And there will be no BEVVEYING

My lum is fair reeking,

I enjoy writing this little blog, it is of course not going to win any Pulitzer prizes but I have a bit of fun doing it and to be honest, it gives me something to think about. But any kicks I get from it are multiplied ten fold when someone leaves a little comment, so thanks to Mr Michael R and any one else that has over the past few months. At the very least it lets me know someone reads it from time to time, but to think it motivates a person to think and then do something with that thought is really quite thrilling.

Its been three months or so with my anti-apple HTC Desire Android phone, so I think a user update will be of public service, and you never know, if someone from HTC or Google reads it, they might leave a comment too, though in this particular instance, free stuff would be better. Lets get one thing out the way first, I love it. Even in the face of that i-phone 4 and its "this changes everything, again" advertising slogan. Well, they got that right, it has changed everything, now we know Apple can make an arse of things too, and perhaps they are not all cloned geniuses.

Anyway, back to the HTC. I love the Apps, though a little too many of those useless novelty apps beginning to sneak into the store, Google apps are generally brilliant and well thought out and easy to use. I'm loving Latitude, though I've only got one pal listed on it, still it will tell me when we're close by, and we can wave across the road at each other and text hello. Speaking of texting, the only little gripe I have is about predictive text. On numerous occasions i have sent away a message, placing perfect trust in the predictive numskulls inside my handset, only to look at it later and think, It must be like receiving a message from the policeman in Allo, Allo. The other little negative stoking my lum is the battery life, it lasts a day, but not with bluetooth, or Wi-Fi on. But all in all, I like it and would recommend it to anyone.

Jimmy Reid passed away today. Most I expect wont really have noticed, or even know who I'm talking about but he was perhaps one of the most admirable Scotsmen of the last 50 years.

Back in the early 70s, when the nationalised shipbuilding yards of the upper Clyde were threatened with closure he led a very unusual, and very successful industrial action that had Scottish socialism and Scottish pragmatism stamped all over it.

Instead of organising a strike, or a sit in, or a go slow, or a work to rule, all those ultimately destructive and confrontational actions that went so far later in the decade to crippling the UK's manufacturing capacity, he led a work in.

He knew that if he led the workers out the yard, they would lock the gates and that would be that, what Jimmy Reid argued was that the yards were viable, and they were mistaken in wanting to close them and he set out to show them that the Scottish working man could do just that in an inspiring and disciplined way.

As shop steward he addressed the thousands of at risk shipbuilders, it was televised and went on to be broadcast around the world. I was too young to remember it at the time, but even years later I was still aware of it, and I think its this more than any other thing that has left a slight socialist mark on me, one that I'm pleased with, even proud of in this day and age. So, he stands up in front of these hard arsed welders and grafters to tell them what the union was going to do.

"We are not going on strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. Nobody and nothing will come in and nothing will go out without our permission. And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism and there will be no bevveying, because the world is watching us"

And it worked, the government relented, changed their plans and some say the only reason there are still ships built in Govan and Scotstoun today is because of what Jimmy Reid inspired and the positive action he led the people to take.

In some ways he filled a very Scottish brief, working class, from humble beginnings, rooted in the poverty of pre-war industrial Glasgow, but a man who learns, expresses himself intellectually for the common good of the put upon, going on to become one of our finest journalists, broadcasters and even philosphers, yet never forgetting why.

I've nicked a piece from the BBC website tonight, in an unprecedented step for the Reeking Lum, I'll paste it below, hopefully because I've paid my TV licence I'm entitled too, it paints a little colour of what went on in Govan in 1971. Apologies for the multitude of fonts.

RIP Jimmy Reid, lang may yer lum reek.

Jimmy Reid brought the British Government's attention to the Scottish shipbuilding industry by organising a work-in of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971.

The communist shop-steward helped to reverse the decision of the British Government to close the ship yards. Edward Heath took a U-turn and announced a £35 million injection of cash into the yards at Govan, Scotstoun and Linthouse.

Within three years, shipbuilding on the Upper Clyde had received around £101 million of public grants and credits, with £20 million going to the UCS.

In a revealing interview to the BBC programme UK Confidential, Reid explains how he gained support for his cause from celebrities such as John Lennon and how he went about organising the campaign.

Why did you go for the work-in in 1971?

8,500 jobs in the yard were at stake with the closure of UCS

Because it was the only logical effective form of opposition to closure. Strike action was unthinkable, we would have left the factory, the yards and that would have delighted the government because they would have put padlocks on the gates. So that was out.

We did consider a second strike but I reckon it was far too negative that, and we had an enormous order book, plenty of work and the logical thing was, why don't we work-in, refuse to accept redundancy and work.

It seems to me talking to former government ministers from that time, you really surprised the government with what you did. Did you really expect to surprise them as much as you did?
Yes I've no doubt that the form of the struggle that we had adopted took everything, everyone aback, and not only that but the way we elucidated, we explained our case. For example when asked; "what if the police came in, what are you going to do?" We won't resist, we are not violent, they will need to come and drag us out. We would only resist in that respect.
You're talking about eight thousand workers, overwhelmingly family men with kids.
This was an image that I think the chief constables told the government that they couldn't guarantee that their members, that is the policemen, would carry that out, because it would alienate the whole community.

Why did you not buy the government's argument that - and I'm just putting their argument, they said, this is not commercially viable?
Their case was untrue. The facts didn't tally.
We had agreements we had reached about the interchangeability of certain work grades and all the rest of it that were quite significantly ahead of anything else in British shipbuilding, and so we had these things going.
Now the truth of the matter is, as the Ridley report clearly shows, this was Nicholas Ridley in the opposition. He had produced this report, secret, confidential, and it suggested a number in the shadow Cabinet including Heath and Margaret Thatcher who was a minister at the time, saying, we should butcher the Upper Clyde and sell its assets cheaply to those in the Lower Clyde.
The significant difference was that the Upper Clyde was publicly owned, and the Lower Clyde was privately owned.
And Ridley as we all now know, and everyone knows but we knew it at the time, was a Thatcherite before the term was coined. And that's why when you look back to these times, we had been sacrificed at the altar of a political ideology. It was a political ideology of Thatcherism before Margaret Thatcher embraced it.
Now you received support from across the world and I believe that one of the people you received support from was somebody you thought was a revolutionary. Can you tell me that story?
Yes we had a press conference. So you get this crowded press room and they're answering the questions and some of the stewards that were guarding the gate as it were, I don't mean guarding in any sense except making sure what was going on and what was going out was acceptable.

John Lennon supported the workers

So they come in and they said: "Hey Jimmy you've got a big wagon wheel out there of roses for you". I'd never received flowers from anybody, not the done thing in Clydeside for a man to get flowers and so I said: "Who's it from?" He says: "I don't know but there's a cheque here," and he looked and all he could see was Lennon, L-e-n-n-o-n. He said: "Lennon, some guy called Lennon".
One of the old communist shop stewards from Dumbarton, he says, "it cannae be Lenin, he's dead".

That's amazing, having pop stars supporting your campaign.
Well not only pop stars. It was people in the entertainment industry in general.
I think Jack Bruce came out of retirement to give a concert for us in London and Eric Clapton.
So stars together, put on a show for us in Glasgow, it was like a royal command performance, all coming and queuing.
But that's less important than the weekly contributions and children having little jumble sales at street corners and churches.
Believe it or not we actually got regular contributions from a Conservative party constituency association that thought we were right and the government was wrong and the money poured in, and then from abroad, all over Europe.