You’d never seen him look angry before, you felt angry yourself and damned hurt as well, you asked who the hell he was calling names and he said Clean your ears and you’ll hear quick enough. Bob, be up at the League room tonight. There’s a meeting on of all the chaps I can bring.

Who the hell did he think he was ordering about? But you went to the meeting all the same, a fair birn of the Gowans and Gloag chaps there, half the young lads from Machines and Castings and that thin-necked Bulgar who worked in the Stores, Norman and Alick and wee Geordie Bruce. No League folk and thank Christ no queans, Ewan sat behind the chairman’s table alone and banged it and stood up and began to speak: and afore he’d said much there was such a hush you’d have heard the wind rumble in the belly of a flea.

He said they’d all noticed the new orders coming into Gowans and Gloag’s. Did they know what the orders were for—the new machinery, the new parts they made? Especially had they noticed the new cylinders? He could tell them: he’d found out that morning. They were making new ammunition parts, bits of shells and gas-cylinders for Sidderley, the English armament people.

Somebody cried up Well, hell, does it matter? and Ewan said if a man were such a poor swine that it didn’t matter to him he was making things to be used to blow Chinese workers to bits, people like himself, then it didn’t matter. But if he had any guts at all he’d join the whole of Gowans and Gloag in a strike that would paralyse the Works. Gas-cylinder cases: he hadn’t been at the War, none of them had, but they’d all read and heard about gas-attacks. Here was an account by a hospital attendant that he’d copied from a book:

I RECEIVED AN URGENT MESSAGE FROM THE HOSPITAL TO BE IN ATTENDANCE IMMEDIATELY. I HURRIED THERE AND ALMOST AT ONCE THE STREAM OF AMBULANCES WITH THE UNFORTUNATE PRISONERS BEGAN TO ARRIVE. AT FIRST SCORES, THEN LATER HUNDREDS, OF BROKEN MEN, GASPING, SCREAMING, CHOKING. THE HOSPITAL WAS PACKED WITH FRENCH SOLDIERS, BEATING AND FIGHTING THE AIR FOR BREATH. DOZENS OF MEN WERE DYING LIKE FLIES, THEIR CLOTHES RENT TO RIBBONS IN THEIR AGONY, THEIR FACES A HORRIBLE SICKLY GREEN AND CONTORTED OUT OF ALL HUMAN SHAPE—

There was plenty more, but that gave you a taste. Well, that’s what he’d summoned this meeting for. What were they to do about it in Gowans?

Christ, you’d felt sick at that stuff he’d read, but then wee Geordie Bruce at the back of the hall sounded a raspberry and everybody laughed, high out and relieved, you laughed yourself, only Norman and Ewan didn’t. Ewan said if the chap at the back had anything to say let him get up and say it, and at that wee Geordie Bruce stood up and said Ah, to hell with you and your blethers. What do you think you’re trying to do?—play the bloody toff on us again? It doesn’t matter a faeces to us what they’re going to do with the wee round tins. If you’re a Chink or a Black yourself, that’s your worry. And other chaps called out the same, who the mucking hell did Tavendale think he was?—daft as all the bloody Reds. And afore you could wink the place was in a roar, Ewan you could see sitting at the table, listening, looking from this side to that. Then he stood up and said that they’d take a vote—those in favour of a strike hold up their hands.