Since Iain McLean's The Legend of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh, 1983) the color red has shone brightly in Scottish historiography. With this book William Kenefick suggests that it was not just the Clyde that ran red, but Scotland as a whole. Between the publication of McLean's study and the title under review here, there have been a host of studies of Labour politics in the west of Scotland. The leading figures in the Labour politics of the Clyde—James Maxton, John Wheatley, John Maclean—have received modern biographical treatment to temper the hagiographies and autobiographies produced nearer the time of their prominence. Indeed, Maxton was the subject of a book by one Gordon Brown, who has since gone on to bigger, if not necessarily better, things. The debates contained in this rich historiography represent one of the strongest areas of the recent resurgence in writing about the history of modern Scotland, and we are all better informed for its existence and continuing development.

Kenefick's book attempts to enter this crowded field and achieve three things: to survey this historiography, to restore the history of trade unionism to its proper position, and to suggest that it was not only Glasgow and the industrial regions of the west of Scotland that were marked by the advance of Labour, but the whole of Scotland. As one would expect from an author whose research and writing up to this point has concentrated on the history of dock laborers and their trade unions, he makes a good and well-argued case for the second of these objectives. He clearly shows that industrial tension was present throughout Scotland, especially in Dundee (one of the earliest Scottish constituencies to return a Labour member of Parliament). He also provides much useful information, building on an earlier essay in the collection on Scotland and the Great War edited by Catriona Macdonald and Elaine McFarland, on the history of conscientious objection during the Great War. Oddly, however, he does not cite the papers of Arthur Woodburn from Edinburgh (in the National Library of Scotland [NLS]), who was incarcerated in Calton Gaol during the Great War owing to his refusal to serve. This reviewer is less than convinced that Kenefick has made his case in the final and most important area. Put bluntly, he does not make it sufficiently clear what he means by “Red Scotland!” and he does not show that something of the kind existed. This is partly a matter of source material. There are some odd gaps in the evidence used. It is very surprising that he has not used the papers of Joe Duncan, a trade unionist and Independent Labour Party (ILP) organizer, also in the NLS. From 1906 to 1908 Duncan was employed by the ILP to travel through the east of Scotland and organize the party. On an almost daily basis he wrote to his fiancée, reporting on his frustratingly difficult progress. This material would have been useful to Kenefick, but it may have cast doubt on his central thesis. Further, it is equally surprising that he has not made the trip to Liverpool to read the diaries and letters of John Bruce Glasier. Glasier and his wife Katherine were very active throughout Scotland in trying to organize the ILP in the 1890s. Although the Glasiers were more visionary than the tough and pragmatic Duncan, they also have much to say about the difficulties of making the Socialist case in Liberal Scotland.

The problems with Kenefick's argument do not rest here, however. It is very difficult to find evidence in election statistics or other material to identify “Red Scotland!” Labour was very slow to make electoral progress in Scotland, and when the breakthrough did come in 1922 its support was heavily confined to the west of Scotland and other industrial areas such as West Fife and Dundee. Although Labour did win the Western Isles in 1935, this was something of an outpost, and it is not really possible to conscript the land reform tradition of the Highlands into a “Red Scotland!” thesis. Edinburgh remained very difficult territory for Labour until after the Second World War, as did the rural regions of the south and the northeast. Ironically, one place where “Red Scotland!” did exist was in the minds of Labour's Unionist and Liberal opponents. Neither Kenefick nor many of the other authors who have written about Scottish politics have much to say about the Unionists (Blue Scotland!), despite their strong performances in Scottish elections until the late 1950s. For much of the interwar period, Labour in Scotland was faced with antisocialist coalitions at parliamentary and local government elections. Indeed, the euphemisms “Moderate” and “Progressive” survived in the lexicon of city politics in Scotland until the 1970s and denoted little else but antisocialism. Although Kenefick has performed a useful service in reminding us of the contexts of Labour politics other than that of the west of Scotland, he does not convince us on the central theme of “Red Scotland!”