The Scottish Labour History Society has published seven videos from its John Maclean Centenary Conference to its YouTube channel.

The videos feature speakers Bailie Roza Salih, actor Tam Dean Burn re-enacting Maclean’s Speech from the Dock, Henry Bell and Gerry Cairns on the ‘myths’ surrounding Maclean, Stephen Coyle on Maclean’s involvement with Ireland, Katherine Mackinnon on Maclean and Glasgow, Tom Allanach on Maclean and young people, and, finally, Professor David Howell and Dr Ewan Gibbs considering Maclean’s legacy. Watch now.

Born in 1879, John Maclean was a Scottish schoolteacher and revolutionary socialist notable for his outspoken opposition to the First World War. After his arrest under the Defence of the Realm Act and the loss of his job, he became a full-time lecturer and organiser. In April 1918 he was arrested for sedition, and his speech from the dock became a celebrated text for Scottish left-wingers. He was sentenced to five years in prison but released after the November armistice.

Maclean developed the idea of ‘Celtic communism’ based on a modernised version of what he saw as the collectivism of the Scottish clans. He considered Lenin’s support for a ‘British’ Communist Party a mistake, and attempted unsuccessfully to create first a Scottish Workers Republican Party and subsequently a Scottish Communist Party.

Maclean collapsed and died in November 1923 while making a speech. He was just forty-four, but his health and been permanently affected by a hunger strike and force-feeding while in gaol.

Following the success of the conference, which tool place in November 2023, the SLHS has decided to hold an annual themed conference alongside its annual general meeting, starting in 2025 with an event on the theme ‘writing trade union history’.

Maclean is the subject of a biography, John Maclean: Hero of Red Clydeside, by Henry Bell (Pluto Press, 2018).

Scottish Labour History Society on YouTube.