We must free ourselves from the rosy myth of Red Clydeside

The socialism of Glasgow did real harm to the West of Scotland, argues Iain McLean The legend of Red Clydeside is hanging on grimly in modern Scottish life, even - or perhaps especially - in our brave new moment of Scottish democracy.

Take Tommy Sheridan, MSP and Scottish Socialist party leader, who often hails John MacLean, the most colourful figure in Red Clydeside during the first world war, as his predecessor.

In the Glasgow Evening Times, on the 75th anniversary of MacLean's death, Sheridan painted a vivid picture of the city in the autumn of 1915: "Working class women organise their communities to defy private landlords and confront sheriff officers. Thousands down tools and march with the women A general strike is threatened unless the government changes the law. A schoolteacher [MacLean] is whisked from his classroom and carried shoulder-high by the protesters in order to make demands directly to the prime minister on their behalf. The law is changed. In Edinburgh High Court, [MacLean] charged with treason and incitement to revolution, is sentenced to five years hard labour."

It is all true, with a little dramatic licence. The Glasgow strikes of 1915-16 challenged the state. The rent strike of 1915 interfered with wartime arms production so Lloyd George introduced rent control to keep the factories at work. The strikes of 1915-6 directly threatened production. But when Lloyd George came to Glasgow on Christmas Day of 1915, he failed to charm the Clyde shop stewards and suppressed Tom Johnston's socialist magazine Forward for reporting what really happened.

In March 1916, shop stewards were exiled to Edinburgh to stop them causing trouble. In 1919 there was a massive strike in and around Glasgow to try to enforce a 40-hour week. MacLean thought revolution was just round the corner. So did the acting prime minister, Bonar Law. The government sent six tanks to Glasgow to prevent a Bolshevik rising. The strike failed, but the Red Flag was raised in George Square on January 31, 1919 - Bloody Friday - before police broke up the demonstration.

In the 1922 election, Labour won 10 of the 15 seats in Glasgow. The Red Clydesiders departed by night train from St Enoch, the singing of Psalm 124 in their ears, to continue the revolution in parliament. They caused Labour as much grief as Sheridan and Dennis Canavan do now.

But hang on a minute. Psalm 124? "Scotland's psalm of deliverance", as Red Clydesider David Kirkwood called it? Deliverance from what? The Old 124th was the battle hymn of the Covenanters in the 1670s. They wanted deliverance from the English, from a broad church, and from Roman Catholicism. The leading Clydesiders were true heirs of the Covenanters: teetotal, nationalist and presbyterian. They could not unite the Glasgow working class; neither could the struggle against wartime "dilution". This meant dividing up work in munitions factories so skilled tradesmen were restricted to doing what only they could do and unskilled men and women came in to do the rest. The toolmakers of Lang's in Johnstone struck in 1915, resolving that "no woman shall be put to work a lathe, and if this was done the men would know how to protect their rights". This had a Covenanting tone all right.

MacLean and the other socialists who cheered on the anti-dilution campaign headed a truly motley army. Johnston, owner of Forward, scourge of Highland lairds and secretary of state during the second world war, analysed his readership: "Neither the bartender's pest nor the Sauchiehall Street dude ever spend a penny on the Forward In the slum areas few socialist periodicals are purchased but many copies of Red Welcome, the Daily Record and John Bull. And the reason is obvious. A man requires to reach a certain level of culture before he can understand socialism."

In my book The Legend Of Red Clydeside, I argue that the stories Sheridan recalls are seriously misleading. MacLean was a tragic hero, but had no serious political influence. In reality, there were two Red Clydesides - a sectional and divisive one during the first world war, and a more open, inclusive one after 1919. The failure of the first was a precondition for the limited success of the second, which rebuilt bridges with the Glasgow Irish. It reached out from the teetotal Johnston, who ensured there were no pubs in Kirkintilloch, to the Sauchiehall Street bartender; from the tradesman to the unskilled worker; from men to women.

The only achievements of Red Clydeside were in housing. The Rent Act 1915, rushed through by Lloyd George, was unrepealable. No government of any party found it politically possible to remove rent control until the Housing Acts of 1980 and 1988. And Clydesider John Wheatley legislated for the best and most spacious council houses as minister of health in the first Labour government in 1924.

But these well-intentioned policies had evil outcomes in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. Rent control caused housing stock to deteriorate because nobody was paying for its upkeep. The Wheatley Act's inter-war estates used up all the building land in the inner suburbs of Glasgow until the 1950s when, with central areas becoming dreadful slums, the only places to put the people were Easterhouse and Drumchapel. I doubt whether Sheridan agrees with me. He inherits a colourful tradition, but it is not quite as colourful as he paints it.

My book has been highly controversial since it first came out and I have been called all sorts of names - including English. But now Scotland runs her own affairs again, she must confront the real legacy of Red Clydeside. Myth is romantic, but a clear head is even better for policy-making.

Iain McLean is a professor of politics at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He was born and brought up in Edinburgh. The second, revised edition of The Legend of Red Clydeside is published this month by John Donald, price #16.99

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