Red Clydeside

Political parties and organisations of the Red Clydeside period

Banished! Kirkwood and other shop stewards expelled fom west of Scotland

1 April 1916

On 14 March 1916, a works manager refused the shop steward convener, David Kirkwood, access to new female dilutees at Beardmore's of Parkhead. This was to lead directly to a series of events which would become known as the 'Crisis of March 1916'.

On 17 March, workers at Beardmore's struck in support of the reinstatement of shop steward's privileges for David Kirkwood. By 21 March they were joined by striking workers at the Diesel works in Whiteinch and also by engineering workers at Dalmuir and Weir's.

These strikes were interpreted by the government as a devious Clyde Workers' Committee plan to impede the production of munitions, and the government acted swiftly to defuse the situation. On 24 March 1916, five leading members of the CWC were deported under military orders to Edinburgh. This action by the government was to effectively break the opposition to the implementation of dilution in the engineering industries on Clydeside, as well as signalling the demise of the CWC and its loss of influence within Clydeside trade unionism for the duration of the war.

Source: Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University Special Collections and Archives