George Watson McGregor Reid was a Scottish modern Druid who established and led the Church of the Universal Bond. Little is known of Reid's early life although he may have been born in Scotland. He embarked on a nautical career and by 1888 was involved in trade union activities for seamen. Biography Early life and union activity: ?–1892 Assertaining accurate information about Reid's life is complicated by the fact that he often made contradictory claims regarding his biography, and many of the claims that he made about his life have conflicted against other surviving evidence. The historian Adam Stout noted that "all lines must be read between, all statements externally verified". No clear facts about his early life are known, with the historian Ronald Hutton stating that "the only certainties [about his early life] are that he was a Scot who initially made his living, in some fashion, from the sea". Reid made various competing claims about where and when he was born. In 1889, he claimed to have been born at Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye in 22 February 1850. This was five years before Scotland introduced official registration, meaning that it cannot be verified. Later in life, he was celebrating his birthday on 7 October and claimed to have been born in India. Another possibility is that he was born in Anderston, Lanarkshire in 1862, with the Scottish registry recording a George Watson Reid who was born here to a nautical family. Several later accounts held that he grew up without his mother. In an 1889 interview, Reid claimed that he had joined his uncle as a fisherman at the age of nine, joining the Royal Navy in 1874 after his uncle died. According to this account, he served in the Royal Navy for twelve years, during which time he took part in sea battles in the Eastern Mediterranean. He alleged that in 1886 he joined the Merchant Navy and in 1887 the Coast Seaman's Union in San Francisco. None of these claims have been confirmed by independent evidence. In July 1888 Reid is recorded as giving lectures at open-air meetings of the Social Democratic Federation. That year, he also helped to organise a seamen's strike in Clydeside. At one of his SDF meetings, he was introduced to two organisers of the National Amalgamated Sailors' and Firemen's Union, who were impressed in his role in the strike.