Red Scotland! - The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872 to 1932 (Broché)

Taking the reader on a journey through the restless times of the 1870s to the 1930s, William Kenefick outlines the response of Scottish artisans to legal restrictions on trade-union activities in the 1870s, trade union formation among the unskilled from the late 1880s, and the origins and impact of the Scottish socialist movement. The Labour movement in Scotland was to face many new challenges by the start of the twentieth century.
We find Scottish workers' fully engaged in labour and social unrest in the years before the Great War and after the outbreak of war - following a period of relative calm on the home from - the resurfacing of workers grievances during the conflict. We witness too the growth of the anti-war movement,the growing influence of revolutionary politics from 1918, and Scottish Labour on the threshold of an extraordinary political breakthrough by 1922.
The 1920s witness the rapid rise of Labour, but growing unemployment economic uncertainty, and a great emigration of Scottish workers helped fragment the trade union and labour movement and set in motion the fall of the radical left. By offering case studies of "new" and "old" unionism, industrial strike and political action, and employing quantitative and comparative regional analysis of labour and social unrest and discontent, this hook represents a major and up-to-date survey of some of the most dramatic years in the history of Scottish Labour.
In accessing new archival and press sources assessing wartime dissatisfaction,war-resistance and the influence of revolutionary politics, and with introductory chapters on writing labour and social history, the author carefully guides readers throughthe historiographical complexities and overlapping themes and issues associated with these exciting and turbulent times.