JOHN Maclean (August 24, 1879 - St Andrews Day, November 30, 1923) was not only Scotland’s greatest socialist “saint”, but internationally renowned.
He held mass meetings and socialist economic classes, not only in Scotland but also in England, Ireland and Wales. He opposed the First World War, held Hands Off India and Ireland campaigns and took on the might of the British Empire. He also supported a Scottish Workers’ Republic before the birth of the modern SNP. Many of the founders of the National Party of Scotland were republican socialists, such as RB Cunninghame Graham, Dr John S Clarke (who both also founded the original, short-lived Scottish Labour Party, 1888-1895) plus Hugh MacDiarmid, Compton MacKenzie, Roland E Muirhead etc.
Maclean was appointed Soviet Consul by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, mainly due to his campaign against WW1. He had a street named after him in Petrograd and the USSR published a stamp to him for his birthday centenary in 1979.
READ MORE: How Scottish socialist John Maclean is relevant as ever
Harry McShane said the Petrograd cavalry battalion in the Civil War had a banner of the city of Glasgow.
The Maclean Society funded a cairn to the great man in Shawbridge Square, which will be shifted to some other prominent part due to housing development, as Maclean would undoubtedly approve of.
His consul is still unmarked in South Portland Street, Glasgow (next to the Sheriff Court). Allan Pinkerton, the Scottish Republican Chartist who founded the Pinkerton Detective Agency and spy system during the Civil War and laid the prototype for the present US spy system, also had a house in South Portland Street, also unmarked. We will later press for plaques to be laid there.
The Soviet Consul was not recognised by the British Government, who even blocked HM postal deliveries. Maclean was refused permission to travel. Others travelled illegally, through Finland and Sweden, and they formed the Communist Party of Great Britain with Lenin’s seal of approval. Maclean had already declared his Scottish Workers Republican Party, which survived him till the 1930s, with several councillors. The CPGB have dropped the “Great” from their title and are now the CPB. The CPGB title has been claimed by a small Maoist group, financed by London gold and a rich “fairy godmother”, instead of Moscow gold. Maclean said that Scotland would not be dictated to by Lenin, who called him “Maclean of England”.
READ MORE: Marking the centenary of Red Clydeside hero John Maclean's death
Sir Basil Thomson, head of intelligence in Scotland, instructed his agents to put the word out that Maclean was “mad” two years before his early death. He was sacked and blacklisted from his teaching job, frequently jailed and given hard labour.
His official cause of death was pneumonia but he died from starvation and poverty, living on peas brose, which he thought was nutritious. He gave his only overcoat to a black comrade amid a cold November winter. Those paid to watch him 24/7, and force-feed him on hunger strike, believing he was drugged, claimed he was “paranoid”, as did his Unionist political opponents, who claimed him a political deviant for demanding an independent socialist Scotland. Sound familiar?
Would you help to, at least, recognise him with a city statue? A well-known Scottish republican songwriter has kicked off with a £10k donation towards the target of £60,000, which includes the cost of paying the council to lay the foundations. The statue appeal details will be announced in The National and the public launch will be after the finale of the John Maclean Song Competition in the Pollok Burgh Halls tonight, following the annual John Maclean rally. Hope to see you all there.
Donald Anderson
Glasgow
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