ON SATURDAY March 12, the touring Townsend Theatre production Yes, Yes, UCS came to Clydebank. 

The Golden Friendship Community Hall was a very welcoming venue for a day school commemorating 50 years of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in (1971-72) followed by the theatre performance in the evening. 

Bringing together UCS veterans, their families, members of the local community and the trade union movement, the day was informative, but also inspirational.

I still hear the confident and optimistic voices of Janie and Heather, the two actors in the evening Townsend Theatre production, singing together in a representation of August 18 1971 UCS solidarity demonstration at Glasgow Green: “Come with us, run with us, we are going to change the world!”

With women at the centre of the Townsend Theatre production, we reflected during the day school too on women’s role in the magnificent action taken in 1971, when workers at UCS took the decision to organise a “work-in” in response to the decision of the Conservative government at Westminster to refuse the financial support requested.

As the speeches were being made in the House of Commons on June 15 1971, trade unions, journalists, local councillors and members of the local communities, organised two trains from Glasgow to London, arriving at 6am the following day. Underwriting much of the cost was Clydebank Town Council, through its the Common Good Fund. 

The STUC was right behind the UCS stewards, and the message right from the start was that the future of all the yards on the Clyde had to be considered together, and was about the Scottish economy, and its impact across the country.

While the delegation met with a completely disinterested response from the Westminster government, the communities and labour movement in Scotland were organising.

A massive demonstration took place on Friday June 18 in Glasgow, with estimates of over 40,000 people gathering there. Walkouts and a half-day strike affected many workplaces.

And women were there, at the heart of the action. John Kay recalled: “At the two major demonstrations in Glasgow, there were spontaneous stoppages in all kinds of industries. Workers just walked out. I vividly remember the women from Wills tobacco factory singing their own songs on the way.”

While a broad coalition across Scottish society was built quickly, and the UCS Shop Stewards Committee continued to argue for investment in the yards, preparations were also being made for the work-in. 

It is believed that this suggestion was made at an early mass meeting by a member of the Shop Stewards Committee, Sammy Barr, convener at Scotstoun. 

With a full order book, and a skilled workforce, on which many other industries depended, the response to the Conservative government was strong and heartfelt. 

By July 29, when the closure was announced and liquidators engaged, the workforce was ready for the work-in.

Although women were not employed in the yards in great numbers, those who were there, were fully involved. Linda Hammill worked in stock control. 

Linda, retired and now in her sixties, spoke powerfully at the day school in Clydebank on Saturday, sharing her memories, conveying her enthusiasm and commitment at the time. During the work-in, the mass meetings kept everyone up to date and involved. 

Linda spoke of the energy, the laughter, the hope on the faces of the marchers on the huge demonstration that summer. Linda became a shop steward, and she told us how the experiences at UCS 1971-72 had stood her in good stead throughout her life.

With the “right to work” as a key slogan for the UCS dispute, the impact of closure on families and communities was picked up too in another slogan that Linda recalled: “Idle cranes don’t feed the weans.”

At the day school UCS veterans Jimmy Cloughley and Davy Cooper recounted some of their experiences and memories of the Shop Stewards Committee, referencing Jimmy Airlie, Jimmy Reid, and Sammy Barr throughout. 

The decision to fight for all four yards was crucial and the jobs that were saved when the government accepted defeat, had a long-lasting impact on the Clyde and more widely. 
 
The STUC held its first ever recall annual Congress in August 1971, in Partick Burgh Halls. It then went on to convene a committee of inquiry that September, and a Scottish Assembly which was held in February 1972. 

That assembly brought together trade unionists with civic society, churches, political parties, local authorities in a way that had not been seen before. 

This approach, a voice for the Scottish people, went on to shape the emerging cross-party and civic society organising for a Scottish Parliament. 

By the 1990s we can also see the impact of women organising in that campaign. A proposal, originally from the STUC women’s committee, for 50/50 representation of women and men in the new Parliament, rapidly gained support. 

While the first Scottish Parliament did not quite achieve that, dependent on political parties changing historic approaches to political representation, the positive action taken by Scottish Labour in particular did ensure that the first Parliament sitting in 1999, far better reflected our society and labour movement, a Parliament with over 37 per cent female MSPs.

The Golden Friendship Hall in Clydebank on Saturday March 12 was filled with those representing the legacy of the UCS work-in. 

Families, communities, trade unionists, local politicians — including members of Sammy Barr’s family, daughters June and Brenda, and granddaughter Lisa McGovern. 

Brenda Carson spoke of that legacy, and of her own experience as a convener at the whisky bond in Drumchapel, and recent chair of the STUC women’s committee, encouraging women to speak up for their rights at work, and acting as a powerful advocate on their behalf. 

Ten years earlier, marking the 40th anniversary of the UCS work-in, Pat Milligan was quoted as saying: “The struggle would have been birds flying on one wing if the women had not been involved. They were at the heart of the communities. The women — the partners, the mothers, the lovers, the sisters, everybody — did it: they transformed the struggle. They took imagination. That carried the baton forward. It couldn’t have happened without them.”  
 
Ann Henderson is former assistant secretary of the STUC, and former secretary to STUC women’s committee.