David Kirkwood, known to all as ‘Big Davey’, was one of the most famous figures of Red Clydeside, a Parkhead engineer whose fight for the rights of the working man saw him deported from his own city during the First World War and arrested at the Battle of George Square. He went on to spend nearly thirty years in Parliament.
A Parkhead engineer
Kirkwood was born in Parkhead, in the East End of Glasgow, in 1872, the son of a labourer. He left school at twelve and, at fourteen, began an engineering apprenticeship at Beardmore’s great Parkhead Forge. Converted to socialism by reading Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, he joined the Independent Labour Party and rose to become the convenor of the shop stewards at the Forge, a story bound up with the history of trade unionism on the Clyde.
The deportation
When war came, Kirkwood became treasurer of the Clyde Workers’ Committee, which fought the wartime laws that tied engineers to their works and the ‘dilution’ of skilled labour by unskilled hands. In March 1916, after a strike at Parkhead, he and five other shop stewards were seized in the night and deported from Glasgow to Edinburgh, a heavy-handed act that made him famous across the country. It is a key episode in the tale of Red Clydeside.
The Battle of George Square
In January 1919 Kirkwood was at the heart of the strike for a forty-hour week, and on ‘Bloody Friday’, amid the rioting in George Square, he was batoned to the ground and arrested. Tried for incitement to riot, he was acquitted, and the image of his arrest became one of the enduring pictures of Red Clydeside.
Westminster and the Queen Mary
In 1922 Kirkwood was elected a Member of Parliament, one of the Clydesiders who went south with such fanfare, and he held his seat for nearly thirty years. Among his proudest achievements was helping to persuade Cunard to resume building the great liner Queen Mary on the Clyde during the Depression, bringing work back to the yards, one of the famous ships built on the Clyde.
Big Davey
He told his own story in a vivid autobiography, My Life of Revolt, in 1935. On leaving the Commons in 1951 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kirkwood, and he died in 1955, aged eighty-two, one of the last of the great figures of Clydeside politics.
Related questions
Who was David Kirkwood?
A Glasgow engineer and trade unionist, a leading figure of Red Clydeside, who was deported from the city in 1916 and later served nearly thirty years as a Member of Parliament.
Why was David Kirkwood deported?
In 1916, as a wartime shop steward at Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge, he and five others were deported from Glasgow to Edinburgh after a strike over the dilution of skilled labour.
What did David Kirkwood do for Clyde shipbuilding?
He helped persuade Cunard to resume building the liner Queen Mary on the Clyde during the Depression, bringing much-needed work back to the shipyards.
What is David Kirkwood’s autobiography?
My Life of Revolt, published in 1935, a vivid account of his rise from the Parkhead Forge through the struggles of Red Clydeside to Parliament.