Final speech
trickery of the British government and their police and their lawyers.” Judge: “Righty-oh.” Joking.
His 75-minute speech from the dock has passed in to leftist folklore, not least its definition of capitalism as “the most infamous, bloody and evil system that mankind has ever witnessed”. Incas/ Romans/Genghis Khan: “Hold my beer!”
He was sentenced to five years in Peterheid, where he refused to eat and was forcibly fed twice a day.
In December 1918, he was released following the armistice agreed by the various nutters partaking in the macabre war.
Shortly afterwards, Maclean was official Labour General Election candidate for Glasgow Gorbals where, natch, the proles declined to back him.
Never mind. In 1918, he was appointed Bolshevik consul in Scotland, establishing a Consulate at 12 South Portland Street, Glasgow, which was duly ignored by the British government.
Maclean wanted to make Glasgow a Petrograd, “a revolutionary storm centre”, but didn’t want Moscow dictating to Scotland.
Opposing the Communist Party of Great Britain, he tried founding a Scottish Communist Party, later renamed the Communist Labour Party, which he left in a schism to found another new Scottish Communist Party. Well, it’s nice to have a hobby.
In 1923, he founded the Scottish Workers Republican Party, seeking to
MEANWHILE, force-feeding during hunger strike in captivity had permanently affected his health. During an election campaign speech in Glasgow, he took ill and, two days later, on November 30, 1923, died aged 44 of pneumonia. Several days earlier, he’d given his only overcoat to a destitute man.
Thousands lined the streets for his funeral procession through the city, from Eglinton Toll to Auldhouse Road then on to Eastwood Cemetery.
Lenin hailed him as one of the “bestknown names of the isolated heroes who have taken upon themselves the arduous role of forerunners of the world revolution”.
Poet Hugh MacDiarmid described Maclean as “next to Burns, the greatest ever Scot”.
In 1973, to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, a 6ft granite cairn was unveiled at Pollokshaws. In January, at Celtic Connections, Billy Bragg, Karine Polwart, Eddi Reader and Siobhan Miller were joined by surprise guest Dick Gaughan in a musical celebration of John Maclean’s life.