Jimmy Reid
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Jimmy Reid (1932 - 11 August 2010) was a Scottish trade union activist and journalist born in Govan, Glasgow.
He came to prominence in the early 1970s when he led the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in to try and stop Edward Heath's Conservative government from closing down the shipyards on the River Clyde.[1] The government had decided that the shipyards should operate without state subsidy, which would have resulted in at least 6000 job losses.[1] An engineer by trade and union official, Reid, along with his colleagues Jimmy Airlie and Sammy Barr,[1] decided that the best way to show the viability of keeping the yards open was by staging a 'work-in' rather than by going on strike.[1] This meant that the workers would operate the shipyard until the government changed policy.[1]
In a famous speech given to the workers, Reid announced the workers control and discipline over the shipyard
We are not going to strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. Nobody and nothing will come in and nothing will go out without our permission. And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying because the world is watching us.
The occupation received support from across the world, with a series of fundraising events and celebrities such as John Lennon providing donations.[1] The campaign was successful in persuading Heath to back down the following year, and the Clyde shipyards received £101 million in public support over the next three years.[1]
Reid was at this stage a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was a councillor in Clydebank. He also received the most recent respectable number of votes for any communist candidate for a House of Commons seat when he polled over 6,000 votes in the Central Dunbartonshire constituency in February 1974 against Hugh McCartney. Reid's experiences as a committed Communist were expressed in his 1976 memoir, Jimmy Reid: Reflections of a Clyde-built Man.
Reid also served as Rector of the University of Glasgow, being elected in 1971, largely on the back of his union activities. When installed as Rector he gave a critically acclaimed speech which was published in full in the New York Times.
He later moderated his political position and joined the Labour Party, and was a candidate for them in Dundee East in 1979, but lost against the then Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Gordon Wilson.[1] He is often referred to as "the best MP Scotland never had."
Reid then became a journalist and broadcaster,[1] writing opinion columns for various newspapers, including The Daily Mirror, The Herald, The Sun and The Scotsman. He also presented a chat-show called the Reid Report for Grampian Television. In 1984 he wrote and presented a series of documentaries entitled Reid About the USSR when his status within the Communist Party gave him unprecedented access and resulted in two BAFTA awards.[1] In 2000 he helped establish the Scottish Left Review, a bi-monthly publication.
Reid continued to support Labour up until the 1997 General Election, but thereafter became disillusioned with the New Labour phenomenon, and subsequently urged people to support either the SNP or the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). In the 2004 SNP leadership contest, he urged SNP members to support Alex Salmond for leader and Nicola Sturgeon for deputy leader, and he joined the party the following year.[1][2]
On 11 August 2010, Jimmy Reid died in hospital. He had suffered a brain haemorrhage earlier in the week and had been in poor health for a number of years.[1][3] He is survived by his wife Joan and three daughters.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Shipyard union leader Jimmy Reid dies". BBC News. 11 August 2010. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
- ^ "Union stalwart Reid backs the SNP". BBC News. 20 April 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
- ^ "Union chief Jimmy Reid suffers stroke". BBC News. 18 September 2002. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
- Jimmy Reid Reflections of a Clyde-built Man (Souvenir Press) ISBN 285 64824 1
- Daily Record obituary