Tartan Tiananmen Square

Introduction

A central plank in the Churchillian Black Legend - and particularly in left-wing criticisms of Churchill - is Churchill's alleged hostility to the working class in general and trade unions in particular. This hostility is apparently demonstrated in his willingness to use state violence to suppress industrial actions. We’ll cover Churchill’s attitudes to the working class more generally another time. For now, I wish to discuss a specific example commonly cited to support that critical view of Churchill. The allegation that in early 1919 Churchill dispatched the army to the city of Glasgow in Scotland to put down a strike.

This complaint is not recent. Unsurprisingly it originated with the strikers themselves. In their daily newspaper, Strike Bulletin, the strikers claimed that:

Apparently, if the workers do not accept what the employers give them, it is to be rammed down their throats at the point of the bayonet (quoted in Barclay, "Churchill Rolled the Tanks", p.38).

The claim that Churchill personally ordered the troops into Glasgow didn't emerge until 1973. That year the former strike leader Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell published a memoir in which he accused Churchill of convincing the Cabinet to send in soldiers and tanks into Glasgow to combat the strike. Shinwell, however, didn’t provide any supporting evidence for his accusation. Curiously, in his 1981 memoir, entitled Lead with the Left, Shinwell blamed David Lloyd George rather than Winston Churchill.

Shinwell's earlier allegation against Churchill is commonly repeated these days on social media. The way some people describe the events makes it sound like Churchill carried out a Scottish version of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. There are endless examples of this on Twitter. As Abraham Lincoln warned us, one shouldn’t believe everything one reads on the internet.

Much more concerning, however, is that these tales have been given credence by the Scottish government. Education Scotland included the following account on their website:

In an event unique in British history, Winston Churchill dispatched English troops and tanks against a large demonstration in George Square on 31st January 1919. The event became known as the Battle of George Square. Scottish troops already present in Glasgow were locked in Maryhill Barracks for fear that they might join the demonstrators and precipitate a major revolution. Thousands of English troops remained in Scotland for many months (quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.263).

A textbook used in Scottish history classes for National Curriculum 4 and 5 makes a similar point:

In response the government rushed 12,000 English troops to Glasgow in case a revolution broke out (Quoted in Barclay, "Churchill Rolled the Tanks", p.34).

Thankfully a researcher called Gordon J. Barclay has recently gone over the Government’s reaction to the Glaswegian strike and riot in early 1919 in forensic detail. He published his findings in two journal articles. Dr. Barclay is unequivocal in his conclusions that the anti-Churchill arguments are untrue.

From this evidence it is clear that neither the government nor Churchill ‘sent the troops in’; they had no legal power to do so, without martial law being declared. They were requested by the Sheriff. The troops were not ‘sent to crush the strikers’ or, indeed, an incipient revolt; they were invited by the Sheriff to ensure the maintenance of societal and economic order and to protect the power supplies. The soldiers were not all ‘English’, neither were they all ‘raw recruits’ and there is no evidence that any troops might have joined the strikers. The demonstrators did not face troops, machine-guns or tanks in George Square; they all arrived hours or days later; consequently, no-one was injured or killed by the military. Martial law was not declared. It was not an ‘English government’ that made the troops available; the majority of decision-makers and civilian contributors to the key discussions were Scots (Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.291).

What Actually Happened?

By January 1919 the mean Glaswegian working week was 54 hours long. The Clyde Workers’ Committee and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers jointly agreed to strike for a fourteen-hour reduction in the working week. This became known as the Forty-Hour Strike. There was some disagreement among the leaders as to what the true purpose of the strike was. One of the leaders, Willie Gallacher, was open about the political aims of the strike:

Let this be the class war started at last. Too long have we been groping about in the dark. Now at last we begin to see the light, and come what may we must sustain the fight until we emerge into the full, bright day of the Socialist Republic! (Quoted in Read, The World On Fire, p.86)

On the other hand, another strike leader, Manny Shinwell, wrote:

This movement…is not revolutionary in character, nor is it inspired by the legitimate demand for more leisure. It is attributable solely and entirely to the fear of possible unemployment in the near future and the desire of the workers generally to make room for demobilised servicemen (Quoted in Read, The World On Fire, p.86).

 

Sir James Watson Stewart

The Forty-Hour strike began on the 27th of January 1919. On the 29th of January, a deputation from the strikers met with the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Sir James Watson Stewart. The deputation wanted him to contact the Prime Minister and ask him to impose a forty-hour working week. Furthermore, they threatened to go beyond constitutional methods should the government not meet their demands, although they promised to hold off taking any action until Friday 31st of January (Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.267).


How the strike leaders planned to escalate was hinted at in a speech Shinwell and Gallacher gave to supporters, in which they threatened to “stop every tramcar, shut off every light and generally paralyse the business of the city”(quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.268).

The Cabinet discussed the matter on the 30th of January. They agreed that the Scottish Office would send a senior official, John Lamb, to Glasgow to keep the government informed of events, but they refused to intervene in the dispute between employees and employers. This refusal to meet the strikers’ demands was reported in the 31st of January edition of the Glasgow Herald newspaper (Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", pp.274-5).

On the morning of the 31st of January, the deputation returned to the City Chambers in George Square for a follow-up meeting with the Lord Provost. While they were there, the Police baton-charged the crowd of striking workers that had gathered outside. This was poorly judged and provoked the crowd to riot. Seeing the violence unfold from the windows of the City Chambers, two magistrates went outside to try and “quieten” the mob but were unsuccessful. The crowd by this point had armed themselves with bottles and had started pelting the police and civic authorities who exited the City Chambers. The Sheriff of Lanarkshire decided to read the Riot Act, thereby making the assembly unlawful. As he read it he was hit by glass bottles and, to add insult to injury, his copy of the legislation was stolen by a member of the crowd. One member of the deputation, David Kirkwood, ran outside the City Chambers and was beaten unconscious by a policeman. Gallacher punched the Chief Constable in the face and was also beaten up by policemen. Eventually, Shinwell, Kirkwood, and Gallacher were arrested (Read, World on Fire, pp.87-88; Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", pp.275-7).

Kirkwood lies unconscious after being assaulted by police.

The riotous crowd disappeared down the various streets connected to George Square, smashing windows and looting businesses as they went. They continued to pelt bottles at the police and overturned over two dozen city trams. This riot became known as the Battle of George Square.

The situation panicked the Scottish Secretary, who at a Cabinet meeting that same day gave his opinion that “it was a misnomer to call the situation in Glasgow a strike- it was a Bolshevist rising” (quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.278).

About 10,000 soldiers were sent to Glasgow but they did not arrive until the violence had largely dissipated. Contrary to the myth, the soldiers did not put down the riot. Gordon J. Barclay quotes several contemporary accounts supporting this claim, including the Daily Record on the 1st of February:

The disturbances were all at an end for the day when the first detachment of the troops arrived. The soldiers reached Queen Street station shortly after ten o’clock, and from that hour until the early morning there was a constant stream of men fully equipped for all emergencies (Quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.280).

Far from fighting with strikers and demonstrators, or even cracking the skulls of looters, there isn’t any record of a civilian being assaulted, let alone killed, by any soldier. What the troops did was recorded in The Observer on Sunday the 2nd of February:

The military is now in full possession of the more important points of the city, such as City Chambers, the Post Office, the railway stations, river bridges and electric power stations. The City Chambers is like an armed camp. The quadrangle is full of troops and equipment, including machine guns, as also are the corridors upstairs (Quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.281).

Tanks didn’t arrive until the 3rd of February and they stayed in their depot in the Cattle Market (quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.284).

The soldiers were not in Glasgow to suppress the strike. This is demonstrated by the fact that it continued for almost two weeks after the soldiers arrived in Glasgow, ending on the 12th of February (Barclay, "Churchill Rolled the Tanks", p.38).

Historian Iain McLean has highlighted that blaming the military occupation for the failure of the strike was a convenient way for those leading the strike to explain its defeat. In fact, the reasons for its demise lay elsewhere:

It may be argued that the Government's firm stand in 1919 prevented any resurgence of revolutionary, anti-official militancy. But that is to forget the structural weakness of the strike. It would certainly have collapsed, and discredited unofficial action, without any help from the Government. Indeed, the net effect of the tanks in the Cattle Market was probably the same as that of the police misbehaviour in George Square: it gave the strike a romantic history which successfully concealed an otherwise ignominious failure (McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside, p.138).

What was Winston Churchill’s Role and Responsibility?

Contrary to the suggestion that Churchill despised trade unionism and was chomping at the bit to send in the military to deal with the strikers, he was in fact one of the more moderate voices in the Cabinet. Before the strike began, Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey wrote that:

The ministers…seem to have the ‘wind-up’ to the most extraordinary extent about the industrial situation. C.I.G.S [Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson] also is positively in a state of dreadful nerves on the subject. Churchill is the only one who is sane on this subject (quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.267).

At the Cabinet meeting on the 30th of January, Churchill cautioned that “we should not exaggerate the seriousness of this disturbance’. He regarded the "disaffected" as a minority. While Churchill did think that a conflict would be needed to “clear the air” he added that “strong measures” would require “plenty of provocation”. The time to use troops “had not yet arrived”, in his opinion. According to Gordon J. Barclay, Churchill stressed that the Government “should not act in advance of public opinion" (Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.271).

At the Cabinet meeting the following day, after the Battle of George Square had taken place, Churchill made no substantial contribution to the discussion. He only commented on the authority required before the strike leaders could be arrested. Unlike the Secretary of State for Scotland, Churchill did not describe the situation as a Bolshevik or communist revolt (Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.278).

Neither Churchill nor the Cabinet sent the troops to Glasgow. Under the King's Regulations and Orders for the Army, the military could not send troops to support law and order without a written request from the appropriate civil authority. In the case of Scotland, this was the local county Sheriff. It was up to the army commanders to determine what and how many troops they would send but they could not be sent without being first invited by the appropriate local authority (Barclay, "Churchill Rolled the Tanks", pp.37-8).

This is what happened in Glasgow. After reading the Riot Act, after being pelted by bottles, and after seeing the riot unfold, the Sheriff decided to request military assistance. The Sheriff admitted this in his testimony at the trial of the strike leaders:

Q: After reviewing all that you had seen and taken part in that day, did you have a consultation with the Lord Provost and the Chief Constable?

A: Yes, I spoke to both of them.

Q: And did you tell them you had come to the conclusion that the resources of the Civic Authorities were insufficient for securing the maintenance of order in the City at that time?

A: Yes, we were all agreed. We had heard other things of more disorder.

Q: You had heard of disorder in the Trongate and elsewhere?

A: Yes

Q: And did you in consequence make up your mind that the necessity had arisen for appealing to the Military Authorities?

A: Yes (quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.277-8).

In fact, when the Cabinet convened on the 31st of January they were informed that orders had already been set to Scotland for the deployment of troops to Glasgow. To quote Iain McLean:

[T]he Cabinet was not called upon to take new decisions, since the moves to send troops to Scotland had already been put into effect (McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside, p.125).

It is also worth pointing out two things. Firstly, Scottish affairs, let alone Scottish labour affairs, were not within Churchill’s purview as Secretary of State for War. At the Cabinet meeting on the 30th of January the Deputy Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law, said that the “first responsibility in the whole matter must be by the Secretary of Scotland” (quoted in Barclay, "Duties in Aid of the Civil Power", p.269).

Secondly, Churchill actually admired one of the leaders of the strike, David Kirkwood. He even went so far as to write a foreword for Kirkwood’s 1935 autobiography My Life in Revolt.

Note the foreword by Churchill

Conclusion

The Forty-Hour Strike and the Battle of George Square are surrounded by mythology. For people who are politically left-wing, it provides an example of Churchill’s alleged ruthlessness in dealing with the working class. Scottish nationalists take the events as an instance of Churchill oppressing the Scots. However, the mythology is just flat-out untrue.

Churchill did not send troops to Glasgow to suppress a strike. The local authorities in Glasgow requested military aid. They did so not because there was a strike, but because a riot had broken out and they were not sure that the forces they had at their disposal would suffice to maintain law and order. Churchill’s department was not responsible for the situation. The Scotland Office was. Churchill was not antagonistic towards the strikers and was in fact a moderate voice in the Cabinet. When they did arrive in Glasgow, the troops guarded important infrastructure in the city but there is no record of them hurting or even killing anyone. Their presence did not end the strike, which continued for almost two weeks after their arrival.

Bibliography

Barclay, Gordon J., "'Churchill Rolled the Tanks into the Crowd': Mythology and Reality in the Military Deployment to Glasgow in 1919", Scottish Affairs, Vol. 28, Issue 1, pp.32-62 (2019)

Barclay, Gordon J., "'Duties in Aid of the Civil Power': The Deployment of the Army to Glasgow, 31 January to 17 February 1919", Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, Vol. 38, Issue 2, pp.261-92 (2018)

McLean, Iain, The Legend of Red Clydeside (John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1983)

Read, Anthony, The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism (Pimlico, 2009)