Glasgow Social Sciences Hub

Ewan Gibbs and Jim Phillips, Economic & Social History, University of Glasgow, highlight the multi-faceted ways in which John Maclean's life and legacy has been framed and interpreted, ahead of a public event on the 100th aniversary of his death.

John Maclean, revolutionary socialist and working-class educator, died on St Andrews Day, 30 November 1923, age 44. That’s a close paraphrase of the opening sentence of Henry Bell’s acclaimed biography of John Maclean, sub-titled 'Hero of Red Clydeside', published in 2018.

On 17 November we will be marking the centenary of Maclean’s passing, presenting three talks by colleagues at the University of Glasgow from different disciplinary traditions: Maud Bracke of History, Charlie Peevers of Law, and Jonas Thoreson of English Literature.

Maclean’s historical profile is based primarily on his opposition as a working-class political leader to the First World War. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Soviet revolution in Russian, who appointed him as Soviet Consul to Scotland. Maclean is remembered above all as the 'accuser of capitalism', the phrase he used in the High Court in Edinburgh while defending himself against the charge of sedition in May 1918. Gruelling experiences of persecution and serial imprisonment contributed to his early death.

On 17 November we will highlight the multi-faceted ways in which Maclean's life and legacy has been framed and interpreted.

Our chief observation is that Maclean was an educator. As a young schoolteacher in Glasgow, he enrolled as a student at this University, taking classes in political economy, in which he excelled, and completed his MA in 1903. Maclean was a recipient of funding from Andrew Carnegie’s Trust. Like Carnegie, the US Steel tycoon from Dunfermline, Maclean could be understood as a product of Scotland’s enlightenment: he was a free thinker who came to rely on materialist explanations for the course of history and a believer that collective human agency could and must improve society.

But in fundamental respects he was on the opposite side of Scotland’s most famous industrialist when it came to the divisions formed by early twentieth century capitalism. He embraced a broad understanding of working-class political interests and mobilisations, supporting everyday campaigning on basic standard of living questions while also arguing for a socialist transformation of the economic and political order. He was involved in leading crowds of unemployed workers into the Glasgow stock exchange before the First World War. In 1915 he supported the rent strike led by women and encouraged industrial workers to withdraw their labour when tenants were subject to the courts. He is remembered in the built environment of our city, with the cairn established in 1973 by the John Maclean Society in the square at Pollokshaws, to mark the half-centenary of his death.

Henry Bell shows us that Maclean, while proud of achieving his MA, saw higher education as embedded and indeed implicated in the profound inequalities of the 1900s and 1910s. In 1916 he wrote, "The Universities have for their object the training of men and women to run capitalist society in the interests of the wealthy".

This was on the occasion of the formation of the Scottish Labour College, funded by trade unions, where workers would engage in classes on economics, taught by Maclean, along with maths and public speaking. "We think the time has come for an Independent College", he added, "financed and controlled by the working class, in which workers might be trained for the battle against the masters".

Between political activism and spells in prison, Maclean committed much of his time and energy to the functioning of the Scottish Labour College. It was probably here that Maclean exerted his deepest and lasting influence on Scottish society. Admittedly it is difficult to gauge the number of students who attended his classes, or even enrolled at the College. Henry Bell says thousands, by 1919, and with powerful and lasting results. The students, usually young men active in unions in coal mining and engineering, learned how to become working-class educators as well as working-class leaders. They passed their learning along in workplaces, communities, union branch and socialist political party meetings.

The College therefore influenced strongly how the labour movement in Scotland viewed the world, deep into the twentieth century. Learning was established as a cornerstone of organisation and activism. Among those who attended the College in the late 1910s was John McArthur, a young miner from East Fife. He was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920. He reckoned that the letters OBE after a public dignitary’s name meant 'Oor Bloody Enemy'. Internalising Maclean’s teachings, he led resistance in East Fife to the coal masters' wage cuts in the bitter mining lockouts of 1921 and 1926 and campaigned for nationalisation of the industry. This goal was achieved after the Second World War.

McArthur retained a position of influence as Fife Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers until retirement in the mid-1960s. In this role he participated as an educator at NUM weekend and summer schools after the Second World War. These closely resembled the Scottish Labour College in their purpose and organisation, with classes on economics, history, politics and employment law as well as mine engineering and numeracy. The Schools were still running in the 1980s, often held at the Salutation Arms Hotel in Perth. The young miners who led the strike in defence of jobs and communities in 1984-85 had been educated on lines established by Maclean six decades earlier. The theme of socialism through education was still being emphasised.

Our event on 17 November will add rich texture to this picture of Maclean.

Maud Bracke, Professor of History, will examine the international situation which Maclean operated within, during and after the First World War, with its revolutionary sequels in Russia and elsewhere.

Charlie Peevers, a Senior Lecturer in Law, will review the legacy of Maclean in the longer history of Scottish peace activism. Maclean wrote punchy articles and polemical essays for socialist newspapers.

He was both a major figure in and a product of what Jonas Thoreson, a PhD researcher in English Literature, describes as Clydeside’s 'proletarian public sphere'.

These three contributions will underline our overarching view, that social progress through education was the key legacy of Maclean’s important political life.

Book a place on Eventbrite

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Photo credits

• John MacLean delivering his 'Speech from the Dock', May 9, 1918: Wikimedia
• John Maclean passport application photo, 1919: Wikimedia
• Stamps featuring John Maclean issued by USSR in 1979
• John Maclean memorial cairn, Pollokshaws: Greater Govanhill - In the footsteps of John Maclean

First published: 13 November 2023