Remembering Glasgow's 'forgotten' revolutionary John MacLean

1 John MacLean was born this week (August 24) in 1879, into a working class family in Pollokshaws, and went on to stand head and shoulders above the majority in the fight for workers’ rights. A schoolteacher at Lorne Street Primary until trumped up charges of sedition forced him to lose his job and spend time in prison, John played a part in Glasgow’s rent strikes and was an outspoken opponent of the First World War.

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2 The all-but-forgotten revolutionary was one of the leading Red Clydesiders. He first got into politics through the Pollokshaws Progressive Union, believing that living standards of the working-classes could only be improved by social revolution. After his sacking, he became a full-time Marxist lecturer and organiser. He would later found the Scottish Labour College.

3 In a speech to the court during his famous trial for sedition he said: “I am not here as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.” In Peterhead Prison he went on hunger strike and was force-fed twice daily using a stomach tube. His wife Agnes wrote that her husband was being subjected to torture and described the feeding process as “slow murder”.

4 After the war John was released from prison to great public fanfare. Songwriter Hamish Henderson, in the John MacLean March, wrote that “the great John MacLean has come hame tae the Clyde” and folk singer and poet Matt McGinn described him as “fightin’ dominie”.

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5 John died aged 44 in 1923. A statue in his memory was erected in Pollokshaws. The plaque describes him as a “famous pioneer of working class education” who “forged the Scottish link in the golden chain of world socialism.” He has been described by his daughter Nan and others as the “Scotish Lenin.”