I saw an article recently about the myths surrounding the famed Battle of George Square in January 1919, basically scotching the well-held belief that tanks and troops were deployed to quell ‘rioters’. It reminded me that I wrote about that particular event in my book Glasgow’s Black Heart (now no longer available).
In the first of two-parts, here’s what I wrote, beginning with a little known ‘race riot’ a few days before the more famous January 31 event. My account was gleaned from the newspaper articles of the time and from other accounts. Yes, I may have made errors of fact but not purposely and not for any political reasons. They would simply be errors.
War with Germany was declared in August 1914 and patriotic Glaswegians, on both sides of the law, knew their country needed them. Thousands queued at recruitment offices, many believing that it would be all over by Christmas. No regulations prevented serving police officers from volunteering to fight and in the early weeks of the war 300 Glasgow men swapped the blue for the khaki. Less patriotic, or less-able bodied, criminals remained at home and continued their old ways so the city force found itself seriously undermanned. To bolster manpower, 400 temporary constables, each paid five shillings for each tour of duty, were taken on while a further 3000 Special constables helped guard important areas such as gas works, power stations, water works and bridges. Germany’s Zeppelins never reached the city on the Clyde but they did on one occasion bomb Edinburgh’s High Street. The fear of sabotage by fifth columnists remained, though.
Christmas came and went with no sign of an end to the blood-letting, and in May 1915 Chief Constable James Verdier Stevenson ordered that no police officer could leave to join the forces. Despite this, by the close of the year, 692 men had left to fight on land and sea. The decision had already been taken to create the city’s first policewomen and in September Miss Emily Miller became the first female to join the ranks. She joined many thousands of women who would support the war effort by working not only at home in the factories but also on and near the battlefields of Europe.
When the war ended in 1918, a total of 748 men had left the force to fight – 145 of them did not return. Among the 26 medals handed out was a Victoria Cross to former Constable John ‘Jock’ McAulay who had braved heavy enemy fire to carry a wounded officer from the battlefield. He later returned to the city force and retired in 1946, an inspector.
Shipbuilding and armaments manufacture on the Clyde had prospered even before the war boom. But workers believed they were being paid starvation wages and were expected to live in sub-standard houses while their employers lived off the profits they created. It was during the war that the banners of Red Clydeside began to wave, although the term had not yet been coined. In February 1915 armaments workers went on strike for higher pay. In March 1916, six union leaders of the Clyde Workers committee in Glasgow were arrested during a strike of 3000 munitions workers. Some Union leaders, mainly miners, had opposed the notion of conscription and in addition they wanted any wartime restrictions on disputes and pay lifted. The strikers and their leaders were seen as unpatriotic and actually aiding the enemy.
‘Whatever might have been the rights and wrongs of those disputes of 1915-17, they undoubtedly prejudiced many people against Glasgow,’ wrote Charles Oakley. ‘The whimsical Wee Macgregor ceased to be the popular conception of what a Glasgow lad was like. Something less pleasant took his place and has persisted ever since.’
The public faces of these new ‘Glasgow lads’ were men like John MacLean, a teacher turned anti-war protester and Communist, another former teacher James Maxton, former sailor Willie Gallacher and Emmanuel Shinwell.
‘Manny’ Shinwell was the bantam cock of trade unionists, as quick with his fists as he was with his tongue and, along with Gallacher and David Kirkwood, guided the famous – or notorious – strike of 1919. He was not a native Scot having been born in Spitalfields in London. That was not what would stick in the teeth of the more reactionary elements of the press who noted with undisguised disdain that he was a Polish Jew, while some of his colleagues were loftily dismissed for being Irish. Shinwell knew of casual racism as he grew up in Glasgow, educating himself in the public library and learning to box in a local gym. His working life began in a clothing factory as a machinist but it was in workers’ rights that he excelled. His brand of fiery oratory struck a chord with his fellow workers and he rose in the ranks of the unions. In 1911, he was working with the National Sailor’s and Firemen’s Union (NSFU) and helped organised a six-week strike that began in the Glasgow docks and spread across the country. The strike won the men a national wage rate for British, European and Black British subjects, although company owners still trawled the docks of foreign ports for cheaper labour. The following year he formed part of a splinter group from the NSWU to join the British Seafarers’ Union, becoming its Glasgow secretary. He also became president of the Glasgow Trades Council.
With the return of the soldiers from those foreign fields, as had happened a century earlier, unemployment was expected to rise. There were also fears of a depression but that did not materialise until 1921. In a pre-emptive bid to stave off mass unemployment, trade unionists called for a shorter working week, from 54 hours to as low as 30, forcing bosses to hire more men to keep up production. Wiser heads, including ‘Manny’ Shinwell, prevailed and a claim was made for a 40 hour working week. Other issues were raised, including high rents and housing conditions, but the resulting stoppage became known as ‘the 40 Hour Strike’. It would end with blood spilled in the heart of Glasgow and union leaders facing jail.
However, Shinwell’s association with the sailors’ unions was to help spark trouble before then. The ‘Race Riot’ of 1919 is a seldom told part of the disputes of that year and is overshadowed by the violence in George Square a few days later. But it was part of the overall industrial unrest and also a telling indictment of the same casual racism that Shinwell himself experienced from the right-wing press – and perhaps of his own prejudices.
The merchant navy was hit as hard as any industry by the influx of manpower from the forces and the decline in world markets. The cry ‘British jobs for British workers’ was as loud then as it was in early 2009 when wildcat strikes hit the country over the granting of contracts to foreign workers while local men were idle. However, many men targeted in 1919 were British subjects – Africans and Caribbeans who had come to the ‘Mother Land’ before or during the war to help plug the manpower gap. Many had settled in the city, married – some to white women, much to the outrage of certain newspapers which used language to describe the men that would not be acceptable today – and raised families. The city, and others around the country, was their home. They were skilled and unskilled workers. They had their own private men’s club, ‘The Order of the Star of Bethlehem’s Shepherds’, formed at the end of the war by Cornelius Johnstone, a one-time sailor, who was later convicted with two white men of running an unlicensed dance hall. The black community also formed its own political group, the African Races Association of Glasgow (ARAG).
During the war they had run the gauntlet of enemy U-boats and warships, just like the white sailors. They had fought and they had died, just like the white sailors. But the war was over and the job pool in the merchant navy was draining. The Union leaders, including Gallacher and Shinwell, imposed a ‘colour bar’ on the employment of black and Chinese seamen – and then banned them from membership. It was not a case of jobs going to British whites for they were going to any European – Dutch, Norwegian, French – leaving some ‘men of colour’ without work. Debt increased, rent could not be paid, men – of all hues – starved. Feelings ran high. The white sailors were told that the ‘foreigners’ were stealing their livelihood. Many of the ‘foreigners’ believed that, even though they had not been born on this small island, they were British subjects and were entitled to work. Shinwell told sailors that overseas workers were undercutting their wages and urged them to take action. He was, to be fair, trying to gather support for the more widespread dispute but a spark had been ignited that day and, fanned by Shinwell’s fiery words, it was about to blaze.
Thursday 23 January, 1919 saw what the Glasgow Herald described as ‘a riot unprecedented in the history of Clydeside.’ Seamen had gathered at the Mercantile Marine yard on James Watt Street off the Broomielaw to sign on as crew members on the variety of merchant vessels crowding the port. Only a few hours before, Shinwell had addressed 600 of them and told them that the Government had refused to exclude Chinese labour from British ships and called on the men to take action at once. To the average white man in these days of Empire, no colour but his own mattered. Feelings ran high and the two factions – white against black – spat insults at each other. Words turned to action and there was pushing and shoving and punching. Then knives and even guns were drawn. Inevitably, a trigger was pulled and the first shots drew more men from the streets into the yard. A British sailor, 23-year-old Thomas Carlin, was slashed on the head and the battle burst out of the yard and onto the street. Around 30 black sailors backed away and holed up in a sailor’s home on the corner of James Watt Street but the whites chased them and ripped through the building. The black sailors ran down the Broomielaw to their own lodging house from where they took pot shots at anyone who moved from the windows. Another seaman, 57-year-old Duncan Cowan, took a bullet in the neck just below the throat. Both he and Carlin were carted off to the Western Infirmary in an ‘ambulance wagon.’
A handful of police tried to keep order but reinforcements were needed and soon around 50 officers had waded into the battle. They stormed the lodging house and arrested around 30 of the besieged seamen, who went along quietly. Among them was Tom Johnston, a 23-year-old West African suffering from gaping wounds on his back and leg. However, he was not taken to hospital like the two white wounded but was first dragged into a police van to later appear before a magistrate. The court ordered that he be taken to the infirmary for treatment, where he remained for 22 days. It is believed the charge against him was subsequently dropped due to lack of evidence.
The police, later accused of bias, did not arrest any white man for the riot. The Evening Times noted that the arrested men ‘although obviously of negro blood, bore familiar sounding names, such as Johnston, David Parkinson, Alfred, Pratt, with Tom Friday at the end of the list.’ The only white arrested subsequently was 19-year-old Patrick Cox and that was for police assault. He had been among a gang who pounced on a Chinese sailor and struck an officer from behind when he intervened. Police also found a revolver and some bullets in the lodging house.
Glasgow lawyer David Cook took the unenviable task of defending the 30 black men, all from British colony Sierra Leone and charged with rioting and recklessly discharging firearms. On 29 January they appeared in court and Cook lodged Not Guilty pleas for 27 of the men, which were accepted by the Crown. The lawyer reminded the court of the men’s war service and said that they were ‘entitled to the protection of the British Government.’ Some, he said, had formerly sailed from Glasgow but others had come arrived from Cardiff to man ships in the city’s harbour. Mr Cook observed, ‘This gave offence to the Seafarers’ Union, a body over which Mr Shinwell had some control. Being coloured they could not become members of that union, though it was difficult to understand why, as this was a democratic body.’ He also pointed out that some Chinese sailors had arrived in Glasgow and the ‘coloured men got the benefit of the white men’s umbrage.’ Three – Julius Parkinson, Daniel Pratt and Thomas Cole – pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of Breach of the Peace. They were each fined £3 15 shillings, or 21 days in jail. Patrick Cox, was also found guilty of a more serious offence – police assault – but was also fined £3 15 shillings, or 20 days in jail. In a passage headed up ‘Amusing Incidents’, the Evening Times reported that ‘in the case of two who bore the same name the magistrate had some difficulty in distinguishing between them. Both said they belonged to Sierra Leone and when asked what part of Sierra Leone both replied Freetown. In an endeavour to find some distinguishing mark, Dr Neilson (the sheriff) asked them their occupation and found that both were firemen.’ In the end, the court told the two men apart by their differing ages. Clearly, it was the kind of amusing incident that had the Glasgow newspaper reading public chortling heavily over their supper. It became even more thigh-slapping when a further two men turned out to be from Freetown and were firemen.
The Glasgow ‘Race riot’ was just the first in a series of disturbances over the following months in ports all over Britain. Men died in these riots and in some cases troops were called in. There was further trouble in Glasgow in April, when two coloured seamen, Josie Kamarra and William Paul, were fined £30 shillings each or seven days in jail for a breach of the peace. The police stated that around 50 black sailors had caused an obstruction on the Broomielaw on April 2 at around 7.30pm. When asked to move, Kamarra threatened to ‘stab and shoot’ any man who tried to interfere with him. He drew a knife to underline his point and the officer moved in for an arrest. His friend Paul then shrugged off his jacket and waded in to rescue him, calling on the other men to join in. They did not and Paul was duly huckled off to the police station too. In June police broke up a further fight between whites and black sailors on the Broomielaw. One of the black men dropped a revolver and was fined £5.
Finally, the Government instituted a repatriation scheme and by 1921 two thousand black people had returned to their former homes in Africa and the Caribbean. By that time, Manny Shinwell, Willie Gallacher and others had become working class heroes thanks to ‘Bloody Friday’.
PART TWO SOON
