Red Clydeside - Rent Strikes

Rent Strikes

Of all the problems in early 20th-century Glasgow, housing was perhaps the most prominent. The housing problem had many guises: the condition of buildings was often poor, overcrowding was rampant, and sanitation was non-existent. And to make matters worse, the housing was frequently situated near rank-smelling, dirty and noisy industries. In this context, the drastic rent increases of 1915 proved massively unpopular.

With many men fighting at the front, the women left behind were seen as vulnerable by landlords, and massive rent increases became the norm. Existing tenants who could no longer afford the rent were evicted, causing widespread alarm among the (now) mainly female populace. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, the women organised an effective opposition to the rent increases, although men such as John Wheatley also played a role. The main figure in the movement was Mary Barbour, and the protesters soon became known as "Mrs. Barbour's Army". Barbour went on after the war to become the first female councillor in Glasgow, and a lifelong campaigner for better living conditions.

The usual method of preventing eviction was to block the entrance to the tenement. Photographs of the time show hundreds of people participating. If the sheriff officers managed to get as far as the entrance, another tactic was to humiliate them - pulling down their trousers was a commonly used method.

The mood of the placards carried by the protesters was that the landlords were unpatriotic. A common message was that while the men were fighting on the front line the landlords were in league with the enemy e.g. "While my father is a prisoner in Germany the landlord is attacking us at home".

The strikes soon spread and became such an overwhelming success, moving out from Glasgow and on to other cities throughout the UK, that the government, on 27 November 1915, introduced legislation to restrict rents to the pre-war level.