Robert 'Bobby' Lynn, Glasgow anarchist and community activist
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Robert 'Bobby' Lynn, Glasgow anarchist and community activist
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"(Photo taken at one of 'Bobby's' mystery 'bus-runs'. It was that mysterious I can't remember where it was, not sure even if we knew at the time. Nor can I remember the name of the man on the left.)
ROBERT ‘BOBBY’ LYNN from the Calton in Glasgow’s East End was an enigmatic figure whose looks belied his personality. He was a cherubic-faced, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired, small and dapper, generous and non-judgemental man with piercing and slightly hooded blue eyes.
Bobby was in his late thirties when I first met him. He had been involved in the Glasgow anarchist group throughout the 1950s and had been its backbone since the departure of older activists who had kept an anarchist presence in Glasgow in the face of massive hostility from the Labour and Communist Parties throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s: resilient activists such as Frank Leach, Jimmy Raeside, Eddie Shaw, Willie McDougall, John T Caldwell, and Guy Aldred of the Strickland Press.
Robert revelled in the street forums, which he called the University of Life. They certainly had their moments. I remember one exemplary SPGB graduate mounting the platform, drawing a ten-shilling note from his pocket and holding it dangling from his thumb and forefinger for a quarter of an hour or so while delivering a devastatingly witty attack on money. The audience of thirty or so were spellbound. There was not a single heckler, until he set fire to it.
From what I remember, my first conversation with Bobby went something like the following; his was a line he used often in debates at the open workers’ forums in Renfrew Street and elsewhere. ‘But what about stealing?’ says I. ‘Nobody would steal’, says Robert, ‘because it would be a society of abundance. What would be the sense in stealing in such a society? Let’s take as an example man’s most precious material things. What would you say these were?’ ‘Air’, says I, ‘and water’. ‘Exactly’, says Robert, ‘and these are in abundance. Now how would you like to steal some air and some water and go around the Gallowgate trying to sell it? Now if we can create a society where everything else is in abundance and we can do that with modern technology, stealing would vanish.’ Who could argue with that?
The elegance and trickiness of Robert’s dialectic typified his approach. It was Jesuitical, but his ‘patter’ and his cheery character was the trigger that won me over to anarchism.
Robert also explained democracy to me. The anarchist or libertarian view held democracy to be an intrinsically liberating and fulfilling humanitarian ideal. The capitalist, on the other hand, saw democracy as an end in itself. It was a political instrument controlled through the party system of government by a few powerful leaders and a number of accommodating scoundrels and fawning stooges.
Through the device of political parties, of both left and right, the ‘popular will’ could be efficiently and legitimately converted into a means of social control over individuals and property — on the assumption it was an expression of the wishes of the majority.
My first visit to Ross Street in the Calton (where the group met) gave me an insight into the ‘dark side’ of Glasgow, one which I had previously known nothing about.
It was dark and raining when I got off the tramcar at Glasgow Cross and as I hurried up the empty street under the railway bridge towards the Barrows, I suddenly found myself squeezed between two sinister- looking, razor-scarred, Glasgow hard men who appeared from nowhere and pushed me towards a close mouth.
‘Wherr ur you goin’ ’, said one. ‘Tae see a friend’, said I. ‘ ’Zat right’, said he. ‘Whaurr’s zis freen live?’ said the other. ‘Ross Street’, says I, trying not to sound fearful.
‘Whit’s his name, then, pal?’ said the first one. ‘Robert Lynn’, said I, and with the mention of Robert’s name the mood changed as though the sun had come out from behind a dark cloud.
The second one said, sternly: ‘A wee boy like you shouldna be walkin’ the streets o’ the Calton on yer own’ and with that they escorted me right to the door of 4 Ross Street, chatting away as if they had known me all their lives.
The Glasgow Anarchist Group met in this derelict ground floor single-end at 4 Ross Street, off the Gallowgate, next to the Glasgow Barrows. The room doubled as a ‘shebeen’, an illegal-drinking house where people came to drink or buy cheap South African fortified wines such as Lanliq.
The scene, when I entered the room through a dark lobby, was dramatic. The room, lit by a naked lightbulb, was bare except for a long table around which were seated the unlikeliest looking collection of people I had seen in my life. It was Callan meets G.K.Chesterton’s Man Who Was Thursday; it was Alphonse Bertillon’s private photo album. Old ‘Red Clydesiders’, William Clarke Quantrill’s Confederate Army guerrilla raiders and ‘The Hole in the Wall Gang’ had come to life in a single end in Glasgow’s Calton.
At the head of the long table sat Robert, who made me feel immediately welcome with a smile, a wave, a brief introduction to those seated at the table, a mug of sweet brown fortified wine and a chair.
The ominous hush that had descended on the room when I made my entrance immediately lifted and the lively debate picked up where it had left off.
Some of the men in this room were quite awesome, massively built and heavily scarred about their faces and appeared to me unusually aggressive with each other. One in particular, Scout O’Neill, had hands like a Belfast ham. If guns were to be bought in Glasgow, it would be here. In fact, Peter Manuel, the last man to be hanged in Scotland, in July 1958, was convicted because Scout had turned Queen’s Evidence when he discovered Manuel was a suspect in a series of seven murders in and around Glasgow between 1954 and 1958. Scout had sold him a gun, a Webley revolver, supposedly for a robbery he said he was planning.
The heated and sometimes bellicose discussions were constantly disrupted by wee wifies coming in with empty jugs to buy wine. After the meetings we would usually go across the road to the Saracen’s Head, Robert’s local, one of the oldest and, at the time, one of the most notorious pubs in Glasgow.
Robert had lived in Ross Street all his life. He and his wife Jean had a ‘single end’ (a room and a kitchen) upstairs from the shebeen.
Like his French Stirnerite companions of ‘the idea’ — such as Jules Bonnot of the Bande A Bonnot, an anarchist group of bank expropriators in 1910 (who were the first organised robbers to use motor cars), and Marius Jacob whose 40-strong anarchist group burgled their way through the stately homes of France a few years earlier — Robert’s interpretation of anarchism gave meaning and legitimacy to the often questionable activities of some Hogarthian local characters. Many of these were regular participants in the Ross Street meetings and these were the faces around the table on that first night.
There was nothing doctrinaire about these meetings; everyone spoke as they found, some of it bordering on what would be described today as ‘non-politically correct’, I thought, but all of them had the heart of the matter in them — socialism, in its truest sense. The younger, newer Glasgow anarchists, in spite of Robert Lynn’s Stirnerite sympathies, were solidly anarcho-syndicalist and we regularly sold Direct Action, the paper of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation on the street corners of Glasgow.
Robert’s favourite leisure pastime was organising ‘bus runs’ and he and Jean would put these on regularly for us and the couthy folk of the Calton. The ‘bus runs’ were a ‘rerr terr’ (Glaswegian for ‘top form’) and we all had a great time with our ‘cairy-oots’ and ‘sannies’.
Occasionally we would stop at a café or restaurant for lunch and Scout O’Neill’s party trick, when the plate of steak pie, peas and potatoes arrived at the table, was to put his massive hands over the dinner plate and thus completely cover it. Scout always led the singing; in fact he acquired his sobriquet because he was constantly singing the Dave Willis song with the refrain I’m a scout, scout, scout.
On one occasion we went on a bus run to Burntisland on the Firth of Forth, near Rosyth naval dockyard, and we had a visiting French anarchist with us, a lad of about 21 who also happened to be a deserter from the French Navy.
The bar, in the British Legion hall, was full of ugly-looking Glasgow anarchists and Royal Navy sailors, plus some from a French naval vessel in port, but the atmosphere was friendly — until after a few ‘bevies’ a French sailor chatting to our French comrade called him a ‘coward’.
Our man immediately threw a punch at the sailor and in a moment the place was in an uproar with chairs thrown at the bar, tables upturned and people swinging fists, glasses and bottles at each other. I felt as though I had been transported to the set of a John Wayne movie.
The French Navy came off worse that night. I imagine they thought they’d docked in Marseilles by mistake! We made a hasty retreat to where the bus was parked, taking time to set fire to the Union Jack on the flagpole outside the bar, and all the time you could hear Scout singing ‘For I’m a scout, scout, scout….’ "
Stuart Christie, July 2011
ROBERT ‘BOBBY’ LYNN from the Calton in Glasgow’s East End was an enigmatic figure whose looks belied his personality. He was a cherubic-faced, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired, small and dapper, generous and non-judgemental man with piercing and slightly hooded blue eyes.
Bobby was in his late thirties when I first met him. He had been involved in the Glasgow anarchist group throughout the 1950s and had been its backbone since the departure of older activists who had kept an anarchist presence in Glasgow in the face of massive hostility from the Labour and Communist Parties throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s: resilient activists such as Frank Leach, Jimmy Raeside, Eddie Shaw, Willie McDougall, John T Caldwell, and Guy Aldred of the Strickland Press.
Robert revelled in the street forums, which he called the University of Life. They certainly had their moments. I remember one exemplary SPGB graduate mounting the platform, drawing a ten-shilling note from his pocket and holding it dangling from his thumb and forefinger for a quarter of an hour or so while delivering a devastatingly witty attack on money. The audience of thirty or so were spellbound. There was not a single heckler, until he set fire to it.
From what I remember, my first conversation with Bobby went something like the following; his was a line he used often in debates at the open workers’ forums in Renfrew Street and elsewhere. ‘But what about stealing?’ says I. ‘Nobody would steal’, says Robert, ‘because it would be a society of abundance. What would be the sense in stealing in such a society? Let’s take as an example man’s most precious material things. What would you say these were?’ ‘Air’, says I, ‘and water’. ‘Exactly’, says Robert, ‘and these are in abundance. Now how would you like to steal some air and some water and go around the Gallowgate trying to sell it? Now if we can create a society where everything else is in abundance and we can do that with modern technology, stealing would vanish.’ Who could argue with that?
The elegance and trickiness of Robert’s dialectic typified his approach. It was Jesuitical, but his ‘patter’ and his cheery character was the trigger that won me over to anarchism.
Robert also explained democracy to me. The anarchist or libertarian view held democracy to be an intrinsically liberating and fulfilling humanitarian ideal. The capitalist, on the other hand, saw democracy as an end in itself. It was a political instrument controlled through the party system of government by a few powerful leaders and a number of accommodating scoundrels and fawning stooges.
Through the device of political parties, of both left and right, the ‘popular will’ could be efficiently and legitimately converted into a means of social control over individuals and property — on the assumption it was an expression of the wishes of the majority.
My first visit to Ross Street in the Calton (where the group met) gave me an insight into the ‘dark side’ of Glasgow, one which I had previously known nothing about.
It was dark and raining when I got off the tramcar at Glasgow Cross and as I hurried up the empty street under the railway bridge towards the Barrows, I suddenly found myself squeezed between two sinister- looking, razor-scarred, Glasgow hard men who appeared from nowhere and pushed me towards a close mouth.
‘Wherr ur you goin’ ’, said one. ‘Tae see a friend’, said I. ‘ ’Zat right’, said he. ‘Whaurr’s zis freen live?’ said the other. ‘Ross Street’, says I, trying not to sound fearful.
‘Whit’s his name, then, pal?’ said the first one. ‘Robert Lynn’, said I, and with the mention of Robert’s name the mood changed as though the sun had come out from behind a dark cloud.
The second one said, sternly: ‘A wee boy like you shouldna be walkin’ the streets o’ the Calton on yer own’ and with that they escorted me right to the door of 4 Ross Street, chatting away as if they had known me all their lives.
The Glasgow Anarchist Group met in this derelict ground floor single-end at 4 Ross Street, off the Gallowgate, next to the Glasgow Barrows. The room doubled as a ‘shebeen’, an illegal-drinking house where people came to drink or buy cheap South African fortified wines such as Lanliq.
The scene, when I entered the room through a dark lobby, was dramatic. The room, lit by a naked lightbulb, was bare except for a long table around which were seated the unlikeliest looking collection of people I had seen in my life. It was Callan meets G.K.Chesterton’s Man Who Was Thursday; it was Alphonse Bertillon’s private photo album. Old ‘Red Clydesiders’, William Clarke Quantrill’s Confederate Army guerrilla raiders and ‘The Hole in the Wall Gang’ had come to life in a single end in Glasgow’s Calton.
At the head of the long table sat Robert, who made me feel immediately welcome with a smile, a wave, a brief introduction to those seated at the table, a mug of sweet brown fortified wine and a chair.
The ominous hush that had descended on the room when I made my entrance immediately lifted and the lively debate picked up where it had left off.
Some of the men in this room were quite awesome, massively built and heavily scarred about their faces and appeared to me unusually aggressive with each other. One in particular, Scout O’Neill, had hands like a Belfast ham. If guns were to be bought in Glasgow, it would be here. In fact, Peter Manuel, the last man to be hanged in Scotland, in July 1958, was convicted because Scout had turned Queen’s Evidence when he discovered Manuel was a suspect in a series of seven murders in and around Glasgow between 1954 and 1958. Scout had sold him a gun, a Webley revolver, supposedly for a robbery he said he was planning.
The heated and sometimes bellicose discussions were constantly disrupted by wee wifies coming in with empty jugs to buy wine. After the meetings we would usually go across the road to the Saracen’s Head, Robert’s local, one of the oldest and, at the time, one of the most notorious pubs in Glasgow.
Robert had lived in Ross Street all his life. He and his wife Jean had a ‘single end’ (a room and a kitchen) upstairs from the shebeen.
Like his French Stirnerite companions of ‘the idea’ — such as Jules Bonnot of the Bande A Bonnot, an anarchist group of bank expropriators in 1910 (who were the first organised robbers to use motor cars), and Marius Jacob whose 40-strong anarchist group burgled their way through the stately homes of France a few years earlier — Robert’s interpretation of anarchism gave meaning and legitimacy to the often questionable activities of some Hogarthian local characters. Many of these were regular participants in the Ross Street meetings and these were the faces around the table on that first night.
There was nothing doctrinaire about these meetings; everyone spoke as they found, some of it bordering on what would be described today as ‘non-politically correct’, I thought, but all of them had the heart of the matter in them — socialism, in its truest sense. The younger, newer Glasgow anarchists, in spite of Robert Lynn’s Stirnerite sympathies, were solidly anarcho-syndicalist and we regularly sold Direct Action, the paper of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation on the street corners of Glasgow.
Robert’s favourite leisure pastime was organising ‘bus runs’ and he and Jean would put these on regularly for us and the couthy folk of the Calton. The ‘bus runs’ were a ‘rerr terr’ (Glaswegian for ‘top form’) and we all had a great time with our ‘cairy-oots’ and ‘sannies’.
Occasionally we would stop at a café or restaurant for lunch and Scout O’Neill’s party trick, when the plate of steak pie, peas and potatoes arrived at the table, was to put his massive hands over the dinner plate and thus completely cover it. Scout always led the singing; in fact he acquired his sobriquet because he was constantly singing the Dave Willis song with the refrain I’m a scout, scout, scout.
On one occasion we went on a bus run to Burntisland on the Firth of Forth, near Rosyth naval dockyard, and we had a visiting French anarchist with us, a lad of about 21 who also happened to be a deserter from the French Navy.
The bar, in the British Legion hall, was full of ugly-looking Glasgow anarchists and Royal Navy sailors, plus some from a French naval vessel in port, but the atmosphere was friendly — until after a few ‘bevies’ a French sailor chatting to our French comrade called him a ‘coward’.
Our man immediately threw a punch at the sailor and in a moment the place was in an uproar with chairs thrown at the bar, tables upturned and people swinging fists, glasses and bottles at each other. I felt as though I had been transported to the set of a John Wayne movie.
The French Navy came off worse that night. I imagine they thought they’d docked in Marseilles by mistake! We made a hasty retreat to where the bus was parked, taking time to set fire to the Union Jack on the flagpole outside the bar, and all the time you could hear Scout singing ‘For I’m a scout, scout, scout….’ "
Stuart Christie, July 2011
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Stuart Christie, “Robert 'Bobby' Lynn, Glasgow anarchist and community activist,” Stuart Christie Memorial Archive, accessed December 26, 2024, https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/items/show/324.