Jimmy Reid and his communist comrade Jimmy Airlie (1937-97) were shop stewards with the right wing Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), who rose to union fame and public prominence during the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) work-in of 1971. The Heath government had decided to allow the UCS consortium of shipyards to go into liquidation, threatening 8,000 jobs and many more in support industries.
The work-in mobilised workers not only in west Scotland but in the entire country and £200,000-worth of donations flooded in from abroad. That equates to approximately £3.1M in today’s figures!
Their ‘Right to Work’ campaign saved the jobs of hundreds of workers and challenged the very ethos of the Edward Heath government, which decreed that "lame duck" industries like UCS should not be bailed out with taxpayers' money. The continuing existence of two shipyards in the upper Clyde is living testimony to the actions of Jimmy and his fellow shop stewards.
Although Jimmy left the shipyards many a year ago to utilise his media skills in television and journalism he was always to remain a doughty fighter for the shipbuilding industry in Scotland and had always been an inspiration for me in my time as a trade union activist.
In 1999 I had the pleasure of working with Jimmy in pushing for an industrial policy for the Shipbuilding and Marine Sector in Scotland and after a seminar on the subject, held at the Teacher Building in Glasgow, I enjoyed his company over a few drinks in a nearby pub. He was a warm, charismatic man with an affectionate smile and a sparkle in his eye. We enjoyed a wide ranging chat and shared a discussion on Kazakhstan of all places. I had a friend from there and Jimmy had broadcast a television programme from the country as part of a series he did on the former Soviet Union. Jimmy was a well read, self-taught intellectual and philosopher. He died after a varied and full life at the age of 78 earlier this week. Scotland will be a much poorer place without him.
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