To mobilise the workers of Clydeside against the First World War, the Clyde Workers' Committee (CWC) was formed, with William Gallacher as its head and David Kirkwood its treasurer. The CWC led the campaign against the Liberal government of David Lloyd George and their Munitions Act, which forbade engineers from leaving the company they were employed in. The CWC met with government leaders but no agreement could be reached and consequently both Gallacher and Kirkwood were arrested under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act and jailed for their activities.
Anti-war activity also took place outside the workplace and on the streets in general. The Marxist John Maclean and the Independent Labour Party (ILP) member James Maxton were both jailed for their anti-war propogandising. Both lost their jobs as teachers as a result of their activities also.
Another strong part of the Red Clydeside legend are the rent strikes that took place in Glasgow in 1915. Using the war as their rationale, the private landlords drastically increased rents. With many men fighting on the frontline it fell to the women at home to organise this strike, although figures such as John Wheatley played a role. The strike was such an overwhelming success, particularly in areas of the city such as Govan and Partick that the government had to introduce legislation to limit rents.
The activities of the left continued after the end of the war. The campaign for a 40-hour week and improved conditions for the workers took hold of organised labour. On January 31, 1919 a massive rally organised by the trade unions took place on George Square in the centre of Glasgow. It has been estimated that as many as 90,000 were present, and the Red Flag was raised in the centre of the crowd. Massive brawls between the police and demonstrators took place, with a police tram being upturned.
The Liberal government panicked and massively over-reacted to the rally. Whilst those present were merely trying to secure improved working conditions they thought that a Bolshevik insurrection was about to occur, perhaps understandable given that it was only two years following the Russian Revolution. Whilst local troops based in the Maryhill barracks in the city were locked inside their posting, English troops and tanks were put onto the streets to control any unrest and exstinguish any revolution that should materialise (which it of course didn't).
William Gallacher, who would later become a Communist MP later claimed that whilst the leaders of the rally were not seeking revolution, in hindsight they should have been. He claimed that they should have marched to the Maryhill barracks and tried to persuade the troops stationed there to come out on the protestors side.
The trade union leaders who had organised the meeting were arrested. Most were acquitted, although both Gallacher and Manny Shinwell were put in jail for their activities that day. Shinwell had been responsible for racist agitation in the lead up to the rally: thirty African seamen had been placed in protective custody after defending themselves with firearms against a racist mob of seamen goaded by Shinwell's suggestion that Chinese and other "coloured" labour were responsible for unemployment amongst demobbed seamen.
The aura of Red Clydeside grew as the organised left replaced the Liberal Party as the party of the working-class. This manifested itself at the 1922 General Election, when several of the Red Clydesiders were elected to serve in the House of Commons (most of them ILP members). They included Maxton, Wheatley, Shinwell, Kirkwood, Neil Maclean and George Buchanan.
According to the Labour Party, the Red Clydesiders were viewed as being left-wing. Many of them, most notably Maxton and Wheatley were great critics of the first and second Labour governments, elected in 1924 and 1929 respectively.
The Red Clydeside era still impacts upon the politics of the area today. Even since then Glasgow has been known for political and industrial militancy, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work In of 1971, led by the then communist Jimmy Reid for example. Also, today the Labour Party holds every seat in the area for the House of Commons and has long been the dominanat poltiical force in the area (they hold 71 out of 79 seats on the City of Glasgow council for example).
The legend of the Red Clydesiders can still be politically motivating. At the 1989 Glasgow Central by-election, the Scottish National Party (SNP)candidate Alex Neil called himself and the then SNP MP for Govan Jim Sillars the "new Clydesiders". It is an important political heritage for many in the Scottish-left, particularly elements of the Scottish Socialist Party.