Murdoch Taylor

Taylor was first active in the Young Communist League from the 1930s and came from Kirkcaldy, Fife in Scotland. Reporting on the 11th YCL Conference of Scotland held in Glasgow in 1939, and the Youth Peace Pilgrimage held in February 1939, Taylor stated in "Our Youth", a YCL monthly magazine, in May 1939: “Scotland as a country must play a real part in the nation wide movement of the young people, must adequately live up to the reputation of the Clydeside apprentices who started the youth strike movement, our Scottish Pit-lads too, who struck against conditions asking for a wage for age scale. Our YCL must be able in Scotland to change from an organisation which only operates in four towns, to one which can carry the decisions of our YCL Conference into every town and village.”

Taylor reported that one YCL member in Glasgow had collected £12 from workmates in the shipyards for the dependents’ aid fund of the International Brigade which he described as a "debt of honour" on top of the £100 promised by the YCL in Scotland. The main areas of YCL activity in Scotland in 1939 seem according to this report to have been Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth and Fife.

Michael Walker

Source: `Our Fight’ monthly magazine of the YCL May 1939