldiers and against the
