In the thirty years from 1884 to 1914 the political opinions of some Dumfries working class voters began to move away from the two-party system of Conservatism and Liberalism, following the arrival of a new political creed – socialism.
From 1886, and encouraged by ideas about national land ownership espoused by a local Scottish Land Restoration League – some Dumfries working-class radicals moved on to the alternative politics of ‘independent labour’ – first, from 1889, in a Scottish Labour Party branch, and then, from 1894, in a branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). After a fallow period in the late 1890s – but with a Dumfries Clarion Fellowship formed in 1901/2, and the revival of the ILP branch in 1906 – the party was, by 1910, providing adult education classes and a ‘Socialist’ Sunday school at its meeting rooms in English Street, augmented by outdoor summer campaigning at Dockhead and elsewhere.
However, a split in the party in autumn 1910 saw the creation of a Dumfries Socialist Society and this, plus the announcement of a Socialist parliamentary candidate in summer 1911, helped delay the first local Labour councillors until 1914. But support for trade unionism was growing, and a Dumfries Trades & Labour Council, formed in 1911 – campaigning for ‘fair wages’ and better working-class homes – helped achieve the first Dumfries municipal housing scheme of 1913/14.
Through detailed research, Ian Gasse has re-assembled the rise of Labour in Dumfries and Maxwelltown, in both its political and trade union forms, thereby recovering a vital – and hitherto forgotten – episode of the towns’ history.