Socialist Review, February 1994
It couldn’t happen here, is a familiar refrain from those
who think the fascists are only a threat in east London. Here
Henry Maitles looks at the history of racism and fascism in
Scotland and shows how the right can raise its head in the most
unexpected places
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In the late 19th century there was a wave of Russian emigration to
Britain. It was caused by religious and political persecution and the
desire for economic betterment. Most of the emigrants were heading
for the United States, but in Scotland two significant communities
settled – the Jewish Lithuanians mainly in the Glasgow Gorbals
area, and Catholic Lithuanians in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.
Almost immediately, both Catholics and Jews came under attack. The
Catholics at Glengarick in Ayrshire were described by Glasgow Trades
Council as ‘an evil’. It wrote to the TUC asking for immigration
controls to keep them out. In Lanarkshire, there was much vitriol
against the Lithuanian Catholics. They were employed in the iron,
steel and coal works, and were accused by the Lanarkshire County
Miners’ Union and the local media of wage cutting, scabbing,
responsibility for dangerous diseases, and being bloodthirsty and violent.
The Jewish immigrants received similar racist abuse; Conservative
politicians played the racist card. In 1900, for example, John
Wilson, Unionist candidate for the St Rollox constituency of Glasgow,
wanted to stop all immigration. He did not believe ‘it proper that
this country should be the dumping ground for all the paupers of
Europe’. Even in areas where there were few immigrants, the
Conservatives used similar arguments. Tory Solicitor General Salveson
claimed at Millport that ‘a great number of alien criminals,
paupers and people infected with disease settled in this country’.
As today, Labour figures were not immune. Keir Hardie, in his
evidence to the 1899 House of Commons Select Committee on emigration
and immigration, argues that the Scots resented immigrants greatly
and that they would want a total immigration ban. When it was pointed
out to him that more people left Scotland than entered it, he replied:
‘It would be much better for Scotland if those 1,500
were compelled to remain there and let the foreigners be kept out ...
Dr Johnson said God made Scotland for Scotchmen, and I would keep it so.’
Hardie was spouting the general trade union feeling of the time.
It was summed up by Ben Tillett in his famous comment, ‘we know you
are our brothers but we wish you had not come’. West of Scotland
leading trade unionists were just as vocal, if not more so. A Glasgow
steel worker told the 1892 congress of the TUC that ‘the door must
be shut against the enormous immigration of destitute aliens into
this country ... (we must refuse) to be the asylum for the paupers of Europe.’
This, of course, is not the only story of trade union response. As
the 20th century unfolded and immigrants joined and indeed shaped the
trade unions, animosity was challenged and effectively overcome. The
LCMU, for example, in the space of some 15 years, went from offering
support to miners willing to strike against Polish workers to
demanding that Polish miners in Lanarkshire should not be kicked out
of the country. During those 15 years, the Poles had joined the union
in large numbers and were active in it. Similar experiences are to be
found in the reactions of the Jewish workers.
The media also stoked up myths, in particular playing on the
disease theme. In August 1905, for example, the Daily Record and
Mail, the leading paper in Glasgow, ran the banner headline
‘Alien danger: immigrants infected with loathsome disease’.
This was the period of a build up to Britain’s first racist
immigration controls, the 1905 Aliens Act. It is interesting to note
how little the attacks on health, work and culture have changed over
the years, and how this vitriol against immigrants was not confined
to the East End of London but found an echo in many parts of Britain,
including the west of Scotland.
This was again the case in the 1930s, when the growth of fascism
saw once again the scapegoating of immigrants. The British Union of
Fascists was a much larger and nastier organisation than the present
BNP, although there is a marked similarity between the two. In the
1930s the BUF built in most places in Britain.
In Motherwell, for example, which had elected a Communist MP in
1922, there was a most active BUF branch. The fascists held street
and hall meetings in the mid 1930s, and indeed had a fascist hall in
the middle of the town. In May 1934, the Motherwell branch was
granted the lease of the tennis courts at Calder Park, and if you
wanted a game of tennis the court had to be booked through the local
BUF! Lady Mosley (the ‘leader’s’ mother) spoke in Motherwell in
June 1934 and claimed that she ‘didn’t know of any branch of the
movement that had started on such strong lines as the one at Motherwell.’
There were also many meetings in the neighbouring town of Wishaw
and in many other Lanarkshire towns. The main issues, reported by the
media, were a defence of Hitler, anti-Communism and for a
protectionist economic policy.
Glasgow also saw BUF activity. There was a fascist headquarters in
the city centre and regular street and hall meetings took place.
Similar activity was reported all over Scotland, even if the fascist
week’ report of June 1935, claiming active organisations all
throughout Scotland from Dumfries to Wick, was an exaggeration. What
is certain is there was sustained activity in many areas.
The reaction to the fascists came at grassroots level. The Labour
Party had instructed its branches to have nothing the do with
anti-fascist organisations, but the appeal to Labour Party members to
become involved in activity against the fascists was very strong.
There was much anti-fascist activity in the west of Scotland,
primarily organised by Jewish socialists and/or socialists and
Communists. The Glasgow Herald reported in June 1934 that
several thousand anti-fascists ‘trapped’ fascists in their
headquarters and that only police intervention got them out. The
level of clashes is remembered by participants:
‘Joyce came to speak at Queen’s Park recreation
ground and we organised a counter demonstration. We organised, a
number of us from the working class, the Labour League of Youth,
Young Communist League and other youth organisations, who all agreed
to disrupt this meeting. I had the privilege of taking one of the
platform legs and throwing the platform up in the air.’
Morris Smith (secretary of the Glasgow Jewish Workers’ Circle in
the 1930s) corroborates this. He was active in organising counter
demonstrations to weekly BUF meetings in Govanhill. He remembers that
the line then was to ‘stop them appearing in the streets’. Monty
Berkley (anti-fascist activist and Communist Party member) remembers
his trade union meetings which discussed political as well as
economic issues and ‘when we called for a demonstration [against
fascism], these people would come out and support us.’
There was also grassroots opposition to the BUF in other parts of
Scotland. Meetings in Aberdeen were greeted with ‘a shower of
burning fireworks, sticks, stones and pieces of coal ... the speaker
was howled down.’ In Lanarkshire, BUF meetings were also greeted by
mobilisations. In October 1934, anti-fascists ‘out in full force
and in matters of numbers ... easily superior to the fascists’,
stopped the BUF rally, hurled the fascist speaker from his stance and
then conducted an anti-fascist meeting.
Obviously, the BUF were not stopped every time they appeared, but
equally obviously where there was serious effort to mobilise around
anti-fascist activity, the BUF were prevented from having the freedom
to peddle their Nazi propaganda on the streets.
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