Why write a biography of Jimmy Reid? What did he achieve that makes for compelling reasons to chronicle his life? He was, it is almost universally agreed, a great orator: ‘the most authentic, radical, workingclass political orator north or south of the border’, according to the Guardian's Martin Kettle. Alex Salmond, the former First Minister of Scotland, said of him that he was ‘Scotland's great rallying figure over the last four decades and was one of the few Scottish political figures who can genuinely say that they provoked real change for the better in society’. The late Tony Benn claimed he was ‘a great figure of the labour movement’, and, according to others, he was the best MP that Scotland never had. In the arena of industrial relations he achieved heroic status as the symbol of working-class defiance of market forces which manifested itself in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) work-in during the months of 1971 and 1972. Reid, as Gregor Gall states, secured his place in the pantheon of the left because, along with fellow Communist Party members, such as James Airlie and Sammy Barr, ‘he led not only one of the most important post-war struggles but one which did not end in glorious defeat’. This fact alone would provide enough reason to write a biography of him; but for the struggles of the shipyard workers, shipbuilding on the Clyde would have disappeared. As former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, ‘the fact there is still a shipbuilding industry in Scotland today is in large measure because of the inspirational campaigns that he waged’. But Reid also matters as a political figure, not just for UCS, but because his political journey from communism, to Labourism, and ultimately to Nationalism (a political life in three acts) not only speaks of the complexities of left politics after 1945, but also illuminates and facilitates our understanding of ‘particular institutions and forms of social change’ by showing how they had been ‘understood and negotiated’ by a particular individual.