The years 1975 to 1976 were to prove momentous for Jimmy Reid. It was during this brief period that he re-evaluated where he stood politically. The general elections of 1974 had not only proved a disappointment for him personally, but also were embarrassing to the Party as the derisory vote it received in October that year proved, if it needed proving, that it was as an organisation politically irrelevant. However, the Party remained an important presence on the industrial front in the 1970s. Despite predictions from some influential social critics that class struggle was a thing of the past, between 1970 and 1972, over 47 million days were lost in Britain due to strikes. The two main events, the UCS work-in and the miners’ strike of 1972, saw Party activists, such Reid and Airlie, Arthur Scargill and Mick McGahey, play major roles in both disputes. However, as the 1970s wore on, these disputes were increasingly being viewed by the Eurocommunist section of the Party as ‘economistic and centred on maintaining the privileges of male, white, skilled workers’; something that became very explicit during the 1984 miners’ strike. Reid had experienced at first hand the Party's impotency in the political arena, he was now to experience it in the industrial field too.

Feeling that he enjoyed an enormous reservoir of goodwill among engineering workers throughout Britain, Reid decided to run for office as AUEW divisional officer – Division 1 (Scotland) – describing himself on the candidate's list as ‘a reasonable and in the proper sense of the word a moderate person’. The position had become vacant due to the election of the right-wing and anti-communist John McFarlane Boyd as general secretary in 1975. Reid faced a straight fight against ex-communist Gavin Laird (later Sir Gavin Laird), who had left the Party over Hungary in 1956, and who had defeated James Airlie earlier in 1972 for a regional officer’s post by 17,500 votes to 10,000. Laird was also a part-time director of the Highlands and Islands Development Board, enjoying a salary of £1,800 per annum on top of his full-time union salary of £4,500.