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James Reid (9 July 1932 – 10 August 2010) was a Scottish people trade union activist, orator, politician and journalist born in Govan, Glasgow. His role as spokesman and one of the leaders in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in between June 1971 and October 1972 attracted international recognition. He later served as Rector of the University of Glasgow and subsequently became a journalist and broadcaster. Formerly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Reid was later a member of the Labour Party. He moved on to supporting the Scottish Socialist Party in the late 1990s, then joined the Scottish National Party in 2005 and gave his full support to the idea of Scottish independence. He died in 2010 after a long illness.
In a speech to the workers Reid announced the beginning of workers' control of the shipyard and insisted on self-discipline while it was in force:
The occupation received support from across the world. There was a series of fundraising events, and foreign unions, celebrities such as John Lennon and Billy Connolly, and members of the public provided donations. The campaign was successful in persuading Heath to back down the following year, and the Clyde shipyards received £101million in public support over the following three years.
Reid also served as Rector of the University of Glasgow, having been elected to the post in 1971, largely on the back of his union activities. When he was installed as Rector he gave a speech that has become known as "the rat-race speech". The New York Times printed the speech in full and described it as "the greatest speech since Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address".
In the general election in February 1974 Reid stood for the Communist Party in Central Dunbartonshire, which was dominated by the town of Clydebank, against the sitting Labour member Hugh McCartney. Reid got 14.6 per cent of the votes cast, the best result for a Communist Party candidate in Britain for some time. It was a controversial campaign, as the ballot paper described Reid only as "Engineering Worker," which some thought was disguising his Communist identity. One Catholic priest gave a sermon advising his parishioners to vote only for candidates whose beliefs were consistent with Christian principles. In his speech at the count Reid described his opponents as "" in reference to their perceived Catholic nationalism. He stood again in October 1974, when his vote share went down to 8.7 per cent.
About a year after he left the CP Reid joined the Labour Party. He was Labour candidate in Dundee East in 1979, but lost to Gordon Wilson, then the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP). Writing in the aftermath of the election, Anthony Finlay stated in The Glasgow Herald that it was "only because the Labour Party was foolish enough to pick Jimmy Reid", that Wilson held the seat when all but one of the 10 other SNP MPs was defeated. The decision by Dundee East Constituency Labour Party to select him as its candidate was controversial, as he had been a party member for less than the two years normally expected.
Reid then became a journalist and broadcaster, writing opinion columns for various newspapers including the Daily Mirror, The Herald, The Sun and The Scotsman. He also presented an investigative series 'The Reid Report', for BBC Scotland. In 1985 he wrote and presented a series of documentaries entitled Reid About the USSR, for which his previous status within the Communist Party gave him unprecedented access. The series resulted in two . In 2000 Reid helped to establish the Scottish Left Review, a bimonthly publication. He also wrote a column in Tribune under the title "As I Please", previously used by George Orwell in the same magazine.
Reid was highly critical of the UK miners' strike (1984–1985) and its leader Arthur Scargill. In his newspaper column Reid argued that the working miners could not properly be referred to as strikebreakers, as no national ballot had been held and no local ballot had passed a resolution to strike: "A Scab labour is someone who participates in a vote in which the majority are for taking strike action and then refuses to honour the decision. If you are denied the right to vote, it is impossible to be a scab." Reid's attitude led to his coming under strong criticism from many former supporters in the Labour movement, and Mick McGahey described him as "Broken Reid".
In 2007 From Govan to Gettysburg, a play by Brian McGeachan about Reid's life, starring John Cairney, toured Scotland as part of celebrations of Jimmy Reid's 75th birthday.
After a private service in Rothesay his hearse was driven into Glasgow for a secular funeral service at the Govan Old Parish Church on 19 August. The cortege passed the BAE Systems Surface Ships yard in Govan, one of the shipyards saved after the collapse of UCS, where hundreds of workers had gathered outside in tribute. The funeral service was attended by notable figures including Ed Balls, Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown, Alex Salmond, Alex Ferguson and Billy Connolly.
Reid is survived by his wife Joan, their three daughters and their three granddaughters, one of whom, Joani Reid, was a Labour Party Councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham. Since the 2024 General Election, Joani Reid is the Labour Member of Parliament for East Kilbride and Strathaven.
The Jimmy Reid Foundation, a left-wing think tank and advocacy group, was established in his memory by the Editorial Board of the Scottish Left Review.
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