What a Socialist Council Would Do -ILP (1923)

WHAT A SOCIALIST TOWN COUNCIL WOU

LD DO

By Walter Ayles (Independant Labour Party 1923)

It is the 9th of November. For twelve months there has been a Socialist majority in the Town Council. The Mayor is on his feet, speaking of the year’s work. Let us listen.

“One thing I have noticed both in this Council and out-ride. There is a new attitude towards the Council’s work. There used to be a spirit, of distrust. All expenditure was grudged; there was continual grumbling about the rates. Now this has quite changed. Our citizens are developing a real sense of civic unity. They understand our policy and are ready to pay their rates because they realise that the money is used for the benefit of the community. We have taken the citizens into our confidence, and they have responded.

“Ladies and gentlemen, ours is a grave responsibility. We are here to serve the common good. In the name of the poor and needy, of the children and the aged, of the men and women who Labour for the city’s good, I ask you to be faithful to the trust they have ‘placed in our bands”

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A Socialist Town Council which could change the public attitude towards municipal politics in this way would have done its most necessary and difficult task. It would be the first duty of a Socialist Council so to order its activities as to bring about such a result.

The Socialist looks upon the Town Council as the natural body to express and improve the life of the town. He knows that by collective effort we can give to every citizen greater freedom, more material comfort, and a fuller life than is possible now. The Town Council is the great instrument which can be used to gain these advantages.

MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE.

There are a number of things in modern society which we must do together in order to live. The Socialist wants many of these things done through the Town Council, representing, as it does, the common interest of the citizens. The anti-Socialist is only prepared for Town Councils to do these things when. No profit can be made out of them.

Thus the anti-Socialist is willing for the Town Council to make drains and sewers, keep the streets clean, build hospitals, and so on. But he is not willing for the Town Council to do other things which are just as necessary to the welfare of the people. Houses are wanted, gas and electricity are needed, food, meat, milk and coal are required. These, says the anti-Socialist, must not be provided co-operatively by the whole body of citizens. They must be pro-vided by private companies.

Why does the anti-Socialist want to keep these things in private hands ? Because a private profit can be made out of them.

The Socialist says that the interest of all the people should come before private interests, and that social services should be publicly organised as a partnership between die community and the workers engaged in the service

No one who has knowledge of municipal enterprise can deny that on the whole it has been cheaper and more efficient than private enterprise, and that the profits have benefited the whole town. Where municipal enterprise has not proved more efficient the: cause, has often been the failure to give opportunity for the active co-operation of the municipal employees. Where municipal enterprise has not proved cheaper the heavy capital costs have usually been to blame. An increased charge has had to be made to pay back the money borrowed and the interest upon it. This has occurred particularly in the case of houses.

MUNICIPAL BANKING.

To meet this difficulty the Socialist advocates the establishment of Municipal Banks.

The initial capital for municipal schemes is now borrowed from a private bank. But where does the bank get its money from ? From the tradesmen and citizens of the town. Thus the citizens of the town lend to the bank at a low rate of interest, and the bank lends their money back to them as represented in the Town Council, demands a higher interest upon it, and makes private profit in this transaction. A Socialist Town Council would establish a Municipal Bank and thus obtain capital for its schemes of public benefit without heavy interest charges to the Money Ring.

OUSTING THE FOOD PROFITEERS.

With reasonable facilities for obtaining capital, the Socialist Town Council would provide not only houses, water, gas, electricity and tramways, but other common necessities. Three things may be specially mentioned: bread, milk and meat. At present, owing to our wasteful competitive system, the cost of these necessities has increased enormously, and especially to the poorer consumer. The reports of Government committees have recently shown how all classes are fleeced by our present arrangements. The Socialist Town Council would either itself undertake the supply of these things in the interest of the whole body of citizens, or would encourage their provision through the Co-operative movement. Two benefits would follow :

(i) the cost to the consumer would be lessened, and
(2) the workers would be better paid and would have better conditions of labour.

THE CHILDREN’S CHARTER.

Side by side with these basic changes, the Socialist Town Council would carry out a broad programme for human welfare. It would begin with the children.

1. No child would be ill-born. Every kind of available information would be at the disposal of poor mothers before the birth of their children. During birth they would be accommodated in a maternity home. Help and advice would be given when they returned to their homes. All the voluntary help available would be linked up with the official organisation operating under the Health Acts to keep the personal touch human and sensitive and to supply the deficiencies of the law.

2. No child would be unfed. The Health Acts would be used for this purpose before school age and the Education Acts afterwards. There would be a plentiful and pure supply of milk for nursing mother? and their babies, and- school children in need would be properly fed whether the schools were in session or not.

3. No child would be unattended in illness. No children need have bad ears, noses or mouths. Doctors and nurses would see to them. The Health and Education Acts give power to provide doctors and nurses, and information. Mothers would be encouraged to attend classes and gain information regarding their all-important work; municipal crèches would be established for the children of mothers whom. Capitalism drove out to. work, and child clinics established for all who required them.

4. No child need be dirty. The Baths and Wash-houses and Education Acts jointly can be used to see that children are not only kept clean but are taught the rule’s of personal hygiene.

5. No child need be ignorant. The Consolidating Education Act of 1921 gives very large powers, and though the Board of Education may be niggardly and reactionary, there are vast powers that can be used without their approval being required.

6. No child need be homeless. The Housing Acts would be rigidly enforced and stretched so that every child should be housed and homed healthily. Slums would be cleared, flushing tanks would be made compulsory, and as rapidly as possible new accommodation provided in which children would be welcomed.

If you realise what the accomplishment of this six-point Children’s Charter would mean to our cities you get a glimpse of the revolution a Socialist Town

Council would make in civic life. The Socialist would frankly give parents their choice—the rates or the child. The significant thing is that if they choose the rates they will lose the child. If they choose the child they will actually save the rates too, not only because healthy children are cheaper than those that are sick and tuberculosis, but because expenditure will be able to be reduced on incapable and diseased adults.

NEXT IN ORDER COMES THE CARE OF THE AGED.

A community—and a Party—is to be judged by how it cares for the old, the sick and the young.

1, Applicants for Old Age Pensions would be helped technically to qualify for a pension. There are hundreds who need pensions and who rightly could claim them, but who for technical difficulties as to age, savings, allowances from children, and so on, do not get them. A Socialist Town Council Old Age Pensions Committee would help them to remove the technical difficulties so that justice and mercy could do their work.

2. Old Age Pensioners would be supplied with homes. This could .be done under the Housing Acts. All Town Planning Schemes should include provision for those who need one or two rooms for quite small rents. This would enable them to retain their own furniture and self-respect by keeping outside the Poor Law. It is done in Denmark.

3. Medical help would be given through the use of the Health Acts. Nurses would visit and advise.

4. Recreation and games would be provided in open spaces, and shelters provided of a beautiful and convenient type at small cost.

THE SICK WOULD BE CARED FOR.

There would be adequate provision for all infectious cases, including tuberculosis, and for the period of convalescence. All accidents and surgical cases would be provided for. The Health Insurance medical service would meet the needs of the employed workers and adequate dispensary accommodation would be provided for others. Information on all kinds of diseases and simple rules of precaution and remedies could and would be disseminated as. has recently been done with regard to influenza. A completely new outlook could also be developed in the case of lunatics and the mentally deficient. Reports of the work accomplished would be given fully to the public in order to instruct them in the use of a Socialist Town Council and an efficient public service.

THE UNEMPLOYED

The Socialist Town Council -would think constantly of the unemployed worker in its midst and would plan to provide useful, honourable work at Trade Union wages. The programme here outlined would necessitate a great increase in employment under the municipality—the construction of houses and schools and baths, the extension of parks, the improvement of the streets, etc. The Socialist Town Council would specially press ahead with its public schemes during times of extended unemployment so as to provide worthy work for as many as possible. Work for the ablebodied and honourable assistance for the sick and aged would be its motto. It would also increasingly press upon the Government the need for transforming the system that led to such dire results.

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Let us now give a few short notes on other activities a Socialist Town Council would undertake.

Baths and Wash-houses. This is a health service that would be given for a nominal charge so as to make it accessible to all who need. A community that has allowed bathless houses to be built and still allows overcrowding must be prepared to pay to prevent fever and plague. Cottage baths should be established in smaller suburbs as being more economical.

Blind Persons. All blind persons would be given a pension so that none need go on the street to beg. This can now be done under the Blind Persons Act. A Socialist Town Council would also see that the blind were given free passes on the trams to enable them to avoid the dangers of traffic-laden roads and also have a little healthful recreation.

Public Halls and Municipal Concerts. A Socialist Town Council would see that the poorest, no less than the -well-to-do, had a chance of hearing the best artistes.

Parks and Open Spaces. These are to a city what holidays are to an individual—an apparent expense which is a good investment. They would be put where needed most—a reversal of present policy.

Education. This wants a pamphlet to itself. A Socialist Town Council would not solely build permanent structures which are necessarily costly, but would build schools on the open-air principle with proper provision for bad weather. This would enable a larger number of schools to be provided out of the money available for the purpose. The numbers of scholars in classes would be gradually reduced until they were down to thirty. Teachers would be adequately trained and paid and given the status and freedom their important work warrants. Teachers’ and Parents’ Councils would be organised. There would be visiting days for parents at least once a quarter. Every child would be taught personal hygiene and how to swim, in addition to the usual sports and games. The child’s respect for literature and for a lesson that becomes more and more irksome

would be increased by treating the Bible as a treasured literary possession as well as a means of religious instruction. Holiday camps would be

organised both for boys and girls. (The money could be largely raised by voluntary efforts by the children themselves.) Social histories and geographies would take the place of the usual “drum and trumpet” and “date and fact” textbooks, and the heroic in life emphasised rather than that of the battlefield. English history would be taught in its relation to the life of other people. The fullest facilities would be given for continued education after the age of fourteen years. There would be a larger number of scholar-ships and maintenance grants for boys and girls able to use them adequately.

Fire Insurance. The property owned by all Corporations is very great, and large sums are spent’ on fire insurance. A scheme would be formulated for progressively taking over the fire insurances. This would be a very profitable bit of business.

Housing. Almost anything can be done in the-way of providing working-class dwellings. Direct or Guild labour has proved cheapest and best. Excellence of workmanship always means decreased maintenance charges.

A Town Planning department would be set up to do its job. It would be speedily established as a guide for all future development of new (and improvements of old) parts of the city.

Small temporary libraries would be established in all suburbs to meet the demand for books and papers, and as and when convenient larger establishments would be erected.

Museums and Art Galleries would be more largely used for popular lectures on their contents by the most highly qualified and popular lecturers. Lantern slides would be used for illustration. The Lectures would be at the times most convenient for working men and women.

Streets. Sanitary refuse bins would be made compulsory, and all houses collected from in the most convenient and expeditious manner. The refuse would be burnt and not tipped. Stone pitching for streets would gradually be abolished and asphalt carpeting supplied instead. It is most important that infants, men on night shift, and sick people should be allowed to sleep during the day and not disturbed by carts clattering over cobblestones. It is also cleaner and more sanitary. The smoke nuisance would be more drastically dealt with, especially in the northern towns. Where possible, trees would be planted-to brighten what are now soul-destroying avenues of drab monotony.

Small Holdings and allotments. The Socialist Town Council would buy—and not lease—land for small holdings and allotments, up to and a little beyond the ascertained demand. They would hand the land over to the association of holders to administer, thus establishing in the one way legally possible democratic control by the workers. The rent charges would cover (a) interest on money borrowed; (b) cost of city administration in connection with the Acts. But the sinking fund would be paid by the city itself as the land would ultimately belong not to the holders but to the citizens.

Administrative. Finally, there are certain administrative reforms of far-reaching importance to which a Socialist Town Council would attend. Let us take them in order.

1. All civic departments use a number of things in common. In many towns they all get different tenders for comparatively small quantities of goods, occupying different staffs of clerks to do the work. These include such things as cleaning materials, coal, paper, printing, and so on. The buying of these would be centralised and a Controller for central purchasing appointed. This has already been found very profitable in the few places where it has been tried.

There would be a co-ordination of Works Departments under one head. There are generally two and sometimes half a dozen under each Corporation. This department would be allowed to tender for all jobs required to be done by the Corporation in competition with outside contractors. It would be advantageous in the transition stage to allow competition with private contractors both for buildings and the supply of such things as gas and electric fittings and requisites.

Finance. A Socialist Town Council -would do away with the overlapping finance departments attached to the Borough and District Funds, and have one department and a consolidated rate. This would mean a saving of time, temper and money to the city.

An excellent combination! The City Treasurer would have control of all the accountancy departments of the Corporation undertakings. The finance

of the Corporation as a whole would come up for discussion at least once a year in addition to “Budget” days. Extra discussion on “ways and means” as a whole would do much good.

A Socialist Town Council would lead a vigorous agitation by local authorities’ for adequate grants from the Government for housing, unemployment,education, and other essential purposes.

RATES AND THE WORKER.

It is probable that this programme will lead to an increase in rates. That must be faced. Rates used wisely level up the standard of life. They are levied not only on the occupiers of houses but upon the factories and other business places, and the effect is to collect a certain sum from both rich and poor and to distribute it in the form of public services to the people as a whole.

The extent to which this is done depends upon the policy of the Council. A Council of Capitalists will pay considerable attention to the roads in, order to facilitate transport of their goods. This will not benefit the worker so much/especially if the educational and public health services are starved. A Socialist Council would increase the facilities of free education, free meals for children, cheap transport maternity and child welfare, and the many other things described above.

If a workman will sit down and think for five minutes and will ask himself how much these sendees would cost him if he had to provide them individually, he will see how municipal activity on the right lines’ actually increases his real wages. It may be that it will cost him a few pence a week extra in rates, but if he balances against this what he gets he will see that he has made a good bargain. Anti-Socialists are always out to keep the rates low on things that benefit the worker. They claim that they want to save the worker money. They really want to keep down to the lowest the public services which increase his real wages.

LABOUR.

Corporation labour has hardly ever been rightly handled. It is not wise to divorce municipal employees from labour in private employ. The difference of 2S. a week, slightly lower hours, better holiday allowances, security of employment, would enable the community to get the best labour and not the throw-outs of private enterprise. Advisory courts would be established in all departments and a joint advisory court for the whole employees to advise the Corporation as to the conduct of the working conditions. This would be a step towards workers’ control and would train them in the job of organising industry.

No step would be taken without consultation with the workers’ representatives. All labour questions would be settled in that way, whether of output, discipline, wage-hours, holidays, the introduction of machinery, the restriction or expansion of departmental activity. .

THE SOCIALIST VIEW.

The programme -which has been outlined above indicates the new attitude in which Socialists approach the problem of civic life. To Socialists the Town Council is not a mere governing body. It is a committee of all the citizens. -If the citizens are animated with a keen desire for the true welfare of their city they will place upon it men and women with vision—men and women with a spirit of social service—men and women who are determined to make citizenship a reality to all.

See to it that your Town Council becomes a Socialist body !

Write to the Head Office of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) Headland House, 508 Gray’s Inn Road, London, W.C. 1 for particulars of the work of the Party, and how you may join it. The Secretary will also be glad to send you, post free, a list of interesting ‘Pamphlets and Books on Socialism and Labour questions.

Walter Ayles

Labour MP for Hayes & Harlington

Bristol City Labour Councillor

Labour HQ - 33 Eccleston Sq SW1

This is a photograph of the newly opened Labour Party headquarters at 33 Eccleston Square, London SW1.

It was undoubtedly not lost on the newly emerging Labour Party that this was the former home of Winston Churchill who lived there from 1909 - 1913.

This building also served as the TUC's headquarters during the 1926 general strike.

The move to Eccleston Square was quote "pending the realisation of the larger scheme for the erection of a British Labour Party headquarters as a memorial to members of the Labour movement who have fallen in the war"

Note World War 1

1948 - The Forgotten Gorbals

*click on pictures to enlarge

The Forgotten Gorbals

Picture Post - 31st January 1948

Book and ballet brand it an evil quarter of Glasgow. It is indeed. Not because of the people in it. But because of the way they must live. It is high time change were made.

The air of calm that covers a multitude of horrors. Nearly 40,000 people live in the Gorbals. they live for, six eight to a room, often thirty to a lavatory, forty to a tap. they live in Britain's most abandoned slum.

At first sight, of an early morning, the Gorbals looks like any other poor area. Its flat wide streets are lined with flat-faced tenements. There is a pub on every comer and an undertaker's (open day and night) in almost every other block. The walls are covered with chalk messages: Love God, Vote for McShane, Kilroy was Here, Irish Border Must Go, and (fading now) Victory. Cats are every-where; and for good reason.

It is not until you get inside the tenements that you realise the Gorbals isno ordinary poor place. It is in fact an area that provides a very special version of the slum problem.

In its beginnings, the problem was one of immigration. A century ago, thousands of poor labourers began to arrive in Glasgow. They came to work on the new-fangled railways and the docks of the Clyde.

They came for higher wages, for fuller plates, for what they conceived to be a better way of life than was possible in starving Erin and the wasted Scottish Highlands. A big proportion packed themselves into 252 acres just over the Clyde south from the city centre, in the area known as the Gorbals. Till then the Gorbals had been 'A Good Address,' a place for successful lawyers, doctors, merchants to retire to. But now the speculators built tenemen

ts over the gardens and the orchards. They built them quickly and cheaply, to house folk whose standards were far lower than those prevailing in the Lowlands. And there the descendants of those folk, and the thousands of newcomers who have joined them, live today in poverty, squalor, and in the hope that things will be better in the afterlife.

(picture) Mary is sixteen. She works in a Bakery. she has the the fancies and foibles natural to a girl her age. she dreams of nice clothes, hamdsome suitors, happy times. But already her life is coloured by her surroundings. already futility and frustration stretch ahead. Already her dreams re losing their battle against reality.

North of the Gorbals are the black rat-ridden banks of the Clyde. South is the railway jungle that spreads out from the big Goods and Mineral Depot on Pollokshaws Road. The western end of the ward has the handsome classical terraces of Abbotsford Place and Warwick Street. The eastern end is bounded by the lowering mid-Victorian tenements

of Lawmoor Street. Within these bounds live some 40,000 shockingly-housed people.

(picture) Out in the street is a fading chalk scrawl: "Welcome Home, John" And here lies John under his army greatcoat. It is 11am. the rest of the family are long gome - his brothers to school, his 16 year old sister to work. In a thousand rooms, no bigger than this, some Gorbals folk sleep four to a bed.

The Gorbals has no large industries, and few small ones, where its residents may find work.

Some of the local girls have jobs at the 'hair factory,' the mattress-making establishment in Ballater Street. But most folk must go elsewhere to make a living. The ward is simply a vast lodging-house.

As a lodging-house, the Gorbals could hardly be worse. In it, people live huddled together 281 to the acre. They live in apartments that are mostly small, dark and dirty. They live five and six in a single room that is part of some great slattern of a tenement, with seven or eight people in the room next door, and maybe eight or ten in the rooms above and below. The windows are often patched with cardboard. The stairs are narrow, dark at all times and befouled not only with mud and rain. Commonly there is one lavatory for thirty people, and that with the door off.

Rents are low. The average is rather less than ten shillings a week for a room, or £4 for an eight-roomed house. But in some parts, particularly in the handsome westward section, it is common to find a single tenant will lease a whole house cheap and then_ sublet to other tenants, room by room, till even the kitchen and the bathroom have a family living in them. This section around Warwick Street was a respectable professional-class neighbourhood till only twenty years ago Nowadays its facades hide some of the worst horrors in the Gorbals. It is known as 'Chinatown' or “Burma”, because of the many Orientals—Indians mostly – who live there. Some investigators declare that sub letting racketeers may make nearly £2,000 a year from a single house hereabouts. But over most of the Gorbals, tenants pay the low 1914 rent, plus 40 per cent, for repairs, if they ever get done.

(picture) Mrs Lundy of Bedford Street, autctions bedding, crockery, clothes, The notice says "Goods not claimed in 7 days after first deposit will be sold"

Low rent is one reason why people stay in the Gorbals. Another reason may be the liking an Irishman has for an Irishman's company. And anyway, a man seeking to move now is lucky if he can find a place to go. Once the area had a large immigrant Jewish population, and the district round Gorbals Cross was called 'Little Jerusalem.' But many Jews left as their economic condition improved and nowadays, though you still see Jewish names over the shops, the main landmark at the Cross is Doyle's Irish House.

Not that the Gorbals is Irish only. There are probably just as many Scots in the ward, living in the same conditions, and having the same reactions; and you couldn't tell them apart, except by who goes to Mass and who stays at home. There is no discrimination between Scots and Irish. What they know is they are all fighting for a living together, and finding it an affair of ups and downs. Some work in the foundries, some in the shipyards, some on the docks.

Almost all are unskilled labourers; and on that account the area is most sensitive to economic ebband flow. There are always a lot of Gorbals residents on Public Assistance, either through sickness, or in the interval between one short job and the next. But at present, most are in work, and few have to dodge the factors' men when they come round after the overdue rent.

As is usual where people find circumstance a hard thing to grapple with, the Gorbals is a great place for pipe-dreams; a place where folk think passionately of sudden fortune. Street bookies do a roaring trade round the ramshackle back-courts; and in many tenements the dream-book is the only literature.

(picture) Corportation Burial ground in Rutherglen Road - The only bit of green in the Gorbals

Football takes on the proportion of a mythology, and players are seen as heroes of a fantasy world. In the bars and on the street corners you run into men with, you would think, small capacity for academic learning, but with such knowledge of the intricate history of professional footbal? as would earn them a professorship in any other field.

It used to be said "Every man has two capital dues—his own and Paris." In the Gorbals, everyman has two football teams—his own and Celtic. The local team is Clyde. But the dream team is the one with the green-and-white hoops. Inside Gorbals houses, the commonest pictures are of The Sacred Heart and the Celtic team. You see few likenesses of the Saints but many of Johnny Thomson, the Celtic goalkeeper, accidentally killed on September 5, 1931, in a game against the Rangers, and now spoken of reverently as a popular martyr and a bright hero brought down by misfortune.

(picture) Mrs Greenan of Commercial Road has bourne 13 children, lost 7 from pneumonia

In the past, writers have given the Gorbals a bad name, as an area for razor-toughs and meth-drinkers. This penny-dreadful picture has distracted the attention of liberal citizens from the real facts of life as they affect the district. It is not as the sensation-mongers pretend. Some criminals live there. So do some hunchbacks. The population is not composed of criminals, nor of hunchbacks.

Murder is rare in the district. Last August there were two cases in a single week. That was the year's quota. Organised crime, in the sense of gangs, hardly exists; though a while back a bunch of movie-inspired adolescents banded themselves into an outfit called the 'Hammer Gang,' and gave the police some trouble before they were broken up.

Assault is a frequent affair, especially wife assault. Razor fights are uncommon. If they do take place, it is generally with the old-fashioned cut-throat blade. Serious assaults, involving a number of assailants, occur from time to time, usually as part of some family feud. The use of the bayonet, is not unknown in the neighbourhood.

In his annual report, Glasgow's Chief Constable does not consider it politic to give a ward-by-ward breakdown of crime figures. But at 'A' Division's ' sub-station in Lawmoor Street, the cagey officer will tell you that the Gorbals is a pretty rough area, but that there are plenty of places just as rough elsewhere. The opinion of the bobby on the beat is that the sensationalist just don't know what they're writing about.

(picture) Recreation facilities are few in Gorbals. Pubs are plentiful. there are 174 of them (above Frank Judge's Bar) Some are good, some bad, all popular. but the idea that gorbals is peopled by roughnecked boozers is erroneous. The area is remarkble for kind, friendly folk, with a strong feeling for social justice.

After dark, the sky is red from the glow of Dixon's Ironworks, and even in bad weather the streets are full of folk who do not care to sit around in a crowded house whose evening breath is, as they say, like a lung-sick beast's. The district is a poor one for pleasure, though it contains the Citizens' Theatre, and an imposing set of 174 pubs, mostly of the pitch-pine and engraved-glass kind. Some of these are bold and bright, like Milarky's celebrated Horseshoe Bar in Crown Street. Some are sad and dismal, like the panhandlers' houses in Gorbals Street, where ' the habitual 'wine'-drinkers befuddle themselves with Red Biddy at is. 6d. a gill. Drunkenness, the old Glasgow trouble, is not sensational in the district. Of the 38 City wards, Gorbals comes sixth for the number of drunk-and-incapables apprehended over 12 months. With 122 arrests, she lags far be hind the less-populous districts of Calton (345) and Exchange (267). Drinkers of methylated spirits, surgical spirit and perfume are slightly on the increase just now, but (with 147 arrests in the whole city) they are four times fewer than they were in 1937.

Good-looking girls are numerous, and they wear their Marks and Spencer clothes with an air. Transparent macs and printed scarves are de rigueur. For the girls and their boy-friends there are two or three cinemas of varying dubiety, and Joe Diamond's Dancing Academy, a bright respectable place with a goodish if decorous band. There are also the railway arches. Living as they commonly do, huddled together with adults/often in the same bed, Gorbals youngsters find few mysteries among the facts of life. At the same time, the percentage of illegitimate births is not remarkably high (with 9.6 per cent.

Gorbals' illegitimacy rate ranks sixth in the City). By and large, the youngsters have plenty of pride and few. illusions. Said one girl, "I hate it in the Gorbals. If I meet anyone new I have to give a false address." And another (with the words Biarritz, Quaglino's, Arc de Triomphe, Juan-les-Pins on her scarf) said, "We're eight in the one room. We go to bed in relays. My elder brothers walk round the court while we girls undress. Then they come back and kip down on their mattresses on the floor beside us. The cat sleeps with us. If a rat runs over the blankets, he springs out and has it."

At midnight, if you stand on any of the four bridges that run across the Clyde into the Gorbals, you see the windows still lit; for when the gas goes down, the rats come out in strength. So the lights bum dimly all night, and they shine on the huddled sleepers, on the delicate faces of the girls, and on the ravaged faces of the women who once were girls and on the men's faces that look like the broken slabs of every commandment in the decalogue.

(picture) Bright light for Gorbals youngsters is Saturday night at Diamond's Dance Hall (Academy) - They get no hard drinks; but the band is good

Here is our most loathsome slum, and a horror to be cleansed. Who owns it? Private people in London, Sydney, Shanghai and elsewhere. Factors (house-agents, they call them down South) own some tenements. Others belong to the Glasgow Corporation. Many were formerly the property of the L.M.S. Railway, and now presumably are the nation s affair. Sometimes the ownership is vague What is certain is that whoever owns the Gorbals precious little has been done, year by year, to case its hideous condition.

Let no one think the residents of the Gorbals like the way they live, or are apathetic to any agitation for change. They have an unusually deep awareness of their plight, and a hot anger for listless authority.

With Dundee, Gorbals was the first Scottish constituency to return a Labour member to Parliament That was in 1906. The vote has been solid for Labour ever since, because it is still believed that their lies the only hope for a change in local circumstance. Gorbals' present M.P. is Minister of Pensions, George Buchanan, recently raised to the dignity of Privy Councillor.

Perhaps because change is so slow to come, the local Communist Party is strong and well-received, and one of its leading members. Harry McShane, is something of a local hero on account of his fight for improved conditions. Nevertheless, partly from religious opposition, the Communist Party is not much voted for. The Gorbals and Hutchesontown Tenants Association (membership about 100) is active in canvassing the City Corporation for repairs to individual houses, but it carries rather less weight than the Gorbals Housing Campaign Committee, an organisation of combined political and professional men, started by the Rev. Bill Smith, a Church of Scotland minister, and Communist McShane, with the help of local doctors, lawyers and the like. Even so, the Glasgow Corporation—which has the greatest responsibility—is slow to move; and in the Gorbals the theory is widely held that 'the Corporation is no longer shockable.'

(picture) A young girl plays in the back-court of the gorbals. broken concrete, flooded pools, heaps pf smelling rubbish and rats

What could be done ? Most of the district was built up intentionally as a slum in the 1840's and i850's, and has so remained without change and almost without repair. The local folk say the area is ripe for dynamiting. Certainly nothing short of an over-all slum clearance would meet the case. The harassed Corporation has a proposed Fifty Years' Plan, under which they hope to re-develop most of the Gorbals for industrial purposes. The intention is to reduce the population density of that pan of the ward set aside for residence to 66 people to the acre.

To those who accuse them of apathy, the authorities point to the 850 slum houses that have been closed or demolished since 1920. In reply the impatient inhabitants point to the crumbling walls, the broken floors of the places they live in still. If ever there was a top priority—not only for the Glasgow City Corporation, but for the nation, too, if it values its self-respect—it is the destruction of the old Gorbals and the building of a better one.

A.L. Lloyd

Picture Post 31^st January 1948

Pictures by Bert Hardy

Harry McShane (7 May 1891 - 12 April 1988) A shipyard engineer, McShane (pictured, left, in the 1930s) became John Maclean's lieutenant and was jailed three times for his part in the Clydeside strike movement of the First World War. He was with Willie Gallagher when tanks and troops charged strikers in George Square on January 31st 1919. Joining the Communist Party in July 1922, he worked alongside Wal Hannington in the unemployed workers' movement. A reporter on the Daily Worker's short-lived Scottish edition, he became the paper's Scottish correspondent from 1943 until he resigned from the Communist Party in 1953. It was the adoption of the British Road to Socialism in 1951 that eventually prompted this move. McShane could not accept the concept of parliamentary struggle. Although an early critic of the Stalin cult, McShane did not join any grouping and remained an independent Marxist. A maverick by nature, the title of his autobiography summed up what most thought of him: `No Mean Fighter'. In 1985, the city council gave him the freedom of the city and he remained active in Glasgow's trades council until the year before he died aged 97. Source: Morning Star 15th April 1988

Hayes Cottage Hospital Work-In 1990

Sit-In protest at the Cottage

STAFF staged a 24-hour sit-in at Hayes Cottage Hospital yesrerday (Tuesday 29th May 1990) ) in the first stage of a campaign to halt privatisation plans.

Nursing and ancillary staff at the Grange Road hospital, which cares for the elderly,
claim there has been no consultation with them or families over the planned privatisation.

They are demanding full discussions with management.

Hillingdon Health Authority general manager Mike Bellamy said: "I very much regret
the action taken by some staff".

No decision has been taken on the future of Hayes Cottage, although the health authority is fully committed to modernising it, expanding its bed numbers and securing its future.

"It will discuss the various options at its meeting on June 12, but a final decision will not be made then.

"This 24-hour sit-in really is a nonsense and helps no one."

One 92-year-old long-stay patient, Maud Ashley, is threatening a hunger strike if she is forced to move out.

More than 3,000 signatures were collected in Hayes on Saturday by staff who claim theirpported by GPs and the community.
COHSE Health union representative Michael Walker said: "It is a local service offering high-quality care for the people of Hayes and Harlington.

This is a very local service offering high quality care for the the people of Hayes & Harlington - This is a very much loved facility"

Much of the hospital's equipment had been provided by local fund-raising, he added.

Protesters say that, if the hospital was privatised, beds would go to the highest bidder from anywhere in the country and would cease to be a local centre for communitycare

Mr Walker says managers have gone back on guarantees that the hospital would stay open and accused Mr Bellamy of being "economical with the truth" over his statements about its future.

In 1983, Hayes Cottage Hospital was occupied by staff and supporters (work-in) for several months as staff successfully fought to save it from closure.


See previous postings on 1983 Hayes Cottage Hospital Occupation and Northwood & Pinner Cottage Hospital occupation

click to enlarge photos

Guy Môquet - French Communist Resistance Hero

Guy Môquet, a Parisian, was 16 when the Germans invaded France. He became committed to the Resistance, distributing leaflets, but was arrested in 1941. He was tried and acquitted but, as a Communist, he was held as a political detainee.

When a German officer was killed by three Communists in Nantes, Hitler ordered the execution of 50 prisoners in retaliation. The Vichy government supplied the names and Môquet was the youngest.

On October 21, 1941, the night before he was shot, he wrote home to "my dearest mother, my adored little brother, my beloved father", asking them to be brave. "I am going to die," he started, adding: "17 and a half years, my life has been short, I have no regret except for leaving you all.

Guy Môquet – the Courageous Struggle

Translated 22 October 2007, by Patrick Bolland

Homage. The memory of the young Communist resistance fighter, Guy Môquet, is to be honoured. His last letter to his family will be read in all French high schools. Nicholas Sarkozy is co-opting our past to fit his political agenda.

The decision was announced by the president of the Republic on Wednesday 16 May, just after he was installed in office, in a ceremony paying hommage to the 35 young resistance fighters who were assassinated at the waterfall in the Bois de Boulogne. The last letter of the young communist Guy Môquet, shot by the Germans on 22 October 1941, will be read out by teachers in all French high schools at the start of each new school year.

To justify this, Nicolas Sarkozy said "I believe it is essential to explain what it is to be young and French" ... "Let us be proud of France in whose name they died", he declared to the young generation, invoking the memory of the young resistance fighters "for whom France counted more that politics or religion".

Executed by the Nazis at the age of 17

Frequently cited when Sarkozy talked in his electoral speeches of "selective immigration" and "national identity" during the presidential campaign, the student at the lycée Carnot, an activist with the Communist Youth League, is therefore being honoured today by a president of the Republic eager to clean up his image as a source of division.

Three great resistance fighters, Serge Ravanel, Danial Cordier and Raymond Aubrac, while pointing out their distance from Nicolas Sarkozy, are supporting this initiative, hoping that the trajectory of the young resistance fighter will be explained by teachers.

Sarkozy has appealed for "the liquidation of May ’68" and praised the "spirit of resistance", at the same time proclaiming the legitimacy of colonial conquests: the new head of state is trying to give a privileged space to history in his ideological combat. As Gérard Noiriel puts it, Nicolas Sarkoszy "is consecrating the great figures to consecrate himself" (1).

The historian continues: "This discourse on collective memory is also aimed at building a consensus that disregards social conflicts and the struggle for power." The political stuggle to which Guy Môquet was committed recurs, in fact, thoughout the president’s speeches; Sarkozy exalts only the "pride of France" which guided, according to him, the young resistance fighter. End of the story - no mention of the anti-fascist struggle, internationalism, the ideal of human emancipation, the fight for equality and for democracy that motivated him.

Arrested by the French police

Moreover, it is only the Gestapo that is being stigmatized. As the historian Max Gallo has however emphasized, Nicolas Sarkozy is saying absolutely nothing about the responsibility of the Vichy police and the Pétain government. Any mention of the role played by French citizens in the assassination of the young resistance fighter would have tarnished the heroic and twisted story of the nation that the new president wants to write.

Yet, it was the French police, looking for underground communist activists, who, on 13 October 1940, arrested Guy Môquet at the Gare de l’Est metro station. They then tortured him to try and obtain the names of the comrades of his father, Prosper Môquet, member of the National Assembly representing the 17th arrondissement in Paris – who was arrested a year later, stripped of his mandate and deported to Algeria.

A list of hostages to be shot

Imprisoned in Fresnes, then at Clairvaux, Guy Môquet was finally transferred with other communist activists to the Châteaubriant camp. On 20 October 1941, the Feldcommandant Karl Hotz was killed by three communist resistance fighters: two French, Marcel Bourdarias and Gilbert Brustien, and an ’immigrant’, the Italian Spartaco Guisco. As a reprisal, the nazi authorities presented to Pétain’s minister of the interior, Pierre Pucheu, a list of hostages who were going to be shot. Pucheu negotiated, picking out the communists "in order to prevent fifty good Frenchmen from being shot".

Two days later, in the Salière quarry, just outside the Châteaubriant camp, 27 resistance fighters were assassinated, among them Guy Môquet. Those whom the Vichy government representatives considered "bad French" fell under the bullets, crying out "Vive la France!" - A France they could only dream about, like the ’foreigners’ of the Affiche rouge(2), who had shed themselves of all the poison of fear and hatred of the Other.

The text of the farewell letter written by 17-year-old Resistance hero Guy Môquet before his execution in 1941 and read in schools across France on Monday:

My dearest Mother, my beloved little brother, my beloved father.

I'm going to die! I'm asking you, especially Mother, to be brave. I am being so and I want to be just as brave as those who have gone before me. Of course I would have preferred to live. But what I want with all my heart is that my death serves some purpose. I haven't had the time to embrace Jean. I embraced my two brothers in arms Roger and Rino.

Alas, I wasn't actually able to embrace my real brother. I hope all my things are sent back to you, they will be of some use to Serge, who I trust will be proud to wear them one day. Dearest Dad, although I've given you and Mom lots of troubles, I send you one last greeting. I hope you know that I have done my best to follow in your footsteps.

A last farewell to all my friends and to my brother who I love a lot. He should study hard so that he becomes a man later on.

17 and a half. My life has been short, but I have no regrets apart from leaving you. I'll be dying alongside Tintin and Michels. Ma, I'm asking you, and I want you to promise, to be brave and get over your pain.

I can't write any more. I leave you, Mother, Serge, Dad, embracing you with all my young heart. Be brave.

Your Guy who loves you.

Guy

Eric "Ginger" Evans - TGWU Union - EMI Hayes

Eric "Ginger" Evans was a leading member of the Transport & General Workers Union at EMI in the 1960's, 70's and 80's (TGWU 1/690) working in the Packing Department at Blyth Road, Hayes, West Middlesex for over thirty years.

At one point Eric Evans was a member of the TGWU National Executive Committee, and was a regular delegate to TGWU conference.


He was presented with a TGWU "Gold badge" the highest union award (circa 1986 or 87) by TGWU General Secretary Rod Todd.

He was a patient at Hayes Cottage Hospital during the period of it's occupation by staff in late 1983.

Eric Evans lived at 43 Judge Heath Lane (Belmore Ward)

A Labour party member, Eric was generally on the left and opponent of Hayes right wing MP's Skeffington and Sandleson, he also opposed the local right wing Labour run Hayes & Harlington Urban District Council on issues such as council house rents.

Unfortunately, later in life Eric and his close friend fellow Welshman, Cllr Ivor Anthony fell out with the direction of the Hayes Labour Party in the Press on issues such as Gay rights and Ireland. As a result a witch hunt was launched against the local party by Labour party head office and the right wing media - no evidence of "ultra leftism" or "infiltration" by groups was ever forthcoming.

It's has to be pointed out that Eric was suffering from bad health during this period.

* we would welcome more information and better quality picture

German "Red Front" - " Rot Front" Defending Workers in the 20's

The German "Red Front " Rotfrontkämpferbund was a self defence organisation established 18th July 1924 with a proud record of defending workers, trade unionists and the "Left" from attack upon it's meeting's, demonstrations and picket lines by the bosses, right wingers and later Nazi thugs.

The "Red Front" was established on 18th July 1924 under the leadership of the inspirational leader Ernst Thälmann (16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944). It was banned in 1932 as part of the attack upon the Left by the German establishment who would allow Hitler to seize power in 1933. The Nazi party actually lost 34 seats in the November 1932 general election and never secured a majority in it's own right. Ernst Thälmann was imprisoned by the Nazi's and was shot by them on Hitler's orders in August 1944 at the Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of World War I.

The Red Front had a greeting:

"Rot Front!" ("Red Front!") was spoken while the right arm was raised with fist clenched, fingers looking forward. The traditional left greeting still used on demonstration's

The RFB issued their official newspaper, Die Rote Front

There was also a youth organization (ages 16-21), Rote Jungfront (Young Red Front).

Der rote Wedding (Red Front), lyrics by Erich Weinert and music by Hanns Eisler (1928) is an anti Nazi battle hymn for the Red Front: (Video above)