In 1914, with the men away at war or working in the shipyards, the landlords thought they would have no difficulty evicting tenants who were unable to pay crippling rent rises. They didn’t account for Mary Barbour. She galvanised the women in Govan, Scotland who came together to protect each other. By banging on saucepans they would call for assistance as the bailiffs approached. This is her story and one that will resonate with those in social housing today.

Mary Barbour was born on the 22nd of February 1875 in the village of Kilbarchan. She was the third child of seven, her father was a carpet weaver. In 1887 the family moved to the village of Elderslie. Mary worked as a thread twister eventually becoming a carpet printer. The year 1896 saw her marry David Barbour and settle in the Govan Burgh of Glasgow. She joined and became an active member of the Kinning Park Co-operative Guild, The first to be established in Scotland

Glasgow Rent Strike & Women’s Peace Crusade

Mary joined the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Sunday School. The Glasgow rent strike during the first world war brought her to the forefront of local political activity. Because of large rent increases by the Landlords, the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association was born in 1914. It was in Govan that the first active résistance to rent increases appeared. Mary Barbour was instrumental in forming the South Govan Women’s Housing Association. As a working class housewife with two sons and her husband an engineer in the shipyards she was well qualified to be energetically engaged in all its activities from the organising of committees to the physical prevention of evictions and the hounding of the Sheriff’s Officers. This type of activity soon spread to the whole of the Clydeside area. The situation climaxed on the 17th of November 1915 with one of the largest demonstrations in Glasgow’s political history. Thousands of women marching with thousands of shipyard and engineering workers paraded through the streets of the city to the Glasgow Sheriff’s Court where the demonstration was near riot proportions. Out of this defiant stand came the “Rent Restriction Act” heralding in a change in the housing system of the city of Glasgow. The act also benefited tenants across the country. Mary’s involvement in this struggle had made her a working class hero in Govan and much further afield.

To read more about Mary Barbour and others like her, click the link below to visit Glasgow Caledonian University/Radical Glasgow. http://www.gcu.ac.uk/radicalglasgow/chapters/mary-barbour.html#Glasgow

Thanks to GCU for permission to publish from their web-site.

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