Jimmy Reid's grand-daughter warns 'rats are still with us' as she battles to become Labour MP
dailyrecord.co.ukThe grand-daughter of legendary trade unionist Jimmy Reid has warned his famous “rat race” speech has never been more relevant as she battles to become an MP.Joani Reid is standing for Labour in East Kilbride and Strathaven where she is fighting to overturn a huge SNP majority in a constituency hammered by the cost-of-living crisis.
For 18 months, the married mum of two has been knocking doors on a relentless campaign drive and is now favourite to be elected after the SNP’s Lisa Cameron caused outrage by defecting to the Tories.
Jimmy Reid grabbed headlines around the world when he led the early 1970s Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in to stop Edward Heath’s Tory government closing down yards.The New York Times declared his barnstorming 1971 address to Glasgow University titled Alienation as the “greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address”.He told students to “reject the values and false morality” of “self-centred and grasping” rampant capitalism.And he followed up with the now immortal line: “A rat race is for rats.
We’re not rats. We’re human beings.”Reid, who died in 2010 aged 78, was described as the “best MP Scotland never had” and Joani, 38, is now determined to finally continue his work of championing the plight of workers in parliament.She said: “When my grandfather talked about the rat race and alienation, you can see it in the way the Conservatives are behaving in the dehuminisation of lots of different groups – from immigrants with the Rwanda policy to the claims of a sick note culture among workers.“All of the things he was warning about in the 1970s have been turbocharged by the current government at Westminster and I don’t think the Scottish Government under the SNP has done anything like
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