Power To The People
Tuesday 4th April
BBC Two Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm
The opening episode in a six-part series which chronicles the stories of the Scots who took on successive British governments to secure power for workers focusses on the struggles in Glasgow in the early twentieth century. John MacLean was a schoolteacher from Glasgow's Pollokshaws and by World War l the intelligence services would label him 'the greatest threat to British society'. This was the birth of Red Clydeside.
Power To The People
Tuesday 11th April
BBC Two Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm
The second documentary in the Scots workers struggle for power in the twentieth century looks at the first Labour Prime minister Ramsay Macdonald rise to power , radical MP James Maxton and the hunger marchers of Scotland
Power To The People
Tuesday 18th April
BBC Two Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm
Scots returning from the Second world war resolved to build a better country for all. How long could this socialist utopia last?
Power To The People
Tuesday 2 May
BBC Two Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm
In the 1960s trade union power had never been stronger. While union leaders discussed economic policy at Number 10, shop stewards held the real power over the nation's workforce, and as inflation gnawed at workers' wages, wildcat strikes spread.
In Scotland, the government worried about the decline of traditional heavy-engineering on Clydeside and the inevitable black hole of unemployment that would ensue.
The solution was sought in the boom industry of the day - car manufacturing. Under intense pressure from Macmillan's Conservative government, and with the promise of £10 million in grants, the British family firm
Power To The People
Tuesday 9 May
BBC Two Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm
No Surrender
The Tory election victory of 1970 unleashed a new economic vision on Britain and kick-started a bloody battle with Scotland's Trade Unions. National prosperity was threatened and governments buckled as worker militancy reached an all time high. By 1979 however a new power emerged determined to bring the union giants crashing to their knees.
Power To The People
Tuesday 16th May
BBC Two Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm
Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government had suffocated the militant worker leaders. What followed was a bitter internecine war between the traditional and the moderate wings of Scotland's Unions. Thirteen years have passed since the last major dispute, Dundee's Timex strike.
So what happened to the John MacLeans and Jimmy Reids? Where now for Scotland's Unions?
A review by Louisa Pearson - Power to the People, who tell it like it was