Musicman 1
Jimmy Reid, second from the right, leads a march through Glasgow city centre in 1971
It was the speech that confirmed him as the greatest Scottish orator of
his time and shaped the thinking of a generation of students.
Jimmy
Reid’s Glasgow University address, in accepting the honour of being appointed
Rector, was reprinted verbatim in the New York Times. The paper described it as
“the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address”. Many
of his political peers drew reference to his words, delivered in 1972, in the
glowing tributes paid to Reid following his death this week.
Here,
we reprint his moving acceptance speech in full along with analysis of what made
it such a stirring address.
"Alienation
is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social
problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual
circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us
for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more
pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by
alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind
economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people
excluded from the processes of decision making.
The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with
justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own
destinies.
Many
may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to
articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their
social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways by different
people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal
anti-social behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those
young people who want to opt out of society, by drop outs, the so-called
maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society
through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course it would be wrong to say it was the
sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them
than is generally recognised.
From
the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men
... to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable
Society
and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It
alienates some from humanity. It partially dehumanises some people, makes them
insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and
grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well adjusted. It
is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society
is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else.
They
remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He
was a farmer in the American Mid West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care,
social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an
enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing
their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he
bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came
from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful
non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard
enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong
hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think,
have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.
It
is easy and tempting to hate such people. However it is wrong. They are as much
products of society and a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the
poor drop out. They are losers. They have lost essential elements of our common
humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service
to his fellow men and women.
The
big challenge to our civilisation is not OZ, a magazine I haven’t even seen
let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too
permissive. Any society which, for
example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive
for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is
generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem.
It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge
we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and
devalues human relations. Let me give two examples from contemporary experience
to illustrate the point.
Recently
on television I saw an advert. The scene is a banquet. A gentleman is on his
feet proposing a toast. His speech is full of phrases like “this full-bodied
specimen”. Sitting beside him is a young, buxom woman. The image she projects
is not pompous but foolish. She is visibly preening herself, believing that she
is the object of this bloke’s eulogy. Then he concludes – “and now I give
...” then a brand name of what used to be described as Empire sherry. The
woman is shattered, hurt and embarrassed. Then the laughter. Derisive and cruel
laughter. The real point, of course, is this. In this charade, the viewers were
obviously expected to identify not with the victim but with her tormentors.
The
other illustration is the widespread, implicit acceptance of the concept and
term, the rat race. The picture it conjures up is one where we are scurrying
around scrambling for position, trampling on others, back-stabbing, all in
pursuit of personal success. Even genuinely intended friendly advice can
sometimes take the form of someone saying to you, “Listen, you look after
number one”. Or as they say in London, “Bang the bell, Jack, I’m on the
bus”.
‘To
the students I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values
and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats.
We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in
society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around
you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise
your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before
you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The
price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as
Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
suffer the loss of his soul?”
Profit
is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity.
From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a giveaway. It’s
more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. The power structures
that have inevitably emerged from this approach threaten and undermine our
hard-won democratic rights. The whole process is towards the centralisation and
concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. The facts are there for all who
want to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch
of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise
a power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of
democracy.
Government
by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major
economic decision making by the people for the people. This is not simply an
economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question for whoever
takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the
social priorities of that society.
From
the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success
is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming
tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your
accountants’ books.
To
appreciate fully the inhumanity of this situation, you have to see the hurt and
despair in the eyes of a man suddenly told he is redundant without provision
made for suitable alternative employment, with the prospect in the west of
Scotland, if he is in his late forties or fifties, of spending the rest of his
life in the Labour Exchange. Someone, somewhere has decided he is unwanted,
unneeded, and is to be thrown on the industrial scrap heap. From the very depth
of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business
or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.
The
concentration of power in the economic field is matched by the centralisation of
decision making in the political institutions of society. The power of
Parliament has undoubtedly been eroded over past decades with more and more
authority being invested in the Executive. The power of local authorities has
been and is being systematically undermined. The only justification I can see
for local government is as a counterbalance to the centralised character of
national government.
Local
government is to be restructured. What an opportunity, one would think, for
decentralising as much power as possible back to local communities. Instead the
proposals are for centralising local government. It’s once again a blueprint
for bureaucracy, not democracy. If these proposals are implemented, in a few
years when asked “Where do you come from?”, I can reply: “The Western
Region”. It even sounds like a hospital board.
‘It
stretches from Oban to Girvan and eastwards to include most of Glasgow
conurbation. As in other matters, I must ask the politicians who favour these
proposals – where and how in your calculations did you quantify the value of a
community? Or a community life? Of a sense of belonging? Of the feeling of
identification? These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer. Such human
considerations do not feature in their thought processes.
Everything
that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the
role of the people, to miniaturise man. I can understand how attractive this
prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in
their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in
a filing cabinet under “M” for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of
some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as
near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.
If
modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let’s make our
wealth producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social
accountability. Let’s gear our society to social need, not personal greed.
Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that
in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the
underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.
Even
this is not enough. To measure social progress purely by material advance is not
enough. Our aim must be the enrichment of the whole quality of life. It requires
a social and cultural, or if you wish, a spiritual transformation of our
country. A necessary part of this must be the restructuring of the institutions
of government and where necessary, the evolution of additional structures so as
to involve the people in the decision making processes of our society. The
so-called experts will tell you that this would be cumbersome or marginally
inefficient. I am prepared to sacrifice a margin of efficency for the value of
the people’s participation. Anyway, in the longer term, I reject this
argument.
To
unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them
responsibility. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared
to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of
our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have
contributed to their fellow human beings. This is a personal tragedy. It’s a
social crime. The flowering of each individual’s personality and talents is
the pre-condition for everyone’s development.
In
this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is
accompanied as it must be with full employment, then the leisure time available
to man will be enormously increased. If that is so, then our whole concept of
education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for
life, not solely for work or a profession. The creative use of leisure, in
communion with, and in service to our fellow human beings can and must become an
important element in self-fulfilment.
‘Universities
must be in the forefront of development, must meet social needs and not lag
behind them. It is my earnest desire that this great University of Glasgow
should be in the vanguard initiating changes and setting the example for others
to follow. Part of our educational process must be the involvement of all
sections of the university on the governing bodies. The case for student
representation is unanswerable. It is inevitable.
My
conclusion is to reaffirm what I hope and certainly intend to be the spirit
permeating this address. It’s an affirmation of faith in humanity. All that is
good in man’s heritage involves recognition of our common humanity, an
unashamed acknowledgement that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a
poem that technically was not his best, yet captured the spirit.
In
“Why should we idly waste our prime,” he writes:
“The
golden age, we’ll then revive, each man shall be a brother,
In
harmony we all shall live and till the earth together,
In
virtue trained, enlightened youth shall move each fellow creature,
And
time shall surely prove the truth that man is good by nature”.
It’s
my belief that all the factors to make a practical reality of such a world are
maturing now. I would like to think that our generation took mankind some way
along the road towards this goal. It’s a goal worth fighting for.
‘We
are not wildcats … the real wildcats are in No 10" (10 Downing St. ...the
home of the then British Government)
.......................................................
Jimmy
Reid also famously used powerful rhetoric as he addressed striking workers at
Upper Clyde Shipbuilders on July 30, 1971.
The
following are extracts:
The
world is witnessing the first of a new tactic on behalf of workers. This is the
first campaign of its kind in trade unionism. We are not going to strike. We are
not even having a sit-in strike.
“The
shop stewards representing the workers are in control of this yard. Nobody and
nothing will come in and nothing will go out without our permission. The
security officers have been told that and they accept it. The gateman is there.
We’ll take the decisions with your endorsement, that determines what comes in
or out of this yard.
“Let
there be no illusions. There is no guarantee that any unit of UCS will survive
these butchers. And if there is a yard survives they will have to grovel and go
on their hands and knees to the Government. The security men are doing what we
tell them. The management are not interfering. I’m sure they support us
privately.
“The
liquidator can do what he likes – but we are not accepting any redundancies in
any yard.
“Everybody
talks about rights. There’s a basic elementary right involved here. That’s
our right to work. We are taking over the yards because we refuse to accept that
faceless men, or any group of men in Whitehall or anyone else can take decisions
that devastate our livelihoods with impunity.
“We
are not strikers. We are responsible people and we will conduct ourselves with
dignity and discipline. We want to work. We are not wild cats. The real wild
cats are in 10 Downing Street as represented by this Tory Government. And there
will be no hooliganism. There will be no vandalism. There will be no bevvying.
“It
is our responsibility to conduct ourselves with dignity and with maturity.
“We
don’t only build ships, we build men. They (the Government) have taken on the
wrong people and we will fight. We will now take all the decisions. You can call
us Upper Clyde Shipyard Workers Unlimited.”
Jimmy Reid (9 July 1932 – 10 August 2010)