John
Bruce Glasier,
the illegitimate child of John Bruce and Isabella McNicoll was
born on 25th March, 1859. His mother had eight children and the family
lived in extreme poverty. As a young boy John worked as a shepherd
in the Ayrshire hills but after the death of his father in 1870, the
family moved to Glasgow. John's mother
now changed her name from McNicoll to Glasier.
In Glasgow Glasier found work as an apprentice
draftsman but considered becoming a church minister until he read
Charles
Darwin
and T.
H. Huxley.
Glasier was completely convinced by the theory of evolution and as
a result lost his religious faith.
In 1878 the City
of Glasgow Bank failed with debts of £10 million. In the year
following the bank's crash, almost a thousand Scottish firms went
into liquidation. Glasier
lost his job and for the next twelve years found it difficult to find
regular employment. Glasier began to read books and newspapers that
suggested that capitalism was the cause of poverty. In 1882 Glasier
heard H. H. Hyndman, the leader of the
Social Democratic Federation, speak at a
public meeting in Glasgow. Glasier was
impressed with Hyndman's arguments and became one of the leading SDF
activists in Scotland.
In January 1885, Glasier left the Social Democratic
Federation and joined the Socialist
League,
an organisation that had been set up by William
Morris, Eleanor Marx, Edward
Aveling and Walter Crane after a dispute
with Hyndman. Glasier formed a branch in Glasgow
and became a regular contributor to its journal, Commonweal.
The
Socialist
League
failed to become a successful working-class party and in 1893 Glasier
and his wife, Katherine Glasier, joined
the recently formed
Independent Labour Party (ILP). The ILP's leader,
James Keir Hardie, argued that the main
objective of the party would be "to secure the collective ownership
of the means of production, distribution and exchange". Leading
figures in this new organisation included George
Bernard Shaw, Tom Mann, Henry
Hyde Champion, Ben Tillett, Philip
Snowden, Edward Carpenter and Ramsay
MacDonald.
In the 1895 General Election
the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates
but won only 44,325 votes. All the candidates were defeated but the
ILP began to have success in local elections. Over 600 won seats on
borough councils and in 1898 the ILP joined with the the Social
Democratic Federation to make West
Ham the first local authority to have a Labour majority.
Until the birth of her first child in 1897, Katherine
Glasier and her husband toured Britain giving lectures on socialism.
Devout believers, the Glasiers described their socialism as "the
Light of the World". At one meeting arranged by the Fabian
Society in Manchester, John Glasier
and a fellow speaker, Emmeline Pankhurst,
were arrested and charged with speaking at an illegal meeting. Glasier
was found guilty and fined £5 but when he refused to pay, the
courts decided to drop the case.
Glasier was a strong opponent of the Boer War.
In wrote that: "The more I read and get to understand about the
causes of the war, the more ashamed I am of my country. And yet one
feels so powerless to actually stop the war, or save the brave Boers
from the cruel havoc of our guns."
In 1897 John
Glasier was elected to the National Administrative Council of the
Independent Labour Party. Along with James
Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden and Ramsay
MacDonald, Glasier was considered to be one of the four main leaders
of the party. In 1900 Glasier replaced Hardie as chairman of the ILP.
On 27th February 1900, representatives of all the socialist groups
in Britain (the Independent Labour Party, the
Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian
Society, joined trade union leaders to form the Labour
Representation Committee. The LRC put up fifteen candidates in
the 1900 General Election and between them
they won 62,698 votes. Two of the candidates, Keir
Hardie and Richard Bell won seats in
the House of Commons.
Glasier was a contributor to many socialist newspapers including the
Workman's Times, Commonweal,
the ILP News and the Clarion.
In 1904 he became editor of the ILP's new journal, the Labour
Leader. Under Glasier's leadership the journal's circulation
increased fourfold.
In the 1906 General Election Glasier stood
as the Labour Party candidate for the Bordesley
seat in Birmingham. Although the party
had twenty nine successful candidates, Glasier failed to win and was
the only Labour Party leader not inside
the House of Commons.
Glasier continued to work for the Labour
Leader until 1909. He also worked for the official newspaper
of the Labour Party, the Daily
Chronicle and edited the Socialist
Review.
Glasier was a strong opponent of British involvement in the First
World War and writing for the Labour
Leader, was was very critical of socialists who took part
in recruitment meetings or encouraged hatred of the German people.
In August 1915 the Labour Leader
office in Manchester was raided and
its editor, Fenner Brockway was charged
with publishing seditious material.
John Glasier developed cancer of the bowel in 1914. He spent most
of the remainder of his life writing two books, The Meaning
of Socialism (1919) and William
Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement (1920).
John Bruce Glasier died on 4th July,
1920.
(1)
In 1892 The Workman's Times described Bruce Glasier reading
passages of William Morris's book News from Nowhere at a socialist
meeting in Glasgow. (1892)
The
meeting was one of the strangest feeling I have seen since the lectures
began. Quite a religious feeling seemed to pervade the hall the silence
was so still and death-like that it shows a most wonderful power in
this book.
(2)
Fred Hughes, Bruce Glasier's agent at Bordesley described Bruce Glasier
in Labour's Northern Voice.
Bruce
was an artist and a poet, but when he arrived for a meeting, tired
and travel-stained, with his flowing cloak and wide-awake hat, both
much the worse for wear, and his unruly mop of curling hair and beard,
he looked rather like a brigand down on his luck; and Katharine often
conveyed an idea that her clothes had been thrown on to her with a
pitchfork.
(3)
Bruce Glasier toured Ireland on behalf of the Fabian
Society in 1899.
The
more I get to know the inner meaning of things in Ireland the more
difficult, if not hopeless, the problem of its salvation becomes.
There seems to be a flaw - a fatal lesion - in Irish character that
unfits the people for rational and progressive life. The nationalist
movement seems to be a huge superstition rather than an intelligent
desire for national freedom and well-being.
(4)
James Keir Hardie, interviewed in 1900
about Bruce Glasier.
In those days when I first met him he was was an idealist pouring
out fiery contempt on politicians and all their works. He is still
an idealist, but has come to recognize that the way by which the ideal
may be reached is more prosaic than his fresh enthusiasm at one time
imagined.
(4)
Rowland Kenney wrote about Bruce Glasier and James
Keir Hardie in his book Westering (1939)
Both Hardie and Glasier, I firmly believe, would have done a greater
service to humanity, become greater and happier men, had they kept
to the work of preaching on street corners, in lowly halls in mean
streets, or among the poorer workers in industrial towns and the outcasts
and vagrants of the great cities, and left the work of administration
and political trickery to meaner minds.
(5)
In the spring of 1900 Bruce Glasier wrote in his diary about the Boer
War.
The more I read and get to understand about the causes of the war,
the more ashamed I am of my country. And yet one feels so powerless
to actually stop the war, or save the brave Boers from the cruel havoc
of our guns.
(6)
Bruce Glasier, diary entry (1902)
We are having frugal meals. Katharine had no lecture last Sunday,
and I have none booked for next Sunday or the next again! This is
not a cheerful outlook especially at Katharine's stories have not
been selling of late.
(7)
Bruce Glasier, diary entry (June 1911)
I noticed that Ramsay
MacDonald in speaking of the appeal we should send out for capital
used the word 'Democratic' rather than 'Labour' or 'Socialist' as
describing the character of the paper. I rebulked him flatly and said
we would have no 'democratic' paper but a Socialist and Labour one
- boldly proclaimed. Why does MacDonald always seem to try and shirk
the word Socialism except when he is writing critical books about
the subject.
(8)
Bruce Glasier, diary entry (1st November, 1916)
Last
night while waiting for Anderson in the outer lobby of the House of
Commons, Cunninghame Graham hailed me and wished to be friendly. I
asked him why he made an attack on German art in a letter to the Daily
News. Morris, I said, was more German than French or Italian in
his art feeling. Graham admitted this. "Then why", I asked,
"did you use his name to sneer at Germany? Was it fair, was it
manly to do so in order to further influence the blind hatred of the
British public against Germany? I repeated the question again and
again. He then confessed that "perhaps he had made a mistake".
(9)
Bruce Glasier, diary entry on the 1918 General
Election (December, 1918)
Great
God! All our ILP front-rankers defeated - overwhelming! Henderson
also - and Asquith and Sir John Simon! The coalition win - as a flood
- majority probably 260! Only some 50 to 60 Labour men, out of 350,
elected! What a calamity. Home with Katharine - trying to comfort
each other. We must walk by faith.
(8)
The Manchester Guardian on the
death of Bruce Glasier (May 1920)
Mr
Glasier was no politician, and was not remarkable as a journalist.
His place in the Labour movement was rather that of an evangelist.
He was warm-hearted, entirely disinterested, and ready at all times
for self-sacrificing service to the Labour cause. Few men in the movement,
accordingly, have been regarded with stronger affection in the movement.
(9)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography
(1934)
Bruce
Glasier abandoned his profession as an architect to devote himself
wholly to the Socialist movement, although he had nothing to offer
him beyond the wages of an unskilled labourer. Mr. Glasier gave thirty
years of his life to socialist propaganda, and he died at an age when,
in the natural course of events, many more years of activity might
have been expected. Bruce Glasier was one of the most brilliant men
I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and as a conversationalist
he surpassed any man of my acquaintance. He never received the popular
recognition of his ability and services to which he was entitled.
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