We on Setterday were pentin' And wi' heat were nearly fentin', When a message frae the gate was howled in style- " Christie, leave the paint-pots sittin', Send your men to lift a flittin' Up at the female quarters in the jile."
There were boxes, trunk, and crate, A piano, too, in state; They were heavy, and the stair was like a mile. When oor een wi' sweat were blinkin', We consoled oorselves wi' thinkin' There may be something in the bottle in the jile.
We wrestled, hugged, and worried, Heavy loads upstairs we hurried, 'And for reward we barely got a smile Noo wi' achin' banes we're sittin, Cursin' hard aboot the flittin' O' the lass than cam frae Ayr to Dundee Jile.
The Mother’s Plaint.
O, heavy is the burden That he bears upon his back, And heavy are my eyelids As I view the dreary track, And sore and heavy are the feet That tread the blood-red way, And heavy, heavy is my heart That waits and weeps to-day.
"Tis said they fight for justice With their bayonets and guns; Our lads are " God's own angels," And their foemen " Wicked Huns.!' But their mothers wait as sadly Far beyond the sweeping Rhine, And their hearts, like ours, would gladly Hail the dawn of peace sublime.
(In Chapel, male prisoners are partitioned off from females.)
We go on Sunday to the Church, And sit amongst the boys; The girls are on the other side, We tell that by the noise, The warders grim, our shepherds are, Perched on their seats to view The motley: flock of wayward sheep They watch the service through.
Of prayer, and chant, and sacred verse, The pastor spares he none; An' in his prayers confesses oft The rotten things we've done. ‘Twirls seem his God's a magistrate; Safe seated up on high, Who, when he hears the weekly tale, Must surely wink his eye.
A summary of war-like news Each Sunday morn provides, And parson's magisterial God Compelled is to take sides. He must become a God of War To help us smite the German, And so establish peace on earth By sword in place of sermon.
At last the service to a close The parson duly bringeth, And through the Chapel dolefully Jehovah’s praises ringeth, With pose affected, hands outstretched, He benediction utters; Methinks his love for fellow-men Amicted is with stutters.
Riveters on the Clyde circa 1930s some years after this poem is set.
In a tenement in Govan, Jimmie Bashthemin was bred; In conflict with the pavement, Hard and knobby grew his head. At school he was a marvel At forgetting what was taught: But his muscles grew in toughness In the battles that he fought.
School days over, Jimmie wended To a shipyard on the Clyde. Where the gentle art of rivetting He learned to ply with pride. "Two after three," “One after two,' Buck up that ruddy “boy”; His language, as his rivets, red The air around did dye.
Jimmie’s country went to war, But Jimmie kept on working, And growled at non-essential men For soldier duties shirking. He served his country good and well, And lifted mighty wages; And cursed and swore, and swot like Hell O'er Northclife's picture pages.
One morning at the shipyard gate His mates, in great elation, Told Jim he was the final hope And backbone of the nation. Our fate depended now, 'twas said, On who could hammer quickest, As victory in war must go To those whose heads are thickest.
Communists in London celebrating May Day in 1928 (www.rarehistoricalphotos.com)
‘Prison Rhymes’ was first published in 1919 order to raise money for Bob’s nascent Prohibition and Reform Party. This organisation, which mixed his fervour for the temperance movement with that of socialism, formed after he his cut his teeth working for Edwin Scrymgeour’s Scottish Prohibition Party. The reason for the split was simply because of Scrymgeour’s ‘religious prattling’. He was too much of a ‘Holy Joe’ and that was an anathema to Bob.
However, that’s not to say that Bob rejected the Bible entirely. He became more and more familiar with it after long spells in jail with the good book as compulsory reading. In his opinion the Bible could be considered, “a very valuable book for left wing propagandists.” Given that several of the verses in ‘Prison Rhymes’ are socialist adaptations straight from the pages of ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern’ it seems that Bob wasn’t averse to a rousing singsong either.
Today’s poem, as is obvious, from the title is a rewriting of the popular Christmas carol. However rather than the birth of the Messiah it celebrates something closer to Bob’s heart- International Worker’s Day. In truth, this is one of the weaker poems in the collection. However, I do think it’s worth reproducing indicative as it is of the links between faith and communism.
Tune- ‘O Come All Ye Faithful.’
Lo! on the greensward, romp the men and maidens, Oh come ye that labour For mankind’s advancement, O haste ye, O haste ye, afield today, O, come let us be joyful, O, come let us be joyful, O, come let us be joyful, This May Day.
Long, long have ye laboured O’er the dismal valley, Through swamp and morass, a darksome way: Now shines the sun forth, lightning fairer pathway. O, come let us be joyful, O, come let us be joyful, O, come let us be joyful, This May Day.
Sing, sing in glad chorus Of toilsome journey ended, Of light, love, and laughter upon our way; No master serve we, each to each is brother. O, come let us be joyful, O, come let us be joyful, O, come let us be joyful, This May Day.
After the last two posts in this series I’ve decided to start putting the poems up here in the order they appear in Bob’s pamphlet. The collection opens with his version of Burns’ ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’ which appeared in the previous ‘Prison Rhymes’ post. Next up is this anti-capitalist effort. Just to clarify for younger readers – the LSD referred to in the poem is ‘ Pounds, Shillings and Pence’ rather than anything psychedelic. This is Bob Stewart we’re talking about, not Aldous Huxley.
Alan Stewart.
Dividends Almighty.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Dividends Almighty; Early in the morning the workers toil for Thee, Body, brain, and heart and soul, sacrifice to win Thee; Oh! thou malignant, powerful L. S. D.
Holy! Holy! Holy! modern saints adore Thee, Burying the truth and right beneath Thy golden sea, Prophets of the warring sects in unity uphold Thee, Oh! thou malignant, powerful L. S. D.
Holy! Holy! Holy! kings and emperors court Thee: The fruitful earth they drench with blood in greedy chase of Thee, The lover from the maiden conscripted is to guard Thee, Oh! thou malignant, powerful L. S. D.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Dividends Almighty! Although the eyes of working class Thy glories cannot see, Toilers soon in every land will rise in wrath to smite Thee, And end Thy dominion, powerful L. S. D.
There is a wonderful scene in the 1981 film ‘Reds’, the unlikely Hollywood epic about the American left and the impact of the Russian Revolution. Warren Beatty plays John Reed, the author of the definitive eyewitness account of the events in Petrograd ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’. Early on the film, Reed has been invited to speak at a Democrat fundraising dinner about the conflict that has recently engulfed Europe and the question as to whether America should get involved. In their evening dress the attendees drip wealth, although it’s concerned, liberal wealth. Reed is asked, “What is the war for?” The audience are quietly expectant awaiting an impassioned speech about fighting for freedom. They are disappointed. There is silence. Reed, shuffles awkwardly to his feet, looks around the room and replies, “Profits,” before sitting down. It was just such a position that Bob took when addressing a large crowd in Dundee on the day the First World War broke out – though he put it less succinctly but perhaps more forcefully:
“Whatever else may transpire in the coming war, you will all learn in the course of it or in its aftermath that it is a capitalist war. It is not worth sacrificing the bones of your domestic cat, or your pet canary, even less those of your husbands, brothers and sons.”
Bob recognised that many ordinary people joined up for the slaughter not due to patriotic fervour but simply because a soldier’s wage together with the separation allowance for wives was better than a labourer’s earnings. He also saw that the 1915 Munitions of War Act had the effect of ‘handcuffing the workers’ eroding what little employment rights trade unions had fought for. As the war progressed and the supply of young factory and agricultural workers used as cannon fodder began to dry up the government began conscription. Inevitably Bob involved himself with a myriad of organisations in the movement against this and also inevitably, though pushing forty, he was himself eventually conscripted in 1916. Those who refused to fight were tried in civil courts and handed over to the military authorities and if they still refused they were court martialled and sent to prison. He didn’t get out until 1919 months after the war ended. In that time there were three further court martials and he got to know Wormwood Scrubs, Calton and Dundee Gaols and the cells at Edinburgh Castle very well. As I’ve said elsewhere on this site these articles aren’t about hero worship but Bob’s stand does make me proud.
During this time Bob wrote the poems which would be collected in ‘Prison Rhymes’ which were sold to raise funds for his socialist National Prohibition and Reform Party. The photographs that accompany this piece are of a postcard featuring one of the verses included in that pamphlet, an anti-war version of Robert Burns’ ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’. Many thanks to Graham Ogilvy who brought them to our attention on Twitter.
“…the author of these verses -Mr Robert Stewart- the man of lucid and terse prose, the very matter of fact economist, having the leisure of the prison cell thrust upon him, turns to Rhyme, and with apt and happy effect expresses not merely his hatred of War, but his whole-souled antagonism to the basic cause of War. Because of his trenchant condemnation of the Capitalistic system and of the Capitalistic Governments whose machinations had inevitably produced the terrible holocaust of death, Mr Stewart was arrested in December 1916, and remained imprisoned in guard-room or gaol until April 1919. But stone walls and iron bars can only hold the body captive, and the spirit of the man never flinched and never faltered-a fact that may be gathered from a perusal of his verses. two passions seem to me to inspire them all-a passion of veneration of love for humanity and a passion of hatred towards every circumstance, convention and condition which operates to the detriment of the human race.”
G. Anderson from the Foreword to Robert Stewart’s Prison Rhymes (1919).
When the First World War began Bob Stewart spent most of his energies agitating against it. By 1916 the government had passed the Military Service Acts which imposed conscription on all males of military age with few exceptions. Eventually, Bob was called up to fight. He refused and so this led to a series of court martials and a large amount of time spent at his majesty’s pleasure in Wormwood Scrubs, Calton Gaol, Edinburgh Castle and Dundee Gaol. He was eventually released in 1919 several months after the end of hostilities.
Surviving copies are rare and few come up for sale. I saw one advertised at the end of last year but £650 seemed a bit steep and I didn’t have it spare. In the late eighties my brother rang up the Communist Party of Great Britain to ask if they had one and they kindly sent a photocopy which is the only version we’ve ever seen. I imagine the original is now in the People’s History Museum in Manchester with the rest of the CPGB archive.
For the most part the poems are written in Scots dialect and are largely concerned with protest, socialist agitation and reflections on the isolation of prison life. I’m not making any great claims for the collection as poetry but it is a good example of popular socialist pamphleteering . It was published in 1919 in order to raise funds for Bob’s party – the Socialist Prohibition Fellowship (formerly the Prohibition and Reform Party). As Bob explains in his memoirs:
“…meetings packed out Sunday nights in the Foresters Hall. They were always packed out, with hundreds left outside. Invariably there was a queue to get in an hour before starting time to make sure of a seat. my Prison Rhymes now became a best seller. So with the money from the collections and the booklet we were doing very well financially.”
Bob Stewart, Breaking the Fetters, Lawrence & Wishart 1967
I’ll be posting some of the poems on here over the next few months. The first one, ‘Little Nan’ is about Bob’s daughter Annie Walker Stewart or Aunt Nan as my father knew her. She would have been six at the time of publication and the poem reflects Bob’s sadness of being separated from her for most of the preceding three years. Like all of Bob’s children she would eventually become a committed member of the CPGB though Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 together with matters closer to home brought all that crashing down.
Breaking the Fetters 