OF CLYDESIDE
A long overdue statue in her home city means the work of
MARY Barbour is Glasgow’s socialist heroine. In 1915, she led 20,000 people to march on Glasgow Sheriff Court to protest against rent rises.
In peacetime, she was one of the earliest female councillors in the City Chambers and helped set up the city’s first birth control clinic.
Yet before the statue of her was unveiled in Govan today, there was virtually no mention of her in Glasgow.
There is one plaque, in the Pearce Institute in Govan. Attempts to name a street after her failed.
Until now, she had been written out of the history of the labour movement and of her home city.
Former MP Maria Fyfe spearheaded the campaign for a prominent memorial to the rent strike leader.
Fyfe – who was Labour MP for Maryhill until 2001, a city councillor before that and has a degree in economic and social history – was well into her 70s before she heard of the amazing Mrs Barbour and her extraordinary achievements.
The revelation came when her choir added a song, Mrs Barbour’s Army, to their repertoire.
She said: “It’s appalling I’d never heard of her. I came from a Labour-voting family and spent all my adult life in the Labour Party.
“I was aware of John Maclean and all the men from Red Clydeside. I used to think there were no women’s names because they were too tied down with domestic demands.”
When she discovered Mary, who had two children and still found time to storm the sheriff court and put the wind up the establishment, she felt cheated.
She said: “It riled me that I had never heard of her. I thought that something must be done.”
Maria and two Govan councillors, John Kane and James Adams, have spent five years plotting to put Mary Barbour back on the map.
Today, all their work will pay off when a statue of her leading the famous rent strike will be unveiled outside the underground station at what used to be called Govan Cross. (It’s been rebranded as Govan Piazza.)
The south side of the Clyde was Mary’s heartland. She was born in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire (where a cairn was put up in her honour in 2015) and moved to Govan when she got married in 1896.
The tenements there have been flattened and replaced with maisonettes. But at the turn of the last century, Glasgow’s housing stock was in a grim state.
According to historian Catriona Burness, who has researched Mary Barbour, by the start of World War I it was “clearly Glasgow’s greatest problem.” She explained: “Thousands of workers flocked to Glasgow, to jobs in the shipyards and munitions factories.
“Property owners calculated they could raise rents for tenement flats. Instead, fury was aroused and the rent strike was the response.”
Mary, who had already joined the Kinning Park Co-operative Guild, was not taking this lying down.
She was a founder member of South Govan Women’s Housing Association, joining other women who were left at home trying to scrape up the rent while their husbands and sons fought in France.
It came to a head in November 1915. As many as 20,000 tenants were refusing to pay their rent and unrest was spreading across the country.
In this febrile atmosphere, a Partick factor took 18 tenants to Glasgow Sheriff Court, to prosecute them for failing to pay their rent increase.
Mary and her committees sprang into action. There were strikes in support of the tenants, many of whom were shipyard workers.
Deputations were sent to the court and thousands more men, women and children demonstrated outside.
They became known as Mrs Barbour’s Army – and they terrified those in the corridors of power. Lloyd George, then munitions minister, got the charges dropped. Within a month Parliament passed the Rent Restriction Act, capping rents to pre-war levels.
Catriona explained: “Mary’s capacity to mobilise working-class families, especially women, to challenge the power of landlords and the state during the 1915 rent strike, led to the passing of one of Europe’s first rent restriction acts.”
The rent strike was Mary’s crowning achievement. But she was not ready to step back and put her feet up. Several women who agitated among the tenement blocks went on to form the Women’s Peace Crusade, campaigning throughout 1916 for a negotiated settlement to World War I.
In 1917, she was one of the May Day speakers at a huge rally in Glasgow Green. When peace finally came, her focus switched.
In local elections in 1920, she stood on the Labour ticket for the Govan ward and was one of the first five women elected to Glasgow Corporation.
Four years later she became a bailie, making her the first woman magistrate in the city.
One of her major achievements as a councillor was helping to set up the Women’s Welfare and Advisory Clinic, the city’s first family planning clinic.
Mary retired from the corporation in 1931 but carried on sitting on committees and organising seaside trips for local kids. She died in 1958.
Her statue has been a long time coming. Maria reckons that the anniversary of the World War I, and the general lack of monuments to prominent women across the country, both helped Mary’s cause.
She said: “I think it’s really important that people take pride in what their predecessors did. Mary collected 20,000 people and marched them to the court. I hope people see this monument as something that inspires their own efforts against
injustice.”
It’s appalling that I’d heard of Maclean and the men of Red Clydeside but not Mary Barbour MARIA FYFE