Time: 1915; place: Port Glasgow, where the Clyde shipbuilders were at the heart of the war effort. They produced battle cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers and merchant ships.

In February 1915, the Clyde workers went on strike. They saw the bosses making a packet out of the war, while they were being called to hard work and sacrifice. Profits had soared and what the Clyde workers did was an early rejection of the notion that “we’re all in it together”. Instead they called what the bosses were doing by its proper name: “profiteering”. They went on strike over a number of issues, including pay. The government arrested the strike leaders and, after three weeks, the strike collapsed.

In the second episode of Britain’s Great War (now there’s a dead giveaway of a title!), Jeremy Paxman told some of this story. And he managed to put the strike leaders down by calling them “ringleaders” (Oxford English Dictionary: “a person who initiates or leads an illicit or illegal activity”).

But he ends with an interview with two present-day trade unionists with a sense of what the history meant, Davie Torrance and Davie Cooper. Paxman raised the question of strikes being acts of “disloyalty” in time of war. Davie Cooper explained to him:

“There was a feeling there that it wasn’t our war, it was the bosses trying to carve out more capital for themselves. That was the feeling.”

“But”, protested Paxman, “vast numbers of people did volunteer.”

“Ah well,” said Cooper, “people got conned. They’re still conning people to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.”

“The point, of course,” said Davie Torrance, “is that the people who wished to continue with the war, to a great extent, were profiteers – and racketeers in many cases. So therefore to say that we were less than patriotic, I don’t think is quite correct.”

Paxman frowned. “Do you really think that the ruling classes unnecessarily prolonged the war so that some people could make money out of it?”

I was reminded of Sassoon’s Declaration: “I believe that this war … has now become a war of aggression and conquest.” He protested “against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.” His politics may not have been the politics of the Clydeside workers, but he had just as strong a sense of being conned and used as they did.

“Yeah,” replied Torrance. “It’s a fair assumption.”

The next part of the story proved the trade unionists’ case and showed the government there were limits to what it could get away with. The landlords of Glasgow’s overcrowded Govan tenements raised their tenants’ rents while many of the men were away at the war. The women who remained fought back. In November 1915 the men of the shipyards joined them in a big and noisy demonstration outside the court where rent strikers were being tried. The government halted the case against the rent strikers and promised a Rent Restriction Act which protected tenants from exploitation. It fixed rents at pre-war levels.

Generosity on the part of the government? No, it was fear – they knew, this time, they were beaten. During a panicky phone call from Glasgow’s Sheriff to Lloyd George (the Minister for Munitions), the Sheriff said, “They’re threatening to pull down Glasgow!”

“Stop the case,” said Lloyd George.

That’s the way to do it.