Jimmy Reid – the people’s Stalinist
Who was the Jimmy Reid who died in August of this year? What, if any, was his political legacy? And why was he the object of such outpourings of posthumous praise from even right-wing political commentators? Reid was born in Govan in Glasgow in 1932. After a brief spell in the youth section of the Labour Party (the Labour League of Youth, LLY) he joined the Young Communist League (YCL) at the age of 16. In his autobiography Reid attributed his switch from Labour to the YCL to his revulsion at the careerist aspirations of local LLY members, his disillusionment with the record of the then Labour...