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Clydeside: When the Workshop of the World Shut Up Shop |
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election manifesto for 3 labour candidates
Emanuel Shinwell, Mary Barbour and Tom Kerr |
The whole political landscape had changed dramatically since the pre-war days of Liberal-dominated Scotland. In 1906, Scotland elected only 2 Labour MPs, against 56 Liberal and 12 Conservative/Unionist MPs. By 1922, there were 30 Labour MPs, against only 16 Liberals, with 15 seats going to the Conservatives and 12 going to the Liberal Unionists. In Glasgow alone, Labour held 10 of the city’s 15 seats.
This trend was no doubt assisted by The Representation of the People Act of 1918, which more than doubled the Scottish electorate and hugely increased the influence of the working classes on British politics in general. The Labour vote was also bolstered by the support of the Catholic Irish, of whom there were many in Glasgow, when they transferred their voting sympathies from Liberal to Labour as the issues surrounding Irish Home Rule became less relevant during the 1920s with the realisation of the Irish Free State.
The Liberals were the real losers of the political polarisation that followed the War. Just as the working class realised a new class-consciousness in way never experienced before, the Scottish middle classes, with the real fear of an imminent Bolshevist rising, swung their support towards the Conservatives and the Unionists.
This political bias would last the whole of the 20th century, and there was very little middle ground for the Liberals to inhabit. In the early 1920’s, the Liberals lost not only the support of the Free Church to the Tories, but also the support of the Daily Record, which until 1924 had been the party’s main supporter in the Scottish press.
In Glasgow, groups such as the Middle Class Union and the People’s League were formed in response to the Bolshevist threat, and these groups, along with students from Glasgow University, volunteered as blackleg labour to break strikes and keep essential transport services running- the blacklegs were crucial in keeping the trains running during the General Strike of 1926.
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