In January 1838 five leaders of the Glasgow cotton spinners’ union stood trial in Edinburgh on charges that included conspiracy and murder. The murder charge failed, but they were convicted of organising intimidation during a bitter strike and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia. The case caused a national sensation. To the mill owners and the authorities it was proof that unions had become violent conspiracies; to the growing working-class movement it was a political trial, and the spinners became martyrs alongside the Tolpuddle labourers of a few years before.
A strong union in a hard year
The cotton spinners of Glasgow and the surrounding towns had one of the strongest early unions in Britain. Theirs was skilled, well-paid work in the great cotton mills of Calton and Bridgeton, and their association had fought for wages and conditions for years.
In 1837 a commercial crisis hit Britain. Prices for manufactured goods collapsed, mills cut wages, and in the spring the spinners struck against a reduction. The strike lasted some three months, and miners and colliers in Lanarkshire also struck. With little relief available, thousands of families were reduced to destitution.
The shooting of John Smith
As the strike wore on, mill owners brought in new workers, known as "nobs", to replace the strikers, and some were attacked. On 22 July 1837 one of them, a spinner named John Smith, was shot dead in a Glasgow street. The masters offered a reward of £500 for information.
Within days, informers came forward to the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Archibald Alison, a determined opponent of trade unions. They told him that the union’s secret committee was behind a plot against new hands and employers, and that the committee would meet on the evening of 29 July in the Black Boy Tavern in the Gallowgate.
The raid on the Black Boy Tavern
That night Alison went to the tavern with the procurator fiscal, his chief sheriff officer, Captain Miller of the Glasgow police and about twenty constables. They climbed through a trapdoor to an upper room and found the committee of sixteen men seated round a table, with money spread before them. The men were called out by name one by one and arrested without a blow being struck. Alison later described the raid in his memoirs.
Two days later, on 31 July, the spinners met on Glasgow Green and voted to return to work on the masters’ terms.
The trial
Five men were brought to trial before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh: Thomas Hunter, Peter Hacket, Richard McNeil, James Gibb and William McLean. The trial ran from 3 to 11 January 1838, with the Lord Justice Clerk, David Boyle, presiding. The indictment had twelve charges, including illegal conspiracy and, against McLean, the murder of John Smith.
The judge told the jury that the murder charge was "involved in great doubt". After five hours, the jury found the murder and most other charges not proven. By a majority, it found the men guilty of forming an association to intimidate workers who would not follow its rules, of mobbing and molesting spinners at two mills, and of breaking into the house of a spinner, Thomas Donaghey, to force him to promise not to work. All five were sentenced to seven years’ transportation.
Uproar in Parliament
The sentence caused outrage among radicals and trade unionists across Britain. In February 1838 the radical MP Thomas Wakley raised the case in the House of Commons, arguing that the trial had been unfair and the sentence savage: in England, he said, the conduct proved would have carried at most a few months in prison. The Lord Advocate, John Murray, defended the Scottish courts. The Irish leader Daniel O’Connell successfully pressed instead for a wider inquiry into trade unions across the whole country, and a select committee on combinations of workmen was appointed later that year.
Legacy
The trial marked the end of the cotton spinners’ union as a major force and was a heavy blow to the early Scottish labour movement. It also fed into the Chartist agitation of the following years, in which Glasgow played a large part. Today the cotton spinners are remembered as one of the great episodes in Glasgow’s trade union history, in a line that runs from the Calton weavers of 1787 to the Radical War of 1820 and beyond.
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1837 | Commercial crisis; mill owners cut wages |
| Spring 1837 | Glasgow cotton spinners go on strike |
| 22 July 1837 | New hand John Smith shot dead in Glasgow |
| 29 July 1837 | Union committee arrested at the Black Boy Tavern, Gallowgate |
| 31 July 1837 | Spinners vote on Glasgow Green to return to work |
| 3 to 11 January 1838 | Trial of five leaders in Edinburgh |
| January 1838 | Murder charge not proven; five sentenced to seven years’ transportation |
| February 1838 | Case debated in the House of Commons; inquiry into trade unions agreed |
Related questions
What were the Glasgow cotton spinners convicted of?
Not murder, which was found not proven, but of forming an association to intimidate workers, mobbing and molesting spinners, and breaking into a spinner’s home.
What was their sentence?
Seven years’ transportation to Australia, a sentence that caused outrage among radicals and trade unionists.
Who was John Smith?
A spinner who took work during the 1837 strike and was shot dead in a Glasgow street on 22 July 1837. No one was convicted of his murder.
Where was the Black Boy Tavern?
In a close off the Gallowgate near Glasgow Cross, where the union’s committee was arrested on 29 July 1837.