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| kalashnikov |
Battle of George Square, Glasgow 1919The battle of George Square, Glasgow (Bloody Friday) 1919On Friday 31 January 1919 upwards of 60,000 demonstrators gathered in George Square in support of the 40-hours strike and to hear the Lord Provost's reply to the workers' request for a 40-hour week. Whilst the deputation was in the building the police mounted a vicious and unprovoked attack on the demonstrators, felling unarmed men and women with their batons. The demonstrators, with the ex-servicemen to the fore, quickly retaliated with fists, iron railings and broken bottles, and forced the police into a retreat. 
On hearing the noise from the square the strike leaders, who were meeting with the Lord Provost, rushed outside to restore order. One of the leaders, David Kirkwood, was felled to the ground by a police baton, and along with William Gallacher was arrested by the police. 
After the initial confrontation between the demonstrators and the police in George Square, further fighting continued in and around the city centre streets for many hours afterwards. The Townhead area of the city and Glasgow Green, where many of the demonstrators had regrouped after the initial police charge, were the scenes of running battles between police and demonstrators. 
In the immediate aftermath of 'Bloody Friday', as it became known, other leaders of the Clyde Workers' Committee were also arrested, including Emanuel Shinwell, Harry Hopkins and George Edbury. 
Government concerns about industrial militancy and revolutionary political activity in Glasgow reached new heights after the events of 31 January 1919. Fears within government of a workers' revolution in Glasgow led to the deployment of troops and tanks in the city. An estimated 10000 English troops in total were sent to Glasgow in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of George Square. This was in spite of a full battalion of Scottish soldiers being stationed at Maryhill barracks in Glasgow at the time. No Scottish troops were deployed, with the government fearing that fellow Scots, soldiers or otherwise, would go over to the workers side if a revolutionary situation developed in Glasgow. 
On 10 February 1919 the 40-hours strike was called off by the Joint Strike Committee. Whilst not achieving their stated aim of a 40-hour working week, the striking workers from the engineering and shipbuilding industries did return to work having at least negotiated an agreement that guaranteed them a 47-hour working week; 10 hours less than they were working prior to the strike. |
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| thetimeisnow |
Great stuff! Really interesting! | ||||||
| azzuri |
Extremely interesting kalashnikov and a side to Scottish/British history we don't often hear.
Some very good pics too. |
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| Morph |
did a little bit of Red Clydeside at uni kalashnikov, and it was a great and very interesting topic. Could you give us a link to where theres pics were found please so I can find out more? | ||||||
| azzuri |
see - http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/redclyde/
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| Morph |
Good site Azzuri, one of the things that struck me was the use of religion to push some socialist points. Maybe Rinty or someone could help me here bu wasnt socialism at odds with religion? | ||||||
| BonnieBlueFlag |
Wow, very interesting, any further links/referances would be very much appreciated! | ||||||
| mairead |
Kalashnikov,
A brilliant post there mate. Congratulations. We could do with more like this. |
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| John MacLean |
The fact that Red Clydeside, John MacLean etc is not part of the Scottish history curriculum at schol is a shocking omission. Just why is the industrial revolution (essentially the rise of capitalism) covered but nothing is taught about Scotland's genuine working class heroes? | ||||||
| SLG |
Perhaps because Scotland is a capitalist country and our teachers are discouraged to act in a way that might promote an alternative ideology. | ||||||
| agentmancuso |
Socialism in the UK spread almost entirely in poor Non-Conformist areas in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. South Wales being the classic example. In any case, despite it's overt hostility to religion, Marxism replicates the mythic structure and soteriology of messianic/revivalist Christianity in exact detail. The most obvious illustration of this is the ludicrous way Marxist/Socialist groups splinter into ever smaller and ever more fundamentalist factions, along lines of theoretical/theological argument as obscure as they are irrelevant to the rest of the planet. The intensity, conviction and stridence of the True Believer is equally striking in both fundamentalist Christian and Marxist cults. Marxism is basically a materialist Christian heresy, filling the void left by the collapse of traditional religious patterns of belonging and belief. |
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| agentmancuso |
Perhaps because MacLean's affect on Scottish history was utterly minute. Perhaps because there is no such thing as 'a genuine working class hero'. There is no such thing as 'a working class' for that matter. |
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| Babygael |
Ahm watchin' yew agentmancuso!! | ||||||
| John MacLean |
I wouldn’t expect the history curriculum in Scotland to focus exclusively on John MacLean, or any other individual either for that matter, that would be nonsense. I used his name purely as an example. Unless it has changed dramatically since I left school (what I have read on the subject would suggest that it hasn’t – am happy to be corrected though) the history taught in our schools is an unbalanced if not to say biased one. While it focuses on the industrialisation of Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries it barely touches on the working class and their contribution to our nation’s history. The Labour movement that spawned what would come to be known as ‘Red Clydeside’ and produced MPs like John Maxton is largely if not totally ignored. There was no revolution in Scotland in 1919 to mirror what happened in Russia two years previously. To be honest I don’t think Scotland was as close to revolution as sometimes people like to think. That said it is still a subject that merits greater study if only to provide a more rounded history of our country. |
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| agentmancuso |
Fair enough. In what sense is history taught in our schools 'biased' though? |
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| agentmancuso |
I'm flattered, truely. |
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| Avatar |
Aww young love 
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| jimtrot |
Because history is written by the ruling class. |
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| Blackleaf |
A similar thing happened in England a hundred years earlier, an event known as the Peterloo Massacre.
On 16th August 1819, soldiers on horseback charged into a crowd of 80,000 people in St Peter's Field in Manchester who had gathered at a meeting to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, whch Britain and her allies thankfully won, had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. Shortly after the meeting began (which was led by the well-nown orator Henry Hunt), local magistrates called on the military to arrest Hunt and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured, among them many women and even children. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier. Source: wikipedia.org 
Peterloo Massacre, Manchester, 1819 |
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| Holebender |
Well... if you want to go back to the early 19th Century, try reading about the Radicals Revolt in Scotland, or the United Scotsmen and the United Irishmen.
We're a revolting lot! |
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| Celyn |
And even look at England in 1381, with the Pedants' Revolt, led, of course, by Which Tyler. 
A wee bit more seriously, though, I am wondering why Blackleaf waited a year and a bit to post her/his reply. Really, this came up on the "new post since you last visited" thing, and I was slightly surprised to see that it was a bit of a zombie thread. wrt to a quick read over the older posts, it certainly is true that little, if any, attention was paid to Scottish history when I was at school. Oh well, we all make history. 
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| Holebender |
There's no need to panda to Blackleaf! 
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| Celyn |
Indeed not!  The Blackleaf of the Tory/New Labour faith (because right now that is what it is, just blind faith) doesnae deserve a panda, but deserves only a wee moggy cat pleading " I Canz HaZ SleazeBurger", but I doubt they would even get a cat (meretricious evil wee craturs that they are, oh yes ) to stand for them now, try as they might to get 5000 spin-doctors of the Liars of the Union.
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