timeline

Jimmy Reid is born on 9 July 1932 in Govan to parents Leo and Isabella Reid. Jimmy was the youngest of seven children. Three of his sisters died in infancy leading to his scathing accusation that their cause of death should be "killed by capitalism". It was a formative family heartbreak which had propelled Reid to life as a political activist i...

Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo, Japan, on 18 February 1933 to Isoko and Eisuke Ono.

Her father, Eisuke – a former classical pianist – was a wealthy banker.

Both parents came from wealthy Japanese families.

Read the full blog: The Beatle, The Bankie & The Bouquet .

The full story behind John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s d...

John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool on the 9 October 1940.

Lennon was born at Liverpool Maternity Hospital to Julia (née Stanley) (1914–1958) and Alfred Lennon (1912–1976).

Alfred was a merchant seaman of Irish descent who was away at the time of his son's birth. His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his pate...

  Jimmy Reid becomes National Chair of Young Communist League (YCL) and moves to London to take up the full-time party post. On the 9 August 1958 – while still living in London – Jimmy marries Joan Swankie at Old Kilpatrick Register Office selling golf clubs to pay for the bar tab…which still ran out, causing an argument between the...

  In 1964 Jimmy Reid, who had been working in London decides to move back to Scotland and, despite being born and hailing from Govan, settles in the Faifley district of Clydebank with his wife Joan and young family. His father Leo had died in 1962. By 1965, following his return to Clydebank, Jimmy is elected to the full time post of Scott...

  Tariq Ali is elected President of the Oxford Union in 1965. Ali's tenure at the Union included a meeting with Malcolm X in December 1964 during which Malcolm X expressed deep consternation about his own risk of assassination. In 1967 Ali was one of 64 prominent figures, including the Beatles, who signed a petition calling for the legali...

  The English philosopher, Bertrand Russell was an early campaigner on Vietnam, tearing up his Labour Party membership card in disgust at the failure of Labour to take an independent stand on Vietnam. Russell, a prominent aristocrat and polymath, had spent time in jail during the First World War for his pacifism. An anti-imperialist and n...

  A casual comment in a newspaper interview was to cause a huge controversy for John and his bandmates, when he claimed the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. It was so typical of Lennon to be analysing the status of the band in philosophical terms of wider culture. But his remark in an interview with journalist Maureen Cleave for the London...

  John Lennon meets Yoko Ono at an exhibition in London. Unfinished Paintings and Objects was hosted by the Indica gallery and bookshop in Mayfair in November 1966. The Japanese avant-garde artist was a seminal influence on John and fired his interest and adoption of radical politics. As the romance grew, the couple became inseparable. h...

  Planet Earth, this is John Lennon, can you hear me? This is the next Beatles single and my first international anthem.

"I'm a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change." John Lennon June 1967 For the first time in human history people all over the planet Earth are watching the same television programme; aptly entertained wi...

The Queen visited Clydebank to launch the latest new ship at John Brown’s Yard. It was a huge event for the town. As a kid we had watched this monster of a vessel grow and dominate the skyline. I recall watching it from the rooftop of a the high flats in Radnor Park where I lived.

[caption id="attachment_4025" align="aligncenter" width="1...

  As the decade comes to a close, the peace and love of the Swinging Sixties gives way to a year of violent and bloody protest across the globe. Mass protest, civil disobedience raged throughout 1968 as a year of huge social unrest. A huge backlash against state repression began with the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. The US suffered ...

  With many shipyards on the Clyde going to the wall, nearly 30 in 1950 to under 10 in 1968 and a huge loss in market share from intense international competition, Minister of Technology, Tony Benn, implements a proposal to reorganise yards. The amalgamation of five shipyards leads to the formation of a new company – Upper Clyde Shipbuil...

Beatles record John Lennon composition, Revolution. Recorded between 9–13 July 1968 and released 26 August 1968.

The song, its lyrics and political message was to become the focus of the left's conversation with John's credibility and direction as he shed his teeny-bop image.

Read the full blog: The Beatle, The Bankie...

John and Yoko are married at the registry office in Gibraltar and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for Peace.

Give Peace a Chance was released and became an anthem of the anti-war movement reaching the top 14 in US and 2 in UK.

The Master (Take 4) of Give Peace A Chance was recorded in Room 1742, The Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, in the very early hours of 1 June 1969.

Read the full blog: The Beatle, The Bankie & The Bouqu...

John makes the anti-establishment war formal by returning his MBE. He returns to his Aunt Mimi's house in Bournemouth  to collect the 1965 award. In typical Lennon-infused grandstanding he combines the political with the humorous. His main aim is to undermine the combined political and royal establishment by opposing British actions in the Nig...

  In March 1970, The Black Dwarf's editorial board split over differences of Leninism. A second newspaper was established, Red Mole, which Tariq Ali edited alongside an editorial board with an IMG (International Marxist Group) majority. Red Mole was a "revolutionary internationalist" paper that carried a broad range of left-wing opinion. J...

  Let It Be released, The Beatles' final album, is released on 8 May 1970 The Beatles’ last album to be released, Let It Be was mostly recorded in early 1969, prior to Abbey Road. The music was produced by George Martin, and was then prepared for release in 1970 by Phil Spector. Following the often fractious sessions for the White Albu...

  Such was the reputation, appeal and longevity of The Beatles; it took a long time for people to appreciate that the band had actually split up. That intensified the focus on John’s debut solo album, entitled John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Recording began on 29 September 1970 at Abbey Road studios.

[caption id="attachment_4252" ali...

On 21 January 1971, John invites Red Mole editors, Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, for a lengthy interview at Tittenhurst Park. It was through Red Mole that Lennon was to become acquainted with the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in. The newspaper had regular coverage and analysis on the work-in. In his day-long interview for the newspaper John e...

  On the evening of Friday June 11 the axe falls on Clydeside. The board of UCS told the government that the firm was technically insolvent. Without an extra £6m the company will fold. Heath’s government and the Industry Department was unresponsive causing a crisis among an estimated 2000 creditors. UCS is forced to enter liquidation ...

On Monday 14 June a mass meeting of all workers takes place in Clydebank Town Hall while leading stewards fly to London to attend a Commons debate on the crisis. Meanwhile in London, Industry Secretary, John Davies appoints a provisional liquidator and sets up an expert committee with a remit to report by the end of July. The following day, Tu...

  On the first of the month, the July edition of Red Mole is published with a cover dedicated to the developing Upper Clyde Shipbuilders dispute which had become a national news headlines in the UK. It was this edition which was to capture the attention of John Lennon. Writing in his memoirs Tariq Ali – at this point regularly speaking...

Far away from the still, murky waters of the Clyde, Prime Minister, Ted Heath, is in choppy waters of a different kind leading Britain’s Admiral Cup team to victory aboard his 42-foot yacht, Morning Cloud. Heath is at the helm in the punishing 600-mile, five-day race from Cowes on the Isle of Wight to Fastnet Rock off southern Ireland returni...

  UCS stewards outflank government by sidelining the Govan proposal at meeting organised by Sir John Eden. This and huge public support undermines the government position. By the end of the August, Industry Secretary, John Davies, takes personal control of negotiations. It was Davies most associated with the ‘lame ducks” phrase having...

  Having flown to New York at the end of August 1971, lawyers representing Yoko suggest to her that to secure her custody rights for her daughter, Kyoko, she and John must take up permanent residence in the States. Although he didn’t know it at the time, John would never again return to his native country. John explains: “Yoko and I w...

The cold-blooded killing of 13 Catholics after a civil rights march in Derry in Northern Ireland by British paratroopers causes outrage. Both John Lennon and even the less politically inclined Paul McCartney compose songs about the murders in February 1972. John had been a sustained critic of British involvement in Ireland. Indeed, both he and ...

  A secret memo addressed to the US Attorney General, John Mitchell, from Senator Strom Thurmond, suggests that John Lennon should be deported from the United States as an undesirable alien, due to Lennon's political views and activism. The document sent on 4 February 1972 claims Lennon's influence on young people could affect Nixon's cha...

  On Tuesday February 29 1972 John and Yoko’s original US visa expires. They are immediately granted a 15-day extension. But this sees the beginning of a three-and-a-half-year struggle by John to reside in America. The government’s opposition to his request is apparently based on his 1968 UK drug conviction by Sgt Pilcher. By the end o...

Having reached agreement with US oil rig company Marathon two days earlier, on 9 August 1972, the unions agree to the terms of the Govan proposal and the occupation ends in success.

One week later, Govan Shipbuilders became a reality. Sixteen months after the "work-in" campaign started, on the 9th October 1972, the terms of the sett...

  As Lennon battles deportation, the main who arrested him for drug possession was himself in the dock. Sgt. Pilcher – in charge of the drug squad at Scotland Yard in London – is jailed for six years on corruption charges. John has long claimed that Pilcher was responsible for planting the illegal substances in his flat when he was bus...

On 9 Feb 1976 Jimmy Reid leaves the Communist Party. After "sleepness nights" he shocks party leaders who had once nurtured him as a future leader and sends a resignation letter. Having joined aged 16, Jimmy has been a member for 25 years of his life and met his wife Joan through the party. Return to The Beatle, The Bankie & The Bouquet bl...

  In October 1977 Jimmy joins the Labour Party. It is a huge political move in which he is vilified as a traitor on both sides. From the Communist Party whom he abandoned his lifelong membership following his UCS fame and from the Labour Party which he had excoriated following election defeat in the 1974 elections. Members of both parties ...

In March 1997, Reid’s long-time comrade in the Communist Party, in the trade union movement and, most importantly, as his double act in the UCS occupation, Jimmy Airlie dies following a six-month battle with cancer, aged 60. Airlie’s unfortunate passing did not make for any happy ending. The pair were rumoured to have fallen after Reid’s ...

July 2021

Tariq Ali is 77 years old and lives in London with his wife. The activist, historian, filmmaker and novelist has written numerous books subsequent to the his memoirs Street Fighting Years. He is a member of the editorial board of the New Left Review and, as an intellectual commentator contributes article to newsapers and magazines. ...