Events
Clydebank Rent Strike
By Iain Russell
The Clydebank Rent Strike was one of the key events in the legend of Red Clydeside.
Rent Restrictions
Between 1914 and 1918, housing became scarce in Clydebank as the burgh was inundated with people seeking work in local shipyards and munitions industries. During the same period, war-time inflation pushed up the cost of building new houses and repairing the old. After the passing of the Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act in 1915, freezing rents at their 1914 levels until the end of the war, landlords were unable to recover increased costs from their tenants. By the time of the Armistice in 1918, property building, maintenance and management costs were estimated to have risen by 180 per cent.
Landlords argued that workers who had benefited from rising wages during the war would be able to meet an increase in their rents. Community leaders and left-wing activists pointed out that many Bankies had not benefited from wage rises, and that war widows, the elderly and others were already suffering severe hardships as a result of inflation. There was rising unemployment at the beginning of the 1920s (the number of jobless in the burgh increased ten-fold between 1920 and 1922, from 500 to more than 5,000 people) adding to the number of people who would struggle to meet increases in their rents.
The Strike Begins
The Clydebank Rent Strike began in 1919, after 5,000 Bankies joined in national demonstrations against legislation that had been introduced to permit rent increases of 10 per cent. In 1920, an Act was passed permitting increases of 40 per cent. Soon, reports appeared in the local press of crowds of women following factors' clerks as they attempted to collect the increased rents, jeering and jostling them. The Clydebank Housing Association, a branch of the Scottish Labour Housing Association, offered to assist tenants who refused to pay the rent increases. By 1921 it had more than 4,000 members. The CHA's organiser, a retired iron turner and union official called Andrew Leiper, and the Association's legal adviser, the Dumbarton lawyer David Cormack, were soon exploiting loopholes in Scottish legislation relating to the process of raising rents. They obtained decisions at Dumbarton Sheriff Court that confirmed that Clydebank tenants who had been served with incompetent notices of increase in their rent could simply ignore them, and continue to pay the pre-war (or "standard") rent. This was confirmed in a test case, Kerr v Bryde, which went on appeal to the House of Lords in 1922 and confirmed that the CHA's view was correct. By December 1922, 20,000 Glaswegians were said to be on rent strike. Thousands of Bankies were also withholding the increases, and some were refusing to pay any rent until the situation was clarified.
The Campaign
Radnor Park was the centre of resistance to rent increase. As early as 1920 the Clydebank Press reported that the CHA had appointed "pickets" to go round the houses on rent day, persuading householders to withhold any increases. John Taylor, the former Provost who had campaigned to become the MP for Dumbarton County in 1918 on the slogan "Vote for Provost Taylor and No Increase in Rents", received 3,000 postcards from Bankies complaining that the Government had indeed raised rents. He lost his seat to the Independent Labour Party's David Kirkwood in the 1922 election.
Only nine Clydebank tenants were evicted from their homes between 1914 and August 1924, all of them for failing to pay even the "standard" rent. However, the property owners began to take a tougher line in late 1924, as the amount estimated to have been withheld by tenants reached £220,000 and landlords' losses mounted. A campaign of evictions began in the burgh.
The CHA responded by setting up the Tenants' Vigilante Committee in 1924, to provide organised teams of local people to obstruct sheriffs' officers when they came to eject tenants from their homes. Vigilante Scouts, largely recruited from members of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, patrolled the streets on their bicycles and reported the approach of sheriff's officers. Twelve large bells were distributed to women in the heartlands of the strike, and they were rung to summon neighbours to the scene of an eviction. Women jeered the sheriff's officers and pelted them with flour and meal when they attempted to evict a family. They blocked close mouths or packed themselves into the targeted house, to make it impossible to remove furniture. Sometimes, nameplates were changed or tenants swapped houses, to confuse the officers. Newspapers including the Clydebank Press and the Glasgow Herald were less than sympathetic in reporting the incidents, and most of the rare incidents involving physical violence occurred when angry tenants assaulted reporters and photographers covering evictions.
By March 1926, 3,000 Clydebank tenants were considered to be in arrears with their standard rent and it seemed unlikely that the sums owing to the landlords would ever be recovered in full. However, the CHA was winning fewer legal cases at Dumbarton Sheriff Court and, as unemployment eased in the burgh, support for the strike weakened. The first evicted families had been able to move to council houses, but subsequently they had to move in with friends. Some were accommodated in tents in McLean's Park until the council obtained some old railway carriages and converted them to temporary homes. On 21 July 1927, Andrew Leiper died following a road accident, depriving the CHA of its charismatic driving force. By the beginning of 1928, leading landlords such as Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons and the Dalmuir and West of Scotland Estates Co were reporting that tenants were increasingly willing to pay the increases.
The Aftermath
Although isolated pockets of resistance to rent increases remained, the Clydebank Rent Strike effectively ended by the beginning of 1928 when Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons' financial secretary could write that "the payment of increased rent is now generally recognised as legal and there is a willingness on the part of the tenants to pay such increased rent wherever their financial circumstances permit."
The campaign had resulted in a series of victories for the strikers, many of whom were never required to pay arrears from the strike years. However, without the continued support of MPs at Westminster or of the Town Council, the strikers lacked the political "muscle" required to obtain the CHA's key demand, the establishment of a system of setting a "fair" rent.
The strike had a huge impact on life in the Burgh, involving thousands of Bankies in mass protests and demonstrating the effectiveness of direct action to win local objectives. There is no doubt that, for thousands of people who took part in the strike, it fostered a strong community spirit and identity. However, some commentators have claimed that it had unfortunate social consequences, discouraging investment in industry and new housing.
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