Claud Lambie - The Clydebank Activist

Claud was the son of Claude Lambie & Marion Paterson Leishman of the

Glassford Lambies, Born 25 November 1899 in Shettleston, Lanarkshire.

He married Elizabeth Nelson on 27 September 1920 in Old or West Kilpatrick,

Dunbartonshire. They started a family with the arrival of Claude, Margaret and Marion.

Of all the problems in early 20th-century Scotland, Glasgow housing was

perhaps the most prominent. The housing problem had many guises. The condition of buildings was often poor,overcrowding was rampant,and sanitation was non-existent. To make matters worse, the housing was frequently situated near

 rank smelling, dirty, noisy industries. In this context, the drastic rent

increases of 1915 proved massively unpopular.

With many men fighting at the front, the women left behind were seen as

vulnerable by landlords, and massive rent increases became the norm. Existing tenants who could no longer afford the rent were evicted,causing widespread alarm among the (now) mainly female populace. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where

 shipbuilding was the main occupation, the women organised an effective

opposition to the rent increases.

The main figure in the movement was Mary Barbour, and the protesters soon

became known as "Mrs.Barbour's Army". Barbour went on after the war to become the first female councillor in Glasgow, and a lifelong campaigner for better living conditions.

The usual method of preventing eviction was to block the entrance to the

tenement. Photographs of the time show hundreds of people participating. If the sheriff officers managed to get as far as the entrance, another tactic was to humiliate them - pulling down their trousers was a commonly used method.

The mood of the placards carried by the protesters was that the landlords

were unpatriotic. A common message was that while their men were fighting on the front line the landlords were in league with the enemy e.g. "While my father is a prisoner in Germany the landlord is attacking us at home".

The strikes soon spread and became such an overwhelming success, moving out

from Glasgow and on to other cities throughout the UK, that the government, on 27 November 1915,introduced legislation to restrict rents to the pre-war level. This helped but did not resolve the problem.

Claud was a 23 year old unemployed riveter who became a lodger in one of Sir

Robert McAlpine & Sons tenements in Crown Avenue in 1922. He was a leading member of the Clydebank Vigilante Committee (he informed the Constable Commission in March 1925 that half of all tenants in the Burgh were fellow

members) and was a trusted lieutenant to Andrew Leiper in the Clydebank

Housing Association (CHA).

In 1925, shortly before the collapse of the Rent Strike, Lambie was sent to

London by the CHA to plead the strikers' cause with the Scottish Secretary. Lambie succeeded Andrew Leiper as organiser of the Clydebank Housing Association after the death of the latter in July 1927. This was a period when the area was known as 'Red Clydeside'.

After his involvement in trying to right the wrongs imposed on the area,

Claud, together with many of the Rent Strike leaders was evicted and blacklisted on Clydeside. He could not get a job or housing. They were forced to live in a tent in the middle of Clydebank Municipal Park while others lived in old converted

railway wagons. One by one these activists slowly disappeared from Clydeside.

In desperation, Claud moved his family to England and settled in Coventry.

Here they had another child - David Leishman Lambie in 1941.

Claud died in Coventry in 1989 at the age of 90 years.