Image courtesy of Internationalist.
Mention the Glasgow-Clydeside rent strike and people will say Mary Barbour. It is as though nobody else played any major role in that class struggle form 1915. The rent strike didn’t even start in the district where Mary Barbour lived, Govan, it started in Linthouse and spread to Glasgow and down as far as Clydebank. There were thousands of ordinary women threw threw themselves into the struggle many took a major role in this event. Communities across this area of Scotland organised groups to stop sheriff officers entering buildings to serve eviction notices. This was a vast community event with ordinary people playing the major role. Mary Barbour was just one of them. There is never any mention of Jean Ferguson, an activist who played a major part in the Glasgow struggle. Jean’s husband was an anarchist, a shipwright at Fairfield’s Shipyard, who was fined for organising strike, which was illegal during this period, refused to pay the fine and went to prison, Jean shared his anarchist principles. There were thousands of “Jeans” who played a major part in this tremendous struggle, who after the strike went back to being housewives, factory workers, shop assistant etc..Mary Barbour owes her fame to the fact that she went on to be a Glasgow councillor, and became well known as Mary Barbour of the rent strike. When the rent restriction act was passed freezing rents, the Glasgow part of the strike called it off. However a little part of history that seems to get over looked is that Clydebank didn’t. They carried on the strike for a further 6 months, claiming that the rent increases that had been passed on to the tenants were in fact illegal. Eventually it went to court and it was stated that in Scotland a landlord can’t just increase the rent. They first must draw up a new tenancy agreement with the tenant who has to sign the agreement, the tenant failing to do so the landlord can then apply for an eviction notice. Since none of this was done, the court ruled that the increases were therefore illegal and those who had paid the increases should be refunded. This again was the ordinary people of Clydebank who came together as one force and beat the system, six months after the Glasgow strike had had been called off, and Mary Barbour was well on her way to becoming a City councillor.
