A Wee Bevvy for Jimmy Reid

Former Glasgow shipyard union leader Jimmy Reid has died at the age of 78.

Jimmy led the successful work-in at the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) in 1971 which thwarted Ted Heath’s Tory government in it’s attempts to close the yards.

The campaign attracted widespread public support, with a series of fundraising events being held for the workers and celebrities including John Lennon giving their backing.

The government finally relented in February 1972.

A one-time Communist Party, he unsuccessfully stood for Labour in the 1979 election. He later became a respected journalist and broadcaster.

He lost faith in Nu-Labour as he saw the party move further and further away form it’s once held philosophies.  He joined the SNP in 2005.

Jimmy was a true working class hero. An intellectual from the grime and sweat of hard labour. A world apart from Heath’s yahoo Henrys.

He won the day with reasoned argument that up show the Tories for what they were – a party of the past that thought by dint of old school tie they could ride roughshod over the lives of working people and proved that organised workers could defeat an unthinking government and a culture of big business that sees people as profit fodder.

  

There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism. But there will be a wee bit of bevvying as we remember Jimmy.