News in Scotland 100 years ago today

Some of the stories making the news around Scotland on 1 April 1917 (outwith the Great War with over a year to run.)

Daughters of some of Dundee’s men at the Front

• Aberdeen to get women police patrols.
• Proposal to start a co-operative jute factory in Dundee.
• Edinburgh grocers are in favour of a card system for sugar distribution.
• Some Glasgow grocers are selling sugar in pennysworths.
• Holidays in munition areas are to be deferred until after the end of July.
• It is reported that 11,000 teachers in Scotland are getting less than £100 a year.
• Protests in Lochgilphead against Sunday labour in the woods and fields.
• Net profits of £270,432 reported by the Bank of Scotland for the past year.
• There is a credit balance of £150 from the British Industries Fair recently held in Glasgow.
• Crookston Combination Poorhouse is to be taken over for the reception of mentally afflicted soldiers.
• A ban on the sale of spirits in parts of Argyllshire and Buteshire has come into force.
• Some conscientious objectors from England are to be employed in forestry work at Ford in Argyllshire.
• The Marchioness of Graham has undertaken to provide Lamlash with a convalescent home for the wounded.
• The Dunoon and District Merchants’ Association have agreed to hold the Fast Days.
• The fishing village of Whitehills near Banff has lost in one week four men who were on Admiralty service.
• Tillycoultry Parish Council has decided to proceed with an extension of the cemetery at a cost of £2000.

STOP PRESS: Russian Revolution 1917

It was almost incredible that it could be true. We stood together in the darkened street, half delirious with joy, while tears mingled with our laughter.

Guest post by Textor

Emotionally charged, with an echo of Wordsworth’s response to news of the French Revolution, these are the words Aberdonian John Paton on hearing that the Tsar had been overthrown. It was March 1917. It was the Russian Revolution. The thirty one year old socialist was leaving an election meeting where he’d supported the anti-war stance of Ramsay MacDonald. Since 1914 millions had been sucked into the bloody maelstrom of world war. For small bands of socialists across Europe the war was final proof of the bankruptcy of capitalism and as such had to be opposed despite lies in the press, willingly if not happily accepting threats of violence and imprisonment.

Anti-war socialists saw glimmers of hope in working class militancy which continued through these desperate years. Rent strikes, demands for 40 hour working week, the emergence of an unofficial shop steward movement all implicitly challenged political authority so much so that by 1917 “Red Clydesiders” were being harassed, sent to internal exile and gaoled. Socialists were buoyed but faced the fact that in Britain and across Europe, particularly in Germany, social democratic parties had taken up their respective national flags and helped drum men to the battle-fronts.

When John Paton left the election meeting on that fateful evening he met with a comrade who was almost choking with excitement at the news of the fall of the Tsar. Hardly surprising that local election politics were for the moment put into the shade. For John Paton events in Russia spurred him to greater political activity which eventually resulted in him becoming a leading figure in the Independent Labour Party.

In a similar fashion the cub reporter James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon) was inspired by the later Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia so much so that he and a colleague could not sleep o’nights. We prowled Aberdeen . . . talking the moon into morning about jolly and heart-some and splendid things: life, death, the Revolution. Young Mitchell was then working for The Aberdeen Journal; the city’s most important newspaper. Since the 1740s the Journal had served Aberdeen with a generally conservative view of the world. In its time it had wagged a political and moral finger at the excessive demands of Chartists and seen off more radical newspaper rivals by accepting some of the liberal policies of the 19^th century. Basically the Journal wanted men to be politically sensible. Political militancy, whether it was votes for women or re-division of land, was unacceptable, at least in the parliamentary “democracy” that was Britain.

James Leslie Mitchell’s enthusiasm was not shared by the Journal nor by its stable-mate The Evening Express.   However, this is not to say that the earlier phase of the Russian Revolution which had so captivated John Paton was denounced by the Aberdeen newspapers. We must remember that the British state and its mouthpieces were concerned with the prosecution of the war. Where John had seen universal hope for an end to the slaughter and the building of a more just world the Aberdeen papers believed that far from doing this the fall of the Tsarist autocracy would mean a more rational organisation of Russia’s military forces, taking power from the hands of an incompetent regime, with what they called dark and mysterious forces behind the throne, and placing it with men in the Russian parliament, the Duma; in other words a new regime with some sort of political legitimacy, consequently better able to work with Britain and her allies by marshalling workers and peasants to fight the German enemy.     

In March 1917 Aberdeen Daily Journal welcomed the “Revolution” and confidently predicted that a more democratic empire could be built with the help of Grand Duke Michael and on this solid foundation the energetic prosecution of the war [would be] their first consideration. And at the same time that it praised Russia for holding fast to the European battlefields where millions were dying the newspaper congratulated Russia for not taking the bloody path of the 1905 revolution or that mapped out in France in 1789. As the Evening Express put it the simple-hearted, generous, hospitable Russians were following a course of common sense in showing a willingness to keep the slaughter going.

On the other hand there was an enemy in Britain, conspiring to defeat the just ends being pursued by the state, personified in the person of Ramsay MacDonald: Aberdeen wants no peace bargainers, no mischief makers, in a time of national crisis. Russia, said the Journal must also beware Socialists and fanatical Revolutionaries. Ramsay MacDonald is now one of the great villains of Labour history; the man who sold out to the National Government and Conservatism. But this is to forget he and others had the courage and we might say the decency to stand against the bloodletting of 1914-18 even if this was from a pacifist stance rather than, as the young John Paton would have demanded, a revolutionary overthrow of the property owning class. 

It just so happened that Aberdeen played its own small part in ensuring the pacifist MacDonald with his M.P. colleague Fred Jowett of Bradford were prevented in June 1917 from attending an anti-war socialist meeting in Petrograd. Aberdeen was the “certain port” from which these two men attempted to sail only to be stopped by organised labour under the leadership of Captain Edward Tupper of the seamen’s union. Pickets at the harbour threw their luggage ashore and followed them to their lodgings to keep them from sailing. Needless to say the local press was enchanted by this show of militancy, displaying a support for picketing which tended to be conspicuous by its absence in earlier industrial strikes.

When the Bolshevik Lenin was given safe passage by the Germans to the Finland Station in April unsurprisingly he was said to be an agent of the Kaiser, the editor of the Evening Express advised the Russian state now is the time for a supreme effort to trample down the internal enemy before hurling back the invader. Equally unsurprising the newspapers also saw MacDonald and his ILP comrades as doing the Kaiser’s work not to mention men and women going on strike threatening to disrupt munitions production.

Regardless of all the political guidance being given and the moral exhortations made it still looked as if the events in Russia had a dynamic beyond the control of any of the states involved in mutual destruction. The “moderate”, pro-war, Russian leader Kerensky seemed unable to guide things to the desired end. In Aberdeen’s Mither Kirk (Parish Church) on the third anniversary of the outbreak of war Colonel the Rev. James Smith preached asking God to intercede on the side of Britain: he prayed to God that a better day might speedily dawn upon distracted Russia and that the men of patriotic spirit and invincible courage be forthcoming to lead one of the greatest and most ancient of Empires to the destiny that awaited her. That destiny turned out to be not the one desired by the Rev. Smith or the local editors. Perhaps the call for God to intercede had not been heard or God (some Hegelian might say History) had set course for a future beyond their imaginations.

Come October-November 1917 and pro-war elements had their worst fear was realised: in Petrograd and beyond workers and peasants organised in councils sought peace and began to imagine a world which might be other than the one they now lived in. This was, however, more than a mental act. The councils, packed with voices from all parts of the political spectrum, were organised around degrees of holding power, making decisions which carried force and when necessary using armed militias to achieve their ends. This is what the British and other voices of “reason and common sense” could neither comprehend nor accept.   The Bolsheviks were wiser, their political programme, as much as it might have been made on the hoof at times, recognised the dynamics of class action and were able to place themselves at the head of this deeply revolutionary situation. Where revolutionaries saw liberation and new found freedoms the status-quo perceived only anarchy, an upsetting of the natural order and more immediately the loss of privilege and power. 

One of the local editors wrote: It is incredible that the Russian people would long tolerate a system which aims at undermining the foundations of the whole fabric of society . . . But undermine it they did. The exploited across Russia and many beyond its frontiers recognised that the “foundations of the whole fabric of society” included systematic exploitation of workers and peasants, imperial adventures and colonisation which had given the world the blood drenched trenches across Europe. Who held power, and to what ends, this was one of the keys to explaining 1917 and indeed equally important to understanding the future of what became Soviet Russia and the emergence of a regime which eventually needed no lessons in how to repress and control civil society.

But this was in the future. Socialists might at times be star-gazers but they are not clairvoyants. The emergence of workers and peasant councils pointed to new social forms around which a new world might be built. One hundred years on John Paton’s words hint at how it must have been:

 Every day brought its fresh excitements and new hopes that even now something of lasting good for Socialists in Britain was to come out of the war.

The day the Food Controller banned the buttery rowie

 

Rowie, buttery or Aberdeen roll

Threat to Aberdeen’s Morning Delicacy

ran the headline on an inside page of the local press on 27th August 1917 under pictures of some of the latest local men killed in the Great War – Trimmer Adam Clark of the navy, private William McRobb and gunner James Hutcheson from Turriff.

The rowie warning also appeared below an article on a joint socialist proposal to end this horrific war. Its main thrust was a need for independence for Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine, Polish unity, self-determination for Armenia, India, Egypt, Ireland and Algiers, formation of a Balkan Confederation, a League of Nations and a hands-off approach to German trade – all in all a ‘people’s peace’ they called it.  Of course self-determination and independence are no longer supported by some of today’s ‘socialists’. As with many things a lot has changed in the intervening one hundred years, including the meaning of socialism.

For the good souls of Aberdeen who were not laying down their arms, legs, minds and lives for the king of more immediate concern was a threat to their fresh hot morning buttery rowie.

War resulted in restrictions and controls over food supplies and the emergence of ‘the Food Controller’. Aberdonians were, and many still are, fond on a warm rowie in the morning. Unfortunately for the buttery rowie one of its main ingredients, butter, or often lard or margarine, distinguishes it from a bread roll or bap. It is frequently compared with a French croissant by those unfamiliar with it – as it is assumed people will be more acquainted with something French than something that comes from the exotic and far-flung northeast of Scotland (a faraway place of which they know little.)

Aberdeen’s buttery rowie was duly sent to the Food Controller with an explanation that it should not be considered as bread but a different product entirely, one that should be consumed within 12 hours of baking. As anyone who has eaten a buttery rowie knows they are soft and melt-in-the-mouth straight from the oven and different, though not unappetising later, when reheated.

The Department of Food had stipulated that bread could not be sold until it was at least 12 hours out of the oven. This was to restrict its consumption. Fresh bread doesn’t slice easily and tends to be sliced thicker than stale loaf so doesn’t stretch as far but that would not affect rolls, also slapped with the same restriction, so alternative thinking was that as fresh bread was tastier than older bread more would be eaten than less appetising stale bread.

Initially the local Food Controller swallowed the difference between the buttery rowie and ordinary bread rolls and decided this was, indeed, a miracle of the baking oven and so exempted it from the 12 hour ruling. Bakers in and around Aberdeen carried on producing buttery rowies while in other parts of the country bakers, ignorant of the marvellous Aberdeen buttery rowie, gnashed their gums, furious at this exception to the bakery rule. But, all good things come to an end and after a few months of exemption from the restriction officialdom proclaimed that the morning buttery rowie –

was to be banned!

Apart from being a low blow to the stomachs of Aberdonians this hit bakers in the city and shire for the sale of buttery rowies made up a significant bulk of their trade. The baker’s union, which nationally used to have its headquarters in Aberdeen in the good old days before Scotland was centralised, and master bakers got together to discuss how they could fight this attack on their trade.

An appeal to the Food Controller again argued the buttery rowie formed such an important part of the food of the working classes in industrial centres the banning order should be remitted.

Aberdeen roll, buttery or rowie

Aberdeen Trades and Labour Council approached the local Food Control Committee in defence of the buttery rowie. It complained the committee had no representatives from the working class – the very people who relied on the rowie for sustenance through their working hours as well as the  workers who produced them – and working people in Aberdeen were tired of profiteers and those who exploited the working class representing them on committees.

It was argued that while Edinburgh and Glasgow bread rolls had been stopped because of the war the Aberdeen roll was of a very different order, its high lard content making it more akin to ham and eggs than the bread roll that was made everywhere else – meaning it was breakfast for many poorer people in Aberdeen – except in the case of Co-op rowies which were inferior in every way and no different from ordinary rolls found elsewhere around the country.

But the Ministry of Food declared no bread could be sold which contained butter, margarine or any sort of fat so the fresh Aberdeen rowie’s days were numbered. No longer was it possible to run to the local baker shop for a handful of halfpenny rowies hot and greasy in the paper on the way to work or take delivery from the bakery boy  on his rounds so that households would have buttery rowies warm from the oven to eat at breakfast. By the end of September 1917 the morning buttery rowie was but a memory. They could still be bought late in the day having sat around for the requisite 12 hours or indeed those baked the previous day but that meant no rowie on Monday mornings fresher than those baked on Saturday mornings. 

Several cases of the courts seizing Aberdeen buttery rowies ensued with bakers taking matters into their own hands and baking and selling them fresh none-the-less. In July 1919 bakers Peter Main of King Street and Matthew Mitchell of Summerhill Farm, South Stocket in Aberdeen pleaded guilty to selling  halfpenny buttery rowies fresher than 12 hours old. Advocate G M Aitken, a name that will be of significance to rowie aficionados, explained to the Sheriff Court that bakers had been forced to stop making the morning rolls because people did not want to buy day old rowies but his argument fell on deaf ears. The bakers were each fined 20 shillings equivalent to 480 buttery rowies.

In 1919 an appeal was sent to the Ministry of Food requesting permission to produce buttery rowies again. It made the point that these rolls along with porridge and milk made up the ordinary workman’s breakfast in Aberdeen. This was rejected on grounds of economy and labour which appeared to be based on the situation in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Again an appeal was made objecting to difficulties with labour elsewhere being used to determine what happened in Aberdeen.

By early August of that year the unpopular order that caused so much public resentment in the city was revoked allowing Aberdonians once more to enjoy their hot buttery rowies.