Working Class Hero: John Maclean

Scottish socialist John Maclean died of pneumonia on Nov. 30, 1923 following repeated incarceration. Born in Glasgow, Maclean trained as a teacher and then became a Marxist and taught free economics classes to local workers. He was an implacable opponent of the War and organized dozens of anti-war protests. In 1916, Maclean was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for sedition, where his health deteriorated as he was forced to work outside in all the weather that struck the Buchan Coast. But following a mass campaign, he was released early in June 1917. In 1918, he was appointed as Bolshevik Consul to Scotland, and although the UK government refused to recognize the new Soviet Republic, Maclean established a consulate. In April 1918, he was arrested again, this time for arguing that Scottish workers should follow the example of the Russian Revolution. This time he was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude, and he spent three months on hunger strike, being force fed via a nasogastric tube. Once again, he was released early, but his mental health was damaged and he began to suffer from hallucinations and paranoia: he believed, for instance, that prison staff injected conscientious objectors with a particular bacillus that caused pneumonia. He was re-imprisoned in 1921 for encouraging miners to lead a revolution, and again in 1922 for saying that the unemployed should steal food rather than starve. Maclean died in poverty in 1923, aged just 44. He had been unable to work since his expulsion from the teaching profession, and his mental and physical health had been destroyed by repeated incarceration. But to the end he remained a passionate advocate of a fairer and happier society. Fittingly, when he collapsed with pneumonia he was speaking at an open-air public meeting. A few days earlier, he had loaned his only coat to Neil Johnston, a Black socialist who was visiting from Barbados, whom Maclean had noticed shivering in the November cold.