On this day in history: Battle of George Square, 1919

In the 1910s and 1920s the urban sprawl around Glasgow, including the towns Clydebank, Greenock, and Paisley were centres of working class radicalism. This era, known as 'Red Clydeside' involved strikes and other forms of labour unrest as well as opposition to the First World War and rent strikes. After the end of the war the Clydeside trades unions organised a campaign for the reduction of the working week to forty hours from fifty-four to improve conditions and create jobs for the returning troops who swelled the ranks of the unemployed.

The Scottish Trade Union Congress and the Clyde Workers' Committee called a strike and organised a large rally on 31st January 1919 in George Square, Glasgow. A crowd of between sixty- and ninety-thousand gathered to hear the result of a meeting between of strike leaders and the Lord Provost. During the meeting scuffles broke out between the strikers and the police. Various causes have been attributed to the outbreak of violence including an unprovoked baton charge by the police, and the continued use of trams through the square during the meeting.

Whatever the cause, the delegation themselves became caught up in the pitched battles when they left the meeting to attempt to calm the strikers. Police attacks on the crowd, which included women and children, were met with the retaliation of strikers and their improvised weaponry that included stones, bottle and iron railings. Running battles continued for hours through central Glasgow in what became known as 'Bloody Friday.'

In the aftermath, not only did the authorities arrest the leaders of the strike, but they also sent around 10,000 English soldiers to Glasgow along with a number of tanks. The authorities confined Scottish troops to their barracks for fear that they may join their fellow Scots in open revolt. Since it was only fourteen months since the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the Coalition government may have feared that a similar insurrection was in the offing.

Tanks and soldiers in Saltmarket area of Glasgow

Ten days after the riot, the strike leaders called off the action after securing a 47-hour week. Those who the police took into custody faced trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, which found them guilty. Manny Shinwell, William Gallacher and David Kirkwood each served several months in prison with each later being elected as Members of Parliament.

The University of Strathclyde website hosts a number of pages dedicated to Red Clydeside: A history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932.

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On this day in history: First gasoline-driven automobile patented, 1886

The German engine designer and automobile engineer Karl Benz was born on 25th November 1844 in Karlsruhe, Baden, to Josephine Vaillant. A few months after he was born, his mother married his father, a locomotive driver named Johann George Benz, who died in a railway accident when Karl was only two years old. The death left the family in financial difficulty, but Josephine managed to provide her son with a quality education.

Karl was an excellent student, attending the local grammar school and technical college before gaining a place at the city's university to study mechanical engineering at the age of fifteen. He graduated in 1864 at the age of nineteen and spent the next seven years moving between jobs where he received professional training. In 1871 Benz opened a mechanical workshop in Mannheim with August Ritter.

Ritter turned out to be a liability. The business only survived when Benz's fiancee, Bertha Ringer, used her dowry to buy Ritter's shares. The business continued to struggle financially, so from 1878 Benz started working on patenting various innovations in engine design, including the two stroke engine, an ignition system using sparks from a battery, spark plugs, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator. Nevertheless, the high production costs of Benz's Gas Factory resulted in the local banks demanding that his business become incorporated.

The creation of the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882 left Benz with only five per cent of the shares in the business. He also became marginalised when it came to designing new products. Dissatisfied, a year later he left the company that he had built to enter into a partnership with the owners of a bicycle repair business, Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger.

The company called Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik produced a successful range of industrial machines and quickly expanded. The success of the business enabled Benz to start developing his ideas for a horseless carriage that he had been considering since his youth. In 1885 he produced the Benz Patent Motorwagen. A three wheeled vehicle powered by a 0.8hp four-stroke engine with a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph).

On 29th January 1886, Benz patented his Motorwagen. Over the next few years Benz tested his design on public roads, refined his design and produced two more models of his Motorwagen, which he made available for sale to the public. In 1888 he made his first sales, including one to the Paris-based bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger. Roger had previously produced Benz's engines under license, now he also started manufacturing the automobiles and selling them to Parisians.

Benz continued to produce innovative designs of motor vehicles. In 1894 he produced the Velo, which many regard as the first production automobile and a year later he designed the first truck. He died in 1929 at the age of eighty-four as one of the key figures in the development of the automobile industry.

A facsimile of Benz's 1886 German patent No. 37435 is available to download in pdf format.

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On this day in history: Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean, 1624

In 1493, Christopher Columbus led the first European exploration of the islands located where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. He named each of the islands of the Lesser Antilles including one which he dubbed San Jorge ("Saint George"). Later explorers misinterpreted Columbus' charts and the island became known as San Cristobal ("Saint Christopher") or, more commonly, Saint Kitts.

In the sixteenth century, French Huguenots refugees founded a colony on the island, naming it after their home-town: Dieppe. Only months after its establishment, the Spanish raided the settlement and deported all its inhabitants. The next attempt to colonise the island did not occur until the next century with the arrival of the English under Thomas Warner.

Warner was the son of a Suffolk landowner and former captain in the bodyguard of King James I and lieutenant of the Tower of London. In 1620 he set off with Captain Roger North to help found a colony in Guiana, but James revoked their charter and recalled North, to placate the Spanish, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. In the meantime, Warner had met Thomas Painton who suggested that he found a colony on St Kitts or another of the smaller Caribbean islands.

Warner returned to England to find support for this venture. In 1623 he set off with his family and fourteen other colonists for Virginia, from where they sailed for the Lesser Antilles. The group arrived on St Kitts on 28th January 1624. Undaunted by initial setbacks - a hurricane destroyed their first tobacco crop and many of their houses - the settlement grew and in September 1625, Warner transported their first tobacco crop back to England. While in England, Warner received letter patent from James' recognising the colony and giving it Royal protection. Warner also received the title of lieutenant of St Kitts (or 'Merwar's Hope' as it was called in the document, referring to himself and one of the major investors, the London merchant Ralph Merifield), Nevis, Barbados, and Montserrat.

He secured more investment and returned to the colony with around one-hundred more settlers and sixty slaves. When he arrived he found that the French had also established a colony on the island. The colonists had welcomed the French probably because they offered mutual protection against the local Carib population should they attack.

As it was, the Europeans made a pre-emptive strike against the Caribs, killing their King, taking a number of the women as slaves, and driving the rest of the survivors from the island. In 1627, the English and French then concluded a treaty formalising their mutual protection pact against both the Caribs and the Spanish. The terms of the treaty also divided the island between the two groups, with the English taking the territory middle and the French occupying either end.

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