THIS month marks 100 years since the passing of one of Scotland’s greatest socialist campaigners, John Maclean (1879-1923).
A commemorative cairn in his memory stands stoically on Glasgow’s McArthur Street surrounded by the rubble and debris of the neighbouring Shawbridge shopping arcade. The repeated attempts to regenerate Pollokshaws have changed the physical landscape drastically since its inception as a weaving town.
Some small glimpses of the past can still be found if you stand under the railway bridge at Pollokshaws East station on a cold, wet and misty November night. Try to imagine the red and orange glow of gas-fuelled street lights reflecting off the myriad of tenemental streets. Listen for the distant rattle of a tram car passing, its carriages rattling as it shepherds travellers through the miles of sandstone tenements that stretch north through the city to Maryhill and east out to Shettleston.
Stare into the mist long enough and you might catch a glimpse of a stocky figure, shoulders rolled forward against the weather. Look hard and the figure may draw closer through the haar, squint your eyes and you might just see the round, kind face of a man forming in soft focus, dark-brown eyes lighting up with a wide smile in greeting.
Stay long enough and a chill will blow through you as the apparition passes, brave it out and you’ll notice he’s underdressed for such a cold winter night. Before you can come to your senses and muster a response the figure will melt away into the fog, stepping out into the rain in fits of coughing and disappearing into the darkness.
Right up until his passing, Maclean continued to campaign relentlessly. Only days before his death, he was carried home from an outdoor meeting racked with pneumonia. His daughter Nan describes a visit to John’s sister Lizzie that week. Noticing his brother-in-law was going to work without a jacket, he insisted that he wrap himself up against what was described as an intensely cold and foggy evening. When pressed as to why he wasn’t wearing his jacket, John brushed the issue aside.
It was only after his passing that a friend from Barbados – Neil Johnston – who had been staying with Maclean, wrote to his wife Agnes to say: “He was the greatest man in Scotland, one great lump of kindness and sincerity... I have an overcoat for the last six months lent to me by your husband.”
Maclean’s friend and comrade Sylvia Pankhurst wrote similarly before his passing that she was worried about his health, saying that he spoke outside in all weathers and survived on pease brose.
George Lansbury, a future leader of the Labour Party who once stood for election on the issue of women’s suffrage, wrote in his obituary of Maclean that: “Only a few days before his death, when he himself was bodily sick, he went to a slum house to see a sick child whom he found without food, warmth or a doctor. He paid for them with what he had in his pocket. Afterwards going to the labour rooms to borrow money for a tram home.”
It isn’t, however, purely down to small acts of kindness and charity that Maclean is admired and remembered. He was an outspoken critic of the British Empire and the First World War at its height; an educator of Marxist economics; and an advocate of direct action when needed. All outspoken positions that he proudly and publicly advocated for, resulting in multiple periods in prison.
One of the earliest attempts to temper Maclean’s behaviour came early on in his teaching career, when the Govan School Board transferred him from his post at Strathbungo School, his new post within the more working class neighbourhood of Kinning Park.
It wasn’t long before he was transferred again, this time to Lorne Street School after organising a petition among his colleagues with regards to workload and criticism of the curriculum.
In a letter to a paper of the time, Maclean (above, centre) writes “children were taught ‘Thou shall not kill’ whilst celebrating military victories” and that children “heard ‘Thou shall not steal’ before learning about British rule in India”. His time at Lorne Street School and as a teacher for the Govan School Board wasn’t going to last much longer.
Using his skills and qualities as a teacher, Maclean had spent years travelling across Scotland, delivering lectures on economics to groups of workers.
Maclean’s daughter Nan tells how her father and fellow Pollokshaws native James MacDougall had been delivering classes across the coal fields of Lanarkshire and as far off as Fife since 1908. By 1915, he had years of experience and had built a relationship with thousands of workers across the country, with 400 students regularly attending his Economics and Industrial History class.
As the human casualties of the war were beginning to take a toll on the families of Glasgow, so too was the economic impact. Maclean had become the main attraction at a weekly meeting held on Bath Street every Sunday evening. MacDougall describes one of the Bath Street meetings: “Men who had never in their lives before taken any interest in socialism flocked to Bath Street to hear what Maclean had to say, for by this time his name was a household word in the city.”
He goes on to describe the scene. “At the foot of the street across from Renfield Street stood the Tramway office, brilliantly lit, plastered with poster appeals for men to join the army… Up the street, standing on a table in the midst of a dense crowd, stood John Maclean. Exhorting men in explicit terms under no circumstances to join the army.”
The war, he told them, was no accident and that it was in “the very nature of capitalism to engender war”. The men that they were asked to shoot, Maclean continued, were their brothers, with the same difficulties in making ends meet and that their real enemy was their own employers.
MacDougall provides Nan with a vivid description of Maclean in full flow: “Who can forget the tense, drawn face of the orator, his broad features, high prominent cheekbones, his heavy, bushy eyebrows, firm, clean shaven mouth, his glowing eyes and the natural eloquence that fell from his lips?
“As he drove on, his prematurely grey hair shone in the reflected light of the street lamps and his forehead became covered with sweat. The soul of the man leapt out of his eyes and took possession of that vast audience. They saw a David before them casting defiance against the capitalist Goliath. They knew that the organised power of the British state was against him, ready to crush him.”
It was for his speeches at Bath Street and another at Langside Halls that Maclean was first convicted under the Defence of the Realm Act. This was the final straw for the Govan School Board who summoned him to a meeting and gave notice of his dismissal. If there wasn’t enough going on at the time, a huge rent strike had been organised against rampant profiteering by the city’s landlords.
The Rent Strike had spread throughout the city and the issue was to come to a head when 18 workers were summoned to court to have their rent arrears deducted from their wages.
Mary Barbour’s army organised themselves across the city – marching past the major workplaces, they called out the men and women in the shipyards, the munitions factories and everything else in between, for a great march on the courtroom.
One contingent broke off from a feeder march to call out John, who was still working his notice at Lorne Street School. They carried him shoulder high through the November fog, in a candlelit procession to the Sheriff Court. The strike and demonstration that day forced the government to introduce the Rent Restrictions Act.
THIS was Glasgow and Maclean at their best. The very next day, Maclean began his first spell in prison. This was a pattern that was to repeat itself for the duration of the war and up until his death.
He was to suffer horrific treatment during his different spells of imprisonment – he was force fed and under constant supervision, largely isolated after he refused to join many comrades and students of his industrial history and economic classes, who together helped to form the Communist Party. He became estranged from his wife and daughters who moved away to be closer to family, find work and be close to a wider support network during periods he was incarcerated .
He maintained contact with his wife and daughters and was making arrangements to welcome his family back home to Glasgow in the weeks leading to his death. Unfortunately, years of physical and mental strain wore away at his health.
A relentless and stubborn campaigner, he continued to agitate. In an election leaflet produced only weeks before his death, Maclean rallied against increasing authoritarianism across Europe, to be on guard against fascist influence on parliament, to reject British imperialism’s role in global geopolitics and not to be taken in by what he calls “The Pink Labourists”.
Wise words that still ring as true today as they did then. Glasgow’s gas street lights have long been extinguished, but the flame of Maclean’s legacy has been kept burning for a century, providing generations of socialists and campaigners a tradition and identity to build on.
Now more than ever we need Maclean’s example in the struggle against poverty, exploitation, war and militarism. He would be shoulder-to-shoulder with the citizens of Glasgow as they march against the genocide in Gaza. He would have helped in the fight for equal pay, decent housing and for investment in the city’s civic infrastructure.
For the centenary, groups and organisations across the city have come together to continue that tradition through art, song, poetry and education.
Over the course of the next few weeks, find the time to take a walk through the old borough of Pollokshaws and peer again through the late autumn fog, and you’ll see the figure of Maclean emerge in beautiful stained glass at the entranceway to Pollokshaws library.
Coorie in, out of the cold, and take from the shelves a new collection of poetry inspired by the man and his struggles, while the sounds of songs composed in his honour drift across from the Burgh Hall. Give a wave to the marchers arriving from his grave in Eastwood Cemetery. But above all, learn from our history to transform the future.
We, like him, are “out for life and all that life can give us”.
