THE demands for a Second Front in the war against Hitler, to take some of the pressure off Stalin’s Red Army, had been growing steadily by the time Glasgow staged its May Day parade and rally in 1942.

“’Second Front Now’ quickly became as much of a slogan as well as a strategy; scrawled on walls, erected into a rallying cry for Communist-organized demonstrations, and attracting the support of Lord Beaverbrook and Michael Foot, as well as, latterly, the United States Chiefs of Staff”, Roy Jenkins says in his biography of Churchill. (Foot edited the Evening Standard, which was owned by Beaverbrook, who had served in Churchill’s wartime cabinet).

Amongst the dozens of groups and organisations taking part in the huge May Day parade were a number of Glasgow University students, wearing their red robes, and a band of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries.

Demands for a Second Front were loud and frequent, but they were criticised that evening by Bailie James Carmichael at a May Day meeting in Glasgow of the Independent Labour Party.

“In the parade”, he said, “there were hundreds of young men clamouring for a Second Front.

“I am a bit older than those shouting today about a Second Front, but if I thought intervention by way of a Second Front was necessary, and if I was backing this war up to the hilt, I would see my way to become a member of the British forces to assist it”.

He expressed fears about the outcome of a new front from “the point of view of the mutilation that would take place”, and went on to warn: “If we try to establish a Second Front it will result in not one Dunkirk but many Dunkirks”.

Five well-known Glasgow MPs addressed 30,000 people at the Glasgow Green rally.

A resolution was submitted in which the workers of Glasgow sent greetings to the people of Russia, America and China, with a promise that they would produce, to their utmost, munitions of war “so that 1942 may be the decisive year".

Read more: Herald Diary