Book Condition: Near Fine. Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches. weight: 9.1 ounces. Engels in his book 'The Conditions of the Working Classes in England' quotes a description of the conditions in Edinburgh and Glasgow: “I have seen wretchedness in some of its worst phases both here and upon the continent but until I visited the Wynds of Glasgow I did not believe that so much crime, misery and disease could exist in any civilized country. In the lower lodging houses 10, 12, sometimes 20 persons of both sexes, all ages and various degrees of nakedness, sleep in indiscriminately huddled together upon the floor. These dwellings are usually so damp, filthy and ruinous, that no-one could wish to keep his horse in one of them”. As early as 1885 Glasgow militants were campaigning for decent municipal housing in the city and by 1914 the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association – whose aims were the improvement of tenement homes – was formed. But it took the anvil and hammer of the onset of war and its consequence of the need for more workers into the munitions industry, the loss of workers who joined the army and the influx of thousands of immigrants into already overpopulated, crumbling areas to foment social tensions among the working class to breaking point. Additionally, financial stresses of increased costs of living were felt by working class families but it was the actions of rapacious landlords, who saw an opportunity to increase their rents more often, that caused latent indignation to rise. Evictions for arrears of rents – especially for the families of men who ‘took the King’s shilling’ – provided additional sources of moral outrage, especially when the rhetoric from the Conservative/Liberal coalition Government of the day was that everyone had to make sacrifices. Although not alone in the struggle for social justice and decent social housing, Glasgow became the most overcrowded city in Britain and a centre of class conflict where many figures came to political prominence. In the three years before 1915, Glasgow’s population increased by just fewer than seventy thousand; – mainly with Irish and Highlander immigrants – but less than two thousand tenements were built. The landlords found themselves in a situation where demand far exceeded supply and they reacted to the glut of potential new renters in the most callous fashion: increasing rents at little notice and evicting anyone who fell into arrears in the sure knowledge that the space would be re-rented instantly. In a renowned incident in March 1915, a landlord instructed his henchman factor to evict a woman: a wife of a soldier who had fallen into rent arrears totalling one pound. When the henchmen arrived to enact the eviction (or poinding as it is known in Scotland) they were confronted by several hundred angry neighbours headed by John Wheately. The factors withdrew in disarray but events like these were used in the propaganda war by the activists who portrayed the landlords and their accessories as unpatriotic ‘spies’: the ‘Hun at home’. The first of the strikes began in the April of that year and Govan was to become and remain the bastion of the struggle. Mary became a well known figure calling her ‘troops’ to her meetings: large and small, in kitchens, in closes, and in backcourts by creating a raucous clatter with her football rattle. In every window of every house there were 1/d notices which read: ‘We are not removing.’ Within weeks thousands of notices were displayed in street after street. Soon all of Glasgow was involved: from Parkhead to Govan, Pollokshaws to Calton. Demonstrations were organised. Mrs Barbour understood the importance of respectability and decorum during these marches. Demonstrators – men, women and children – all presented themselves in good order, wearing their best ‘Sunday’ clothes, many carrying homespun placards declaring, for example: "Partick Tenants’ Strike, Our Husbands, Sons and Brothers are fighting the\nPrussians of Germany, We are fighting the Prussians of Partick Only alternative MUNICIPAL HOUSING" The threat of a poinding notice and eviction was a constant concern and strategies to prevent them were put into place. A single woman who lived in the close was posted as sentry, allowing everyone else to go about their normal daily business. When the Factor was spotted the sentry would give warning by ringing a bell. Immediately everyone within the building would run to defend their neighbour against the Factor carrying their weapons of choice: flour, peasemeal, wet clothes, rotting food; whatever they had to hand. Mary Barbour and her other comrades organised the women so effectively that Willie Gallacher coined the protesters ‘Mrs Barbour’s Army’. The Factors were not above attempting their own ploys of divide and rule to fool the women into paying the increases. On one occasion where they were successful in their bluffs Mrs Barbour rounded up the men from the yards, and led them to the factor’s office and demanded the money be returned. On being presented with a large crowd of angry shipbuilders the Factor decided that retreat was the better part of valour and returned the money forthwith. By November 1915 twenty thousand households throughout Glasgow were on rent strike. It was this coordinated community action between industry and home that was the real strength of the Rent Strike’s success, but it was a movement that was principally led, organised and executed by women: women like Mary Barbour. By the end of the demonstration that day, the landlords’ court actions lay in tatters and all legal actions against the striker tenants collapsed. Rents were frozen at pre-war levels and on 25th November, a Rent and Mortgage Interest Restriction Bill was introduced by Parliament. Royal Assent was quickly given on 25th December. Mrs Barbour’s Army had won. Whenever Red Clydeside, that extraordinary period of working class insurgency which lasted from 1915 to 1919, is discussed attention generally centres on male shop stewards in Glasgow's giant engineering plants and on leaders like John Maclean and Willie Gallacher. Yet the greatest victory chalked up by the working folk of Glasgow came early, and central to its success were some remarkable working class women, that was the 1915 rent strike. Long before the outbreak of the First World war the city's housing conditions were a time bomb waiting to explode. War lit that fuse. At the turn of the last century Glasgow's housing conditions were the worst of any British city. The rapid expansion of the city and the availability of cheap labour from rural Scotland, particularly the Highlands, and from Ireland meant employers were under little pressure to provide decent housing, property developers threw up poorly built tenements with one or two room apartments and landlords could charge high rents and ignore any repairs that were needed. Rents were higher than elsewhere in the UK and with accommodation in demand landlords raised rents. Existing tenants, who could not afford the extra, faced eviction, even the families of those away fighting in the trenches. The government found in October 1915 that at least 33.9% of rents had increased by 5%, while in "Govan and Fairfield, the centre of the storm, all the houses...suffered rent increases ranging from 11.67% to 23.08%." One of the organizers of the Rent Strike, Helen Crawfurd, had been a radical suffragette who had been jailed three times before the war for actions which included smashing the windows of the Ministry of Education in London and the army recruitment office in Glasgow. Seán Damer notes: "The Glasgow suffragettes had a tradition of militancy which includes blowing up all the telegraph and telephone cables, cutting the wires around the city." "In Govan, Mrs. Barbour, a typical working class housewife, became the leader of a movement such has never been seen before, or since for that matter, street meetings, back-court meetings, drums, bells, trumpets – every method was used to bring the women out and organize them for struggle. Notices were printed by the thousand and put up in the windows: wherever you went you could see them. In street after street, scarcely a window without one: WE ARE NOT PAYING INCREASED RENT." One landlord had applied for an eviction order against a mother and family for non-payment of rent at a time when the man of the house was fighting in France and a son was recovering from war wounds. The Court supplied the necessary authorisation despite an offer from the local miners' union to repay the rent debt within a week. However, the attempt at eviction was successfully resisted by a large crowd which had to be restrained from physically attacking the landlord." Similar scenes were repeated across the city, for instance in Partick: "... a 70 year old pensioner living alone was due to be evicted on a warrant issued by Sheriff Thomson for refusing to pay a rent increase. The old man barricaded himself in his tiny tenement flat and a large crowd gathered outside in his support, making his 'castle' impregnable. Again no official showed face." Gallacher records that "the factors [agents for the property owners] could not collect the rents."xv When a factor turned up in Partick in late October, the "Glasgow Herald" reported "he was pelted with bags of peasemeal and chased from one of the streets by a number of women, who upbraided him vociferously." The Landlords then applied for an eviction warrant from a judge and the task of carrying that out fell to the city's Sheriff who asked the police to carry out the task:"But Mrs. Barbour had a team of women who were wonderful. They could smell a sheriff's officer a mile away. At their summons women left their cooking, washing or whatever they were doing. Before they were anywhere near their destination, the officer and his men would be met by an army of furious women who drove them back in a hurried scramble for safety." In every window of every house there were 1/d notices which read: 'We are not removing.' Within weeks thousands of notices were displayed in street after street. Soon all of Glasgow was involved: from Parkhead to Govan, Pollokshaws to Calton. The turn out on the May Day march and rally that year reflected the mood and confidence of the Clydeside working class. The "Partick and Maryhill Press" reported: "[It] was organized on a larger scale than on any previous occasion. Over 165 Labour and Socialist organizations took part. There were 12 platforms. Among those represented were the Socialist and Labour Party, Internationalism, Glasgow Housing Committee, the Anarchist Group, Socialist Children's School, and Women Trade Unionists." By October 1915 15,000 were refusing to pay rent increases, and a month later it was 20,000. The government in London was worried by the scale of the protests and that the eviction of rent strikers might be the spark for a walk out in the Clyde yards. It responded quickly, hurrying through the Rent Restriction Act of 1915, which returned rents to pre-war levels. This was a major victory for working class people of Britain, won by the working women and men of Glasgow. The Glasgow rent strikes, which lasted from April to November 1915, when a regiment of women forced the government to take action, fixing rents at their pre-war rates, have been described by historian James Smyth as possibly “the most successful example of direct action ever undertaken by the working class”. For more than seven months, highly organised committees of women would ambush sheriff officers, hurling flour bombs or other missiles at them if they tried to evict non-payers. Leading the revolt was Mary Barbour, who held neighbours, munitions workers and shipyard bosses in her thrall. Barbour, who lived in Ure Street (now Uist Street), knew only too well the privations of slum dwelling and was determined to put the right to decent housing high on the agenda.
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