Walking with History by Jimmy Reid review: 'a remarkable life'
Based on a planned but uncompleted autobiography, this book is a fitting tribute to one of the outstanding Scots of his time, writes Joyce McMillan
According to the great American folk anthem The Ballad of Joe Hill, old trade unionists never die; and the ballad, as sung by his hero Paul Robeson, was certainly one of Jimmy Reid’s favourite songs.
All the same, there is something uncanny - 16 years after his death in 2010 - about opening a new book that boldly proclaims itself “The Autobiography of Jimmy Reid”, a first-person narrative of Reid’s remarkable life that reads as if it had been written earlier this year.
The book has been put together, in fact, by journalist Brian McGeachan, who in the 1990s worked with Reid and Bob Houston his on their short-lived Scottish political weekly Seven Days. McGeachan later worked with Reid on a planned but uncompleted autobiography; and the result, finally published this month, is a slightly strange brief account of the life, told in Reid’s voice and in his own words, but sometimes patchily, and perhaps not exactly as he would have told it.
The book’s saving grace, though, is the astonishing richness of the story it tells, and the impressive, sometimes dramatic journalistic pace of the narrative. When Jimmy Reid stepped up, as convener of shop stewards, to make his historic speech of 30 July 1971 announcing the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in - “no hooliganism, no vandalism, no bevvying” - the world saw him only as a shipyard worker with strong natural leadership qualities.
In truth, though, Reid had already, for decades, been a leading young member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, working at the party’s headquarters in London for several years, and - as a recognised powerful speaker - travelling the world on behalf of British young Communists, from Moscow to North Korea and beyond.
Reid had been born in 1932, into a Depression-hit working class family in the Gorbals. He was radicalised as a child by the fact that three of his sisters died as babies or toddlers, from illnesses that were rife in Glasgow’s slums; and during his schooldays in Govan, Reid rapidly became a voracious reader and autodidact, dedicated to a lifelong struggle against the savage form of capitalism that he believed had killed his sisters.
As a young engineering apprentice in 1950, Reid moved swiftly from active trade unionism through the Labour Party to the Young Communist League, at a time when Communist activists were an intellectual, cultural and organisational elite among the working class, and the backbone of the trade union movement in many workplaces.
Reid, though, was never much good at toeing party lines. His passion was for democratic socialism; and as the Soviet Union grew visibly more corrupt and authoritarian, Reid became uneasy about his Communist Party membership, finally quitting the party in 1976.
He rejoined Labour during his friend Michael Foot’s leadership in the early 1980s, but could not tolerate the rightward ideological lurch towards New Labour; and in 2005, sickened by the Iraq War, he made his final political move, into the SNP. Along this journey, it sometimes seems as if Reid met everyone there was to meet in the late 20th century, from Leonid Brezhnev to Neil Kinnock, who writes this book’s celebratory foreword.
The book ends, of course, with the text of Reid’s world-famous address on his installation as Rector of Glasgow University, in 1972. His theme was alienation; and for all the controversy that still surrounds hum, it is clear that his life offered a powerful example, even to many who disagreed with him, of how to fight alienation in all its forms.
He fought it with reading, learning and debate, with his beloved jazz and all forms of music, with a treasured family life, enduring friendships, and a Clydeside community of which he was unfailingly proud; and perhaps above all, with an openness to argument and change that made him a poor candidate for party politics, but a great and much-loved political leader nonetheless, and one of the outstanding Scots of his time, well remembered in this brief but fascinating study.
Walking with History, by Jimmy Reid, McNidder & Grace, £17.99
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.