IRSN MacLean Commemoration Statement

IRSN MacLean Commemoration Statement

Comrades,

As Scottish Republican Socialists gather again this year to pay tribute to the inspiration provided by John MacLean, the comrades of the International Republican Socialist Network join you in saluting this giant of the international socialist movement.

The lessons that John MacLean provided in his own time are just as important today, perhaps more so, as the Scottish working class is now in a period of potential opportunity that is unequaled. MacLean recognised that the potential for working class revolution was greater in Scotland than it was in the island of Britain as a whole and on this basis insisted that Scottish workers organise separately, into a distinct revolutionary party. MacLean was no narrow or romantic nationalist- -he was an exemplary internationalist, recognised throughout the international socialist movement for his work in opposition to the fratricide of the first world war--but he understood that the struggle for socialism throughout the islands of Britain and Ireland demanded the destruction of the British imperial state and saw that revolutionary action in Scotland provided a means of striking a blow against British imperialism, assisting the revolutionary forces then active in Ireland, and enabling Sc!
ottish workers their best opportunity for class liberation.

Today in the islands of Britain and Ireland, it remains necessary to undermine and overthrow the reactionary British imperialist state and it is clear that Scottish and Welsh workers would be more powerful within the confines of their distinct nations, at present, than they are when forced to contend with the greater bastions of reaction within England as well. Far from abandoning their English sisters and brothers, this revolutionary strategy offers a means to strike significant blows against the entire British state, which can only assist working class revolutionaries within the English nation.

However, Scottish workers must remember that the republican socialist struggle welds together the fight for national liberation and the struggle to liberate our class. As that other great Scottish-born republican socialist, James Connolly, made plain, these struggles cannot be separated. The national liberation struggle in Scotland can only be won in a meaningful way for Scottish working people through the creation of a Scottish workers' republic and the struggle for socialism in Scotland cannot be won without the destruction of the imperial British state, which means the liberation of the Scottish and Welsh nations from continued union within that state. There is no first this and then this. There is one fight to be one--the struggle to build a Scottish workers' republic and anything that falls short of that is no stepping stone or way-station, but only defeat.

But, there is another aspect of John MacLean's analysis that continues to hold important lessons for Scottish working people; one that receives far less attention. As the historical research of James Young has demonstrated, John MacLean aligned himself with other revolutionary socialists internationally; in Germany and the Netherlands, in Italy and Ireland, in Russia and America who we now refer to by the term Council Communists. This was a revolutionary tendency within international socialism that sought to return to Marx and Engels' understanding that it is the working class itself that can make a social revolution, not any party acting in its name; that it is the working class itself that must lead the way forward to class war and social revolution, because the consciousness of socialism arises from their actual experience under capitalism.

This too, we must learn from MacLean today--our class creates all of the wealth in the world; every wheel that turns does so because our class enables it to; and we need no leadership provided by any class other than our own to determine the road to liberation. The working class movement does not belong in the hands of university lecturers, trade union bureaucrats, or members of the parliament or assembly. but must be led by the working class itself, confident in its own abilities. This lesson from John MacLean is as important for Scottish working women and men today as is his pioneering vision in calling for a Scottish Workers' Republic.

Comrades, today let us pay tribute to the tremendous example provided by John MacLean and let us also re-dedicate ourselves to fight for the Scottish Workers' Republic he first proclaimed and to ensuring that it will be a true Workers' Republic, led by our own class, standing proudly shoulder-to- shoulder. We have been naught, but we shall be all!

Peter Urban
Comrade, International Republican Socialist Network