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REFLECTIONS OF A CLYDE-BUILT MAN, immy Reid, Souvenir Press, pp166, £1.75 It is an open secret that Jimmy Reid, in resigning from the Communist Party n February 1976, put out feelers to join he infant Scottish Labour Party. His LP could not "contain" Reid; which is to pproach was rebuffed. In Sillars" view, the ay Sillars did not want Reid's popularity o create a rival leadership to his own. urther, Sillars was always against associating ith "losers"; he castigated Leith SIP for rganisating a public meeting with expelled abour MP Eddie Milne.
Reid's popularity is still evident ve years on from UCS. Recently in dinburgh, at a meeting called by the Robb aledon Shipyard Action Committee, there ere calls to co-opt Reid to the committee, as the only man in Scotland who can save ar jobs".
Such popularity, as is revealed in this sjointed collection of autobiographical etches and reprinted speeches, is a result a conscious attempt to break from the
CP and a genuine lovefor the West of Scotland working class the CP was betraying Reid explains, in vague impressions, his growing disenchantment with the Party even before UCS. He tells of his resignation as a CP fulltimer in 1969, and his return to the yards in an attempt to turn the party "outwards". For his pains, the archstalinists in the Scottish CP tried to expel him in 1972.
Yet nowhere in the book does Reid
develop a political critique of the Communist Party. His final resignation was precipitated when a "shameful decision was taken by a committee composed overwhelmingly of communists and lefts..... as a result workers were betrayed. But he cannot explain why the CP repeatedly acts in this way.
Which ultimately explains why Reid is indeed a loser. His air of sincerity won him popularity with a working class jaded by the apparatchiks of the Labour and Communist Parties. But sincerity is not enough. Heroic symbol as UCS was, the fight was lost, and lost amidst wheeling and dealing as bad as that which later provoked his resignation. Reid's failure in the recent AUEW clections is significant not just because of the much publicised allegations of ballot irregularities but also because he was able to lose nearly six thousand votes to a candidate to his left in the first round. The failure stems less from any lingering association with the CP than a continued reliance on a Broad Left which has no programmatic alternative to the right wing.
This vacuum Reid has filled with vague notions of "Christian Humanism". They may satisfy a hungering conscience, but they will not save Robb Caledon.