Annual John MacLean Rally 2013

Annual John MacLean Commemoration  2013
Sunday 24 November 2013 
Eastwood Cemetery 1PM (next to Thornliebank Railway Station) for a graveside oration. 
Followed by a march from Thornliebank St/Boydston Rd across the road 1.30 pm prompt. 
This will be followed by a social/rally at the Shawbridge Tavern, Shawbridge St, with a range of speakers to be agreed. and live music, 
including the White Rose folk group. 
£5. Children free. All welcome. 
buses (First) will take you directly to Eastwood Cemetery. Nearest train station is Thornliebank which you can get from Glasgow Central Station. 
Speakers 
www.scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org 

SRSM Ard Fheis Saturday November 23. 


SRSM, P.O. Box 16887, Glasgow, G11 9EP

Graveside Oration, John MacLean Commemoration Nov 25 2012

I am Alan Stewart. I am a member of the Northern England branch/commun of the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement. I welcome you to this John MacLean Commemoration. John MacLean is talked of as Scotland's favourite Socialist Saint. But why is he so important? Why did we commemorate him? Why do we remember him? We remember him firstly as an internationalist. The first Soviet Consul in Scotland. He ran a consulate in Portland Street in the Gorbals. The Post Office refused to deliver the mail and the state wanted it shut but MacLean fought on..admired by Connolly, admired by MacLean. We remember him as a pioneer in working class education. He himself got an MA through evening study. Later he and colleagues ran scores of classes in economics. He went on speaking tours. He wrote pamphlets. All the time spreading socialist ideas. We remember him as an exponent of working class self organisation. Organising the unemployed. At the fore in the Clyde Workers Committee. Backing striking women workers in Neilston. All the time taking the fight to capital. We remember him as a principled opponent of imperialist wars. He went to prison several times because of his steadfast opposition to the slaughter of World War One. He organised anti-war rallies. The first was at Nelson's Column on Glasgow Green. At first the anti-war movement was small but it grew. And finally, given what is happening today, we remember him, like Connolly as someone who recognised the inextricable link between the demand for socialism and the demand for national liberation. The national question -the right to national self determination- was a democratic demand at the heart of socialism. Not an irrelevance or an add on. We will be marching shortly to the MacLean Cairn. There will then be a rally and social at the Shawbridge Tavern. Thankyou comrades for your support. All Hail the Scottish Workers' Republic! http://scottishrepublicans.myfreeforum.org/Graveside_Oration_John_MacLean_Commemoration_Nov_25_2012_about2182.html

Remembering John MacLean

Remembering John MacLean

By Peter Urban

It is appropriate today, with the possibility of Scottish independence within sight and the working class of Scotland again confronted by the misery with which the system of capitalism fills their lives, but it is not sufficient to pay tribute to the man; it is important to pay attention to him as well. MacLean may easily lend himself as a symbol, an icon, to the contemporary struggle, but he has wisdom to lend to it as well and the Scottish working class would do well to make use of it.

MacLean was no romantic nationalist. He was a revolutionary socialist and he articulated a compelling case for the creation of an independent Scottish workers’ republic. MacLean observed the reality of the revolutionary temperaments of the Scottish and English working classes and asserted that so long as the working class in Scotland remained bound to that of England, it would face far greater obstacles in the path towards its own liberation through the destruction of the capitalist system.

Is any more evidence needed to testify to the continuing relevance of this analysis than the reality of a Tory government for the UK, while a Plaid/Labour coalition dominates the Welsh Assembly and the SNP dominates the Scottish Assembly? Today, as in MacLean’s day, the Welsh and Scottish working people stand out as far more radicalized than their counterparts in England. Independence for Scotland and Wales represents the best opportunity for those nations to achieve a working class victory over the system of capitalism and it cannot be denied that the dismantling of the ancient regime called the “United Kingdom” would be a blow to the whole of British imperialism.

But there are even greater lessons to be learned from John MacLean and that other great Scottish-born revolutionary, James Connolly. Scottish workers must not fail to learn from these towering figures from Scotland’s history that independence alone is not enough. More, independence alone is meaningless for Scottish workers. The fight for an independent Scotland must be made but an aspect of the larger struggle to create a Scottish workers’ republic; an independent republic wherein the working class alone controls the economic and political destiny of the nation. It is impossible in this era of globalization to separate Scottish capitalists from the interests they share with those of their class in England, as well as elsewhere in the EU, in North America, and throughout the globe and those interests are irreconcilable with the interests of working people. We have born the burden of this wretched and archaic long enough; the time has come to cast it off and move forward under our own guidance and in our own collective interests; and the way forward to such a future lies in the creation of a Scottish workers’ republic and cannot be attained through anything short of that.

In closing, there is yet another lesson from the great John MacLean that I would remind working people in Scotland about. MacLean, with Big Jim Larkin of Ireland, and Sylvia Pankhurst in England were participants in a founding congress for the Communist Workers’ International, convened by the Dutch revolutionary socialist Hermann Gorter. This was a congress of what we have come to call Council Communists today, from throughout the world. I make this point, because the revolutionary socialist current represented by those who attended that congress has been too long ignored and it offers today, as it did then, a path to socialist revolution suited to the conditions of a highly developed capitalist nation; a compelling and liberating alternative to the Bolshevik tradition that workers today would do well to reexamine.It is a fine thing that we today have assembled to remember and pay tribute to the memory of John MacLean; it would be a finer thing still if when we leave here today, we reflected on the insightful analysis that he left to us and seek to apply them to the challenges we confront in this present day. It is long-past due that we should, in this sense, bring John MacLean back to the Clyde.

All Hail the Scottish Workers’ Republic! The future lies before us.

Peter Urban

Comrade, International Republican Socialist Network

SRSM John MacLean Commemoration 2011

Gerry Cairns of the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement delivers the graveside oration for the memory of John MacLean before the march.With a large turn out at this years SRSM John MacLean Commemoration saw Republican Socialists unite Irish and Scottish with the IRSP Alba and Éirígí represented and a significant presence by other left forces such as the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG)

Also important was the large SRSM contingent which signifies they are growing in numbers probably due to the growing popularity of the Scottish Freedom message and a successfully revamped website.

For more on the Rally check out my Scottish Republic weblog very soon and more photos of the Sunday afternoon event. Also I will be publicising a copy of the speech delivered by a representative of the Northern England branch of SRSM.

SlainteLarry

IRSN Statement for John MacLean Rally 2011

INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN SOCIALIST NETWORK STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE COMMEMORATION OF SCOTTISH REVOLUTIONARY JOHN MACLEAN

Comrades, the International Republican Socialist Network is proud to speak to those gathered today in commemoration of the great John MacLean through this statement. The IRSN was founded to increase awareness of, and support for, republican socialism as a distinct tendency within the Marxist tradition. We in the IRSN are ever mindful that it was Scotland that gave the world the two greatest activists of this tendency, Edinburgh’s James Connolly and John MacLean of Glasgow.

John MacLean’s words from 1923 still offer wisdom to the workers of Scotland, he wrote: “I’m certain London will never lead the Clyde or Scotland, so we must lead ourselves. A separate republic is justifiable as a step to keep Scotland out of the future wars involving England; and breaking up the Empire that most of all retards Communism.”

The entity known as “Great Britain,” which ceases to exist without Scotland, is not a basis for working class unity; it is an anachronism, intended to benefit the English ruling class at the expense of the Scottish people. Yes, the Scottish workers are a part of the larger working class of the entire island of Britain, but so too are they as much a part of the working class of Europe and the world. Just as residing in a nation distinct from Palestine, Venezuela, Bolivia, Egypt, or Tunisia does not impede their capacity for solidarity with the workers of those nations; the creation of a Scottish republic will provide no impediment to solidarity with workers in England, Wales, or Ireland. To the sectarian Left who deride the struggle for Scottish independence with the canard that it threatens class unity, we ask, as Engels did in his day, if they would be prepared to move their head offices to Edinburgh to demonstrate their solidarity with Scottish workers and we denounce them, as Marx and Engels did, as English national chauvinists hiding behind a mask of internationalism.

MacLean wrote further on the subject of Scottish independence, saying: “I accordingly stand out as a Scottish Republican…feeling sure that if Scotland had to elect a Parliament to sit in Glasgow it would vote for a working-class Parliament. Such a Parliament would have to use the might of the workers to force the land and all the means of production in Scotland out of the grasp of the brutal few who control them, and place them at the full disposal of the community. The social revolution is possible sooner in Scotland than in England.”

The Tories were not unearthed from their grave and restored to power on the basis of their electoral support in Scotland or Wales. For a century, working class organizations in Britain have stood on solid bases in Scotland and Wales and the forces of reaction have overwhelmed them from their bases in England. The fact that the SNP’s program stands to the left of Labour’s is a result of the sentiments of the electorate in Scotland being to the left of Labour’s electoral base in Britain as a whole. The creation of an independent Scottish republic will not only protect Scottish workers from those bastions of reaction to their south, however; by breaking apart the ancien regime of Britain, Scottish independence will mortally wound one of the world’s leading imperialist powers, thereby ultimately serving the interests of not only English workers, but working people throughout the world who suffer from the violence of British imperialism.

We would be remiss and ill-serve the memory of either MacLean, or of Connolly, were we to only aver our support for Scottish independence at today’s commemoration. Republican socialism is founded on the inseparable unity of the struggle for national liberation with the struggle for socialism. Reflecting on the contribution of John MacLean to humanity today, let us not lose sight of that reality. The struggle for an independent Scottish republic must be a struggle for a Scottish Workers’ Republic, if it is to merit the effort of Scottish working people. The current international crisis of capitalism and the endless violence of imperialism in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond should be more than enough to tell us that capitalism is now a fetid anachronism itself; one that offers no future to working people other than growing austerity and misery. So, as Connolly said to the Irish Citizen Army’s volunteers marching out during the Easter Rising, hang on to your guns because others fighting with you for independence have a different concept of the republic to be built, we say to you today, prepare for a struggle that will continue after Scottish independence has been won. Scotland will be truly independent until it has freed its economy of the tentacles of the imperialists; until Scotland’s farms, oil, industries, banks, and the rest are the common property of the nation, that is, of Scottish people as a whole.

Our class, the working class, has created all of the wealth in the world today. All the food has been harvested by workers, every structure standing was built by workers, every mile travelled is on roads laid down by workers, the trillions of bits of data that make up the reality of contemporary commerce, education, and entertainment travel on are enabled by the silicone chips and optical fibers made by workers, keyed into worker-constructed networks by workers. All of these are the creation of the hands and minds of working people and it is our right to claim them as our own. How can it be that working people go hungry, lack adequate housing, lack transport, are denied information, education, and the means to live a life of quality, when all of these things are the creation of our class? Comrades, it is long past time we be done with the system of capitalism and take back what is rightfully ours.

As those here today and the millions of Scottish working people move forward towards a Scottish Workers’ Republic, they will be creating the only truly fitting memorial to the memory of the John MacLean. Thus it is through the struggle for that republic that the spirit of MacLean stirs and rises again in our midsts, prompting me to close, with that image in mind, with the words of Hamish Henderson:

The hale city’s quiet noo,
It kens that he’s resting
At hame wi’ his Glasgow freens,
Their joy and their pride.
The red will be worn again
And Scotland will march again,
Noo great John MacLean
Has come hame tae the Clyde.



Peter Urban
Comrade, International Republican Socialist Network

John MacLean: In Memory

Hi All,
new article now available to be read at the SRSM website on the link below.This article was written by Peter Berresford Ellis in 1973 and has featured in a few publications over the years.

http://scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org/SRSMArticlesJohnMacLeanInMemory.aspx

Enjoy reading

(Peter Berresford Ellis)

Fifty years ago 40,000 Scots followed the funeral cortege of the Scottish Marxist and Labour Leader, John MacLean, to Eastwood Cemetery, Glasgow. Today few Scots remember MacLean, yet he is acclaimed by Socialists of all groups. It is strange, therefore that there is notone volume of MacLean's essays or lectures currently in print, and that few people know just what this Scottish patriot and Marxist stood for. There is not even a biography of the man who was a close friend, of Larkin and Connolly, and who was regarded by Lenin and Trotsky as one of the most important Socialists that the nations of these islands, ever produced. The man who was honoured by the Soviet Russian Government as early as 1918. There is hardly another revolutionary whose work has been more thoroughly buried than that of MacLean, and whose character has been more successfully assassinated.

MacLean, a schoolteacher by profession, devoted himself to teaching working men Marxist economics; and his classes, which he began in 1906, laid the foundation for the Scottish Labour College. When the 1914 War began he denounced it as on imperialist war, as Lenin and Connolly were to do. His denunciation lost him his Job as a teacher. In September 1915 he launched his own newspaper, "Vanguard”, which ran to only five issues before it was suppressed. In October 1915 - MacLean was arrested and imprisoned for sedition under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). In February 1916 he was again arrested, and on April the 11th was sentenced to three years' penal servitude, large scale demonstrations led by prominent Socialists of the day led to his release fifteen months later. Connolly, in the very last issue of "The Workers' Republic," also demanded MacLean’s release. MacLean had become known to Irish Socialists through the columns of Connolly's newspapers, and had paid a number of visits to Ireland before 1916. He was “an old friend” of Connolly, who also had been born and brought up in Scotland and began his political life in the Scottish Socialist Movement.

Seamus Reader (1), organiser of the Scottish Brigade of the Irish Volunteers (afterwards the I.R.A.) carried reports to the Irish Military council in Dublin on Scottish conditions during 1916. Connolly, he recalls, was influenced by the state of affairs on "Red Clydeside," and Reader wrote in ‘The Irish in Scotland in 1916’: "Connolly said that Ireland could not wait until 1917 or 1918. John MacLean expected to be arrested in January or February, as he intended demonstrating against the war and conscription. The workers should strike, and those who had guns should use them." When the Easter Rising took place in Dublin, MacLean was still in jail. Along with Lenin, MacLean was one of the few Socialist leaders to hail the rising and to appreciate its importance.

Events were also happening in Russia. Lenin and Trotsky had already acclaimed MacLean, and at the first All Russia Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in Petrograd (Leningrad), MacLean and Karl Liebnecht were elected honorary presidents of the Soviet Presidium. On February the 1st 1918, on Lenin's instructions, MacLean was appointed Consul for Soviet Affairs covering Scotland and England and Wales. Despite harassment by the Special Branch, MacLean did much work to aid Russian political refugees. But the English Government had, at this time, militarily intervened to smash the young Russian Republic, and on May the 9th 1918, MacLean received a sentence of five years' penal servitude for sedition.

At the trial he mode a magnificent defence speech: "I am a Socialist and have been fighting and will fight for an absolute reconstruction of society for the benefit of all. I am proud of my conduct. I have squared my conscience with my intellect -I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of Capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot!" Again, there were mass demonstrations, and these led to his release on December the 3rd. He immediately stood in a parliamentary by-election, coming second to the official Labour Party candidate.

In May 1920 MacLean relaunched his newspaper, "Vanguard." He began to write numerous articles supporting the Irish struggle and urging Scotsmen, as fellow Gaels, not to be used as tools for murdering their brother Gaelsof Ireland. During this time he published a pamphlet ‘The Irish Tragedy -Scotland' s Disgrace’, which sold 200,000 copies. In this he called for a General Strike and for the withdrawal of English troops in Ireland. MacLean addressed meetings on the Irish question in Ireland, Scotland, and England. He continually urged working class support for the Irish struggle. Orange mobs broke up one meeting in Motherwell. In May 1921 MacLean was again arrested and imprisoned for sedition. He served three months. In September 1921 came yet another arrest, and a sentence of one year. During this time he forced the prison 'authorities to concede him the status of a political prisoner, something never accorded by England, which refuses political status to obviously Political prisoners.

Throughout this time he had been working for the establishment of a Scottish Communist Party aiming at the formation of a Scottish Workers' Republic. Through his association with Connolly and Larkin he had come to the conclusion that national independence was a prelude to social independence, that national and social independence were not conflicting ideals but two parts of one basic democratic ideal; and a few faithful comrades joined him in forming a Scottish Workers' Republican Party early in 1923. MacLean’s Scottish Republicanism had developed during the war years, and perhaps the greatest single influence on the national question was the Irish experience and the teachings of Connolly; but a fellow Scot also had a far-reaching effect on MacLean’s political thinking. This was Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr, a prominent leader of re Gaelic language revival in Scotland, who for years had advocated a Scottish Socialist Republic. Erskine had hailed the Easter Rising and the Russian Revolution; and had taken an anti-war stand.

Those who followed the "British" Communist- Party bitterly attacked MacLean’s Scottish Workers' Republic. They were particularly vicious because of the prestige and influence MacLean had with the workers. They promptly began a character assassination, saying that MacLean had become deranged. In anguish MacLean wrote a famous "Open Letter to Lenin" denouncing his attackers (‘The Socialist’, February 1921). MacLean’s articles and letters right to the time of his death are clear, concise, and theoretically well balanced. In "All Hail, the Scottish Workers' Republic!" (August 1920) MacLean wrote: "For some time past the feeling has been growing that Scotland should strike out for National Independence, as well as Ireland and other lands. This has recently been strengthened by the English Government's intention to rely mainly on Scottish troops to murder the Irish Race. Genuine Scotsmen recently asked themselves the question: 'are we Scots to be used as the bloody tools of the English against our brother Gael of Erin? ' And naturally the instinctive response was- No!"

MacLean went on: "Many Irishmen live in Scotland, and as they are Gaels like the Scots and are out for Irish independence, and as wage earners have been champion fighters for working- class rights. We expect them to ally themselves with us and help us to attain our Scottish Communist Republic, as long as they live in Scotland. Irishmen must remember that Communism prevailed among the Irish clans as among the Scottish clans, so that, in lining up with Scotsmen, they are but carrying, forward the traditions and instincts of the Gaelic race." MacLean began to prepare for an election pending on December the 30th 1923. He was standing as a candidate for his Scottish Workers' Republican Party, which was slowly building its strength; but on November the 30th, 1923, he died... His death at the age of forty-four from pneumonia was attributable to the severe hardships he had suffered during his years of imprisonment.

A number of publications appeared some time after his death. "John MacLean," by Guy Aldred, 1932; Willie Gallagher’s autobiography, "Revolution on the Clyde, " in 1936: "John MacLean" by Tom Bell', in 1944; Emmanuel Shinwell's "Conflict without Malice,"1955. He subscribed to the lie that MacLean had become" unhinged" because he advocated Scottish Independence (2). Only James Clunie, in "The Voice of Labour," printed several of MacLean’s letters written during the years in question, in order to prove that MacLean was in perfectly sound mind. Recently, Walter Kendall’s "The Revolutionary Movement It in Britain, 1900-21" has revealed the full extent of the attempt to discredit MacLean.

Nevertheless, there is still no anthology of MacLean’s works, nor a published biography (though several biographies have been written). It is possible, though, that a biography by MacLean' s daughter, Mrs. Nan Milton, will be issued soon. In recent years the John MacLean Society, of which Mrs. Milton is Secretary, has managed to republish a few of MacLean’s pamphlets (including "The Irish Tragedy -Scotland's Disgrace"). These have contrived to create a certain amount of interest in MacLean and his work.

This year, the fiftieth anniversary of MacLean’s tragic death in 1923," committees are forming to try to publicise more fully his writings. The committees will also seek to raise money for a publishing fund in order to reissue some of MacLean’s pamphlets. The year’s activities will culminate in the unveiling of a memorial to MacLean in Eastwood cemetery in November. It is not without significance that there has long been a memorial to MacLean on the wall of the Kremlin in Moscow. 
(1) Seamus Reader (Seumas Mac Ridire): See Winter 1973 ‘Catalyst' p.17.
(2) Mannie Shinwell, a Glasgow Jew, was later to become, as Lord Shinwell, that caricature of a Socialist - a Labour Peer. 

This article was first published in ‘Rosc Catha’. It was also translated into the Breton magazine ‘Sav Breizh’. Later published in ‘Catalyst’ Autumn 1973, and SWR in 1988.