Politics

Cedric Watts described the protean RBCG as ‘a plethora of paradoxes’ and certainly, his politics appear at first sight to be entirely paradoxical – a nationalist and an internationalist, a Justice of the Peace and a disturber of the peace, a landowner who campaigned for the nationalisation of all land, an elitist who went to jail for the unemployed, an anti-imperialist who volunteered during World War I, a Marxist who hoped to see Lenin hanged, an associate of anarchists who was welcomed in the drawing rooms of London’s upper-crust.

This has led to misrepresentations of his political career and accusations that he was a political dilettante, but RBCG was less interested in party labels than in political action, and his solutions to political and social disparities were for the most part practical.

Two formative experiences give us a clue to RBCG's social and political attitudes. The first was the freedom and comradeship he found as a young man among the natives and gauchos in Argentina, which instilled in him an egalitarian and ecologically-minded spirit than would not normally be found in someone from his class. The second was the anger he felt when he witnessed the lives and working conditions of his mining constituents when he became the Liberal MP for North-West Lanarkshire, which turned him into an implacable fighter for justice, and converted him to socialism.

Prime Minister Lord Salisbury: 'Are you thinking where to put your guillotine, Mr Graham?'

RBCG: 'Trafalgar Square, of course.'

Don Roberto and John Burns on trial after Bloody sunday

In the dock with trades unionist John Burns, following Bloody Sunday, November 1887.

Scottish Labour Party membership certificate Number One.

Formation of the National Party of Scotland

Founding of the National Party of Scotland, 1928
l to r: Duke of Montrose, Compton McKenzie, RBCG (president), Hugh MacDiarmid, James Valentine, John McCormick.

Cunninghame Graham speaking on Bannockburn Day

Speaking on Scotland's Day, Stirling, 1931.

Consequently, RBCG's brief time as an MP was marked by anger and frustration, when he was faced with parliament’s stubborn opposition to change. Heedless of his own political future, his campaigns against capitalism, on behalf of labour and votes for women, quickly brought him to wide public attention, particularly following an act of suicidal defiance when he attempted to lead a riot in Trafalgar Square on behalf of the unemployed, where he was severely beaten by the police and jailed for a month. Subsequently, along with the previously unknown Keir Hardie, he founded the first party of labour in Britain, but typically, he became disillusioned with the passivity of the working class and the personal ambitions and lack of radical fervour from their representatives, and has largely been written out of Labour histories. RBCG was a champion of the people - not a man of the people.

From his earliest time in parliament, RBCG was a supporter of Irish Home Rule, and spoke in support of the first Scottish Home Rule Bill in 1889, but his nationalism was again purely practical, a means by which legislation, particularly on labour matters, could be more effectively implemented. However, thirty-six years after leaving Westminster, standing as a ‘Scottish Nationalist’, he caused a major upset by almost defeating sitting Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin for the Rectorship of Glasgow University, which was a major boost for the recently formed National Party of Scotland. Subsequently, he became a vociferous advocate of Scottish independence and was a key figure in the creation of the Scottish National Party.

RBCG’s politics transcended conventional economic and social models. The source of his discontent, the source of his contradictions, and the primary and universal driving force behind all of his political activities, was not based on dogma, party, or self-interest, but on an unshakable sense of justice and a deep compassion, but also on an ethical, broad-minded, all-encompassing practical morality, and if his political allegiances appear promiscuous to some, it was because he believed that the parties themselves had betrayed or compromised their founding principles, many of which he himself had set.