From the Slums of Red Clydeside to the Campaigning World of American Communism: a Quest to Reconstruct the Life of Ellen Dawson (1900–67)

For centuries Scots have felt the need to leave their native land in search of economic opportunity. Scattered across the globe, many have distinguished themselves in other countries. While this is a well-rehearsed theme, the stories of many expatriates remain absent from Scotland’s historical memory. And where there are accounts of the activities of such individuals, too often they merely note their Scottish birth and make no effort to connect their later story with the forces within Scotland that helped shaped their character and aspirations. Ellen Dawson’s story is a good example. 1 She was born into working-class poverty in Barrhead, an industrial village on the south-western outskirts of Glasgow, in 1900. She spent her early adult years during World War I − the years of labour unrest, that were to give the area the soubriquet ‘Red Clydeside’ − working in the local textile mills. It is highly unlikely that witnessing the turbulent Clydeside events failed to influence her later life, in which, after emigrating to the United States, she became, in the late 1920s, a leading Communist labour activist, and the first woman elected to a national leadership position in an American textile union. Until 2006, no history of the Scottish people mentioned Dawson. 2 In the United States, she attracted limited attention from historians of the three major strikes in which she was an active participant; 3 but although some noted her Scottish birth, none sought to uncover the forces that shaped her political and social beliefs. As a result, American labour historians have missed a direct connection between Red Clydeside and the American Communist labour movement of a decade later; and Scottish labour historians have missed a story that stands in counterpoint to the idea that expatriate