Mary Burns Laird

In 1913, as a member of the Women's Labour League, she gave a prepared statement and then was a witness to the Royal Commission on the Housing of the industrial population of Scotland Rural and Urban.

The Royal Commission on Housing originated in 1909, when the Secretary for Scotland, Lord Pentland, directed the Local Government Board for Scotland to seek reports from county medical officers into the living conditions of miners; this being the result of a meeting with a deputation from the Scottish Miners Federation earlier that year.

This eventually led to the Commission being established in 1912 by Lord Pentland's successor, the Right Honourable Thomas McKinnon Wood.

Laird's speech is quoted extensively in the local press, and includes details of the conditions that tenants had to contend with, such as 120,000 families in Glasgow being forced to stay in single-apartment flats due to high rents; also to the diseases such as rickets, measles etc which caused high mortality due to the cramped living conditions., and many of the other daily challenges which were faced.

In 1915, the radical publication Forward urged that Laird be adopted as a municipal candidate for the Labour Party as a way of linking housing policy with a direct appeal to women voters.

[14] On May Day 1917, Laird spoke alongside, among others, Mary Barbour and Agnes Dollan, at a rally at Glasgow Green attended by 70,000 people.

The Committee had been established by the Secretary for Scotland, Robert Munro with the purpose of inspecting houses built by the Local Government Board for Scotland for Ministry of Munitions and the Admiralty, and other housing schemes, and making recommendations from the housewife's point of view; its chair was Helen Kerr.

[18] The women commented on the type and layout of the new houses, many built on Garden City lines, and visits included schemes at Rosyth, Inchinnan, Gourock and Greenock.