Patrick Dollan

Sir Patrick Joseph Dollan (3 April 1885 – 30 January 1963)[1] and his wife, Agnes, Lady Dollan (née Moir; 16 August 1887 – 16 July 1966)[2] were Glasgow activists in the Scottish Independent Labour Party. During the First World War they campaigned against the Munitions of War Act of 1915 which suspended trade unionists' rights for the duration of hostilities.

Patrick Dollan

Early years

Born in Baillieston, Lanarkshire on 3 April 1885[3] of Irish descent and raised Roman Catholic, Dollan attended St Bridget's elementary school until he was ten years old. He later joined his father working as a miner at Clydeside Colliery in 1900. He married Agnes Moir, a Protestant, in 1912. She was a suffragette and a staunch pacifist during World War I.[2]

Activism

Patrick and Agnes Dollan were vocal in raising awareness of the plight of thousands of Glasgow tenants who were having their rents raised at a time when military conscription had reduced their earning potential. Government concern at the volatile situation in the city led to the Rent Restrictions Act of November 1915, freezing rents at pre-war levels. In the 1920s he was the author of a booklet, The Clyde Rent War!, a narrative of the Glasgow rent strikes of 1915–16,[4] which also contained proposals for housing policy reform.

Dollan was election organiser for the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in the 1922 United Kingdom general election[5]: 31  and then the chairman of the Scottish section of the ILP from 1922[5]: 32  until 1932, when he was expelled and formed his own Scottish Socialist Party, which immediately affiliated to the Labour Party.[6]

Dollan served as Lord Provost of Glasgow from 1938 to 1941.[5]: 33 

In 1939 he won the inaugural St Mungo Prize, which is awarded triannually to the person deemed to have done the most to promote and improve the city of Glasgow in the previous three years. He dedicated the prize to his mother.[7] At the beginning of World War II, Dollan encouraged his fellow Glaswegians to support the war effort against fascism,[8] for which efforts he was knighted in 1941.[1][9] In 1940, he was a co-founder and co-chairman (with Jadwiga Harasowska) of the Scottish-Polish Society promoting friendship between the Scottish population and the Polish Army stationing in Scotland at that time.[10]

Keenly interested in town planning, he was a member of the council of the Town and Country Planning Association and of the executive of the Scottish Section. He was the Chairman of the East Kilbride Development Corporation, crucial in bringing industry to that new town. Renowned Scottish planner, Elizabeth Buchanan Mitchell, spoke about him fondly: "His work there was unique. It was there that he wrote his name in the social history of the Scottish nation."

Miscellanea

The Dollan Baths in East Kilbride, Scotland's first Olympic-sized swimming pool, is named in his honour.

Dollan died in the Victoria Infirmary, Glasgow, on 30 January 1963. He was buried in Dalbeth cemetery on 1 February.

The Sikorski Club was donated by Sir Patrick Dollan.[11]

Honours

King George V conferred a knighthood on Dollan in the New Year's Honours of 1941 for his work as Lord Provost of Glasgow.[12]

References
  1. "Sir Patrick Dollan". The Times. London, England, UK. 31 January 1963. p. 16.
  2. "Lady Dollan". The Times. London, England, UK. 18 July 1963. p. 12.
  3. Gallagher, Tom (23 November 1985). "Left man in the right place". The Glasgow Herald. p. 9. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  4. Melling, Joseph (1983). Rent Strikes. Polygon. p. 109. ISBN 0904919722.
  5. Gallagher, Tom (2010). "Scottish Catholics and the British Left, 1918-1939". The Innes Review. 34 (1): 17–42. doi:10.3366/inr.1983.34.1.17 – via Edinburgh University Press.
  6. James Jupp, The Radical Left in Britain: 1931-1941, p. 47
  7. "Mr Dollan gives St Mungo Prize to his Mother". Daily Record. 26 October 1939.
  8. Carrigan, Daniel (2014). Patrick Dollan (1885-1963) and the Labour Movement in Glasgow (PDF). University of Glasgow Library (glathesis:2014-5640): University of Glasgow, MPhil (R) thesis. pp. 107–148.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  9. Sir Patrick Dollan profile, theglasgowstory.com; accessed 24 September 2015.
  10. Kernberg, Thomas (1990). The Polish community in Scotland (PDF). University of Glasgow Library (glathesis:1990-704): University of Glasgow, Institute of Soviet and East European Studies (PhD thesis). pp. 89–98.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  11. "Home to Scotland's Poles since dark days of Hitler, Sikorski Club faces closing its doors for good". The Herald. Glasgow. 9 October 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
  12. "Supplement to the London Gazette of Tuesday the 31st December 1940". The London Gazette. 31 December 1940. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
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