Mary Barbour, a Glaswegian hero.

Did you know that Glasgow has only four statues of women... ONLY four! Two of them are situated in Govan, and one of them is welcoming you as you come out of the subway. Mary Rough was born in 1875 in the weaving village of Kilbarchan, about 15 miles west of Glasgow. She was a working-class woman, and like many other women of the Victorian era, she moved from the countryside to the big city to work in the mills.

This influx of people from villages to bigger cities such as Glasgow created housing issues as the tenements became quickly overcrowded. From 200 000 citizens in 1851, the population of Glasgow grew to over 1,000,000 by the 1920s, Glasgow became the second biggest city of the British Empire during the industrial revolution but also one of the most populated, while very little was built to house all the new inhabitants. Conditions were appalling, with families living in one-room flats, and diseases spreading to a whole neighbourhood in no time.

Then the First World War started, many men were fighting away from home, and women were left behind, taking over jobs, working in ammunition factories, earning less than their male counterparts, and raising their children. And this is when greedy landlords decided to raise the rent prices to a point that even working people couldn’t afford it, many working-class areas across the UK saw a rent increase of about 5%, however, working neighbourhoods in Glasgow, like Govan, saw a 23% increase! People were being evicted, starting with the elderly, the disabled and all people who couldn’t fight for themselves. By doing so the landlords had underestimated Glaswegian women.

In 1914 the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association was created, and Mary Barbour became the leading figure of the South Govan branch, organising rent strikes and resistance committees. Other women, also involved in politics such as Helen Crawfurd, Agnes Dollan, Mary Jeff, became part of what was known as Mrs Barbour’s Army. Crowds started to rally behind the group of women, blocking building entrances, chasing landlords and factors down the street with pots, pans and trumpets to make as much noise as possible to shame them but also to warn other tenants of the evictions taking place within the area. Soon, the strikes spread to all the slums and industrialised areas of the city: Partick, Springburn, Parkhead, Townhead and many more - it didn’t stop landlords to keep pursuing evictions. Now angry marches grew to thousands of people at every corner of the city to the point that the Sheriff's Court phoned London to ask for backups. The government summoned Glasgow councillors to appease the situation and set up meetings to find a solution. A month later the government officially passed the “Rent Restriction Act” in 1915, stipulating that rent should stay at pre-war levels and should remain for the duration of the war.

However, once the war was over, landlords were back at it, but so were the women and men of Glasgow! This led to the creation of the “Addison Act” in 1919, 500 000 homes were to be built within the next three years. The different Housing Acts created as a response to the rent strikes stayed in place until the 1980s, when it was repealed by Margaret Thatcher’s government.

Mary’s activism and political career was only starting. She was also campaigning during the war for a peace settlement, speaking to a crowd of 70 000 people in Glasgow Green on May Day 1917, spreading the words of the Women’s Peace Crusade, another activist group founded by Mary and her friends in 1916. The WPC then reached the cities of Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford, and many more as well as Wales. Following the war Mary was elected as one of the first woman councillors of the city of Glasgow, she was also Glasgow Corporation’s first female bailie and later Justice of the Peace. She also initiated the Glasgow Women’s Welfare and Advisory Clinic with Dr Nora Wattie in 1925. A clinic for women, by women, with female doctors and nurses – the city’s first family planning.

It is exactly five years ago in 2018, on International Women’s Day, a statue by artist Andrew Brown was unveiled in the centre of Govan – to remember Mary’s legacy.