19/01/2024
Tonight, as part of the Celtic Connections Festival, there will be a special tribute concert to the late John Maclean - Russia's Bolshevik representative in Scotland, and the man Whitehall dubbed 'the most dangerous man in Britain'.
While usually we see pictures of him at protests, or shaven-headed, and obviously ill, after terms in prison, this is how I prefer to think of him - the idealistic, smartly-dressed and obviously very proud school teacher. How handsome he was - and how beautiful his young charges.
MacLean (1879-1923) lost his father when he was eight years old, leaving the family struggling to make ends meet.
Maclean was educated at Pollokshaws Academy and later at Queen's Park School. In 1896, aged 17, he became a pupil teacher at Polmadie Public School and then studied at the Free Church Teacher Training College, graduating in 1900. The following year he was appointed as a teacher at Strathbungo Public School and also registered as a part-time student at the University of Glasgow to study Political Economy, graduating in 1904.
Maclean's commitment to education also led him to work as an evening school teacher, offering classes in subjects such as Advanced (Marxian) Economics and Industrial History at the recently demolished Sir John Maxwell Public School in Pollokshaws, 1908-1915.
MacLean was dismissed by the Govan School Board in September 1915 after he was convicted of "using language likely to cause a breach of the peace" during a demonstration against the First World War. He continued to speak out against the war, and was imprisoned for sedition and other offences on several occasions.
When he died, aged only 44, more than 10,000 Glaswegians walked behind his coffin, from his family home in Pollokshaws to Eastwood Cemetery.
The late, great Hamish Henderson wrote the John Maclean March, to remember his return to Glasgow from Peterhead Prison, when the city turned out en-masse to welcome him home - broken, bloody, but unbowed.
"The hail city's quiet now, it kens that he's restin'
At hame wi's Glesca freens, thair fame an thair pride
The red will be worn, ma lads, an Scotland will march again
Now great John Maclean has come hame tae the Clyde..."
