A NEW book has been written about one of Scotland ’s most famous trade unionists, Jimmy Reid, claiming it tells the story of the “the best MP Scotland never had”.

The book traces Reid’s journey, from growing up as a “street communist” in Glasgow’s Govan to becoming the face of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in during the 1970s and also his later career in journalism.

Jimmy Reid: A Clyde-built Man has been written by professor Alan McKinlay from Newcastle University Business School and Dr WWJ Knox, honorary senior lecturer in Scottish history at the University of St Andrews.

The authors say they have used a wide range of sources, including extensive interviews with Reid’s family and colleagues, material from the archives of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and British Communist Party as well as notes and drafts of various speeches and articles Reid wrote. These include notes he made in the early 1990s, when he was thinking about writing his autobiography. Knox and McKinlay also had access to the files that MI5 kept on Jimmy throughout the 1950s and 60s.

Knox said: “Jimmy Reid was an icon of the left in Britain. From childhood memories of poverty he never wavered in his condemnation of social and economic structures that condemned people to lives of hardship and insecurity.

His political journey took him from communism to labourism to radical nationalism. In one individual we can trace the trajectory of left-wing politics in Britain: its triumphs and its defeats.”

The book is published by Liverpool University Press.