FOLLOWING Kevin Brown’s article in the Sunday National (In memory of the most dangerous man in Britain, November 18), much still remains to be said of Scotland’s other national “saint“, Scottish Republican Socialist John MacLean, who died on St Andrew‘s Day, November 30, 1923, not 1922.

Sir Basil Thompson, head of security in Scotland, instructed his agents to put it about that John MacLean and his supporter, Sylvia Pankhurst, were both “mad”. Those responsible for sacking him from his teaching post, sentencing him to hard labour, force feeding him, and following him 24/7 had the cheek to say he was “paranoid”.

Nothing new in this, in Stalinist or Tsarist Russia and Imperial Britain, or American advertising formulas, where heaven is with the right toothpaste and playing with the boys in the band. Instead, hell is not being in the right party, where all is heaven and light.

READ MORE: In memory of the most dangerous man in Britain – John MacLean

MacLean was appointed Soviet Consul by Lenin and the Bolsheviks for his courage in opposing the rival imperialists of World War One in the face of extreme jingoism and warmongering. His Consul Office in South Portland Street, Glasgow is still unmarked, as was his auld hoose in Netherauldhouse Road, where he continued the Consul Office after being barred by the British state.

Incidentally, Allan Pilkington, founder of the US Union spy system and former radical republican chartist, had his faimily hoose, also in South Portland Street, opposite the sheriff court and now occupied by the procurator fiscal. It is also unmarked.

The Post Office refused to deliver to the consul and MacLean refused to travel illegally to see Lenin, demanding full recognition for his office. Others took the back road through Finland, including Syndicalist Willie Gallagher. Lenin recognised him as the envoy to accept Moscow gold, instead of MacLean of “England”, to found and fund the Communist Part of Great Britain (CPGB). They never saw the irony of such an imperialist title. Churchill later said that if Uncle Joe ordered them to take over the railway stations they would all buy a platform ticket first. Lenin said of the ex-CPGB that it would not live and would not die, despite heavy subsidies.

According to the testimony of Jim McLean, folk impresario and his brother, who visited Gallagher on his sick bed in Paisley, Gallagher said he was sorry for telling lies about MacLean and he wished he had backed independence.

MacLean’s English socialist counterpart, the aristocratic Hyndman, who wrote Merrie England, not only supported World War One, but advocated a stronger English Navy. Today’s Brit Nat left are just as vitriolic when it comes to Scottish Independence and supporting the British State and are in the same Bitter Together camp as; the Lib, Lab, Con, UKIP, BNP, NF, EDL and HM Queen.

MacLean advocated independence 20-odd years afore the formation of the SNP, founded by other socialist such as RB Cunninghame Grahame and Dr Clarke, who also founded the short-lived Scottish Labour Party – which was light years away from Corbyn’s British national party, who also find John MacLean “mad” for supporting Scottish independence.

Donald Anderson
Glasgow

READ MORE: Letters, November 20

FIT a rare laugh ah hidd wi yir reporting oan Aberdein Uni researchers sayin that spikken Doric should be encouraged in schools!

As an Aberdonian, not one of the diluted incomers who tend to inhabit the north-east these days, and as such an endangered species (more so after the previous statement?), I would like to relate what it was like be a user of my “mither tongue” in Kittybrewster Primary School in the mid-60s (the same school that a certain M Gove MP attended, and some chap called Dennis Law?)

My earliest recollections are of being rapped over my knuckles with a wooden ruler (on its edge) when I was caught speaking to my chum in “Scots”. The plastic 12” “Shatter Resistant” ones never held up to their claims, but still hurt as much!

I well remember being encouraged to recite “I wandered lonely as a cloud, over hill and over dale” and that the removal of one’s primitive provincial accent was the route to advancement within “British” society.

READ MORE: The Scots leid is for aa, nae jist for nationalists

Just to confuse us we were asked to read and recite Burns for that one week prior to his birthday. Any continuation of the use of such corse language after January 25 would be reminiscent of a strip from Oor Wullie! The use of the dreaded ruler or the the tawse! Aye the proper Oor Wullie, that I read as a boy. Burns wrote in Lallans, which is a Lowlands Scots dialect, which differs to the form of Scots spoken in Doric (but then again Burns’s grandfather was from the Mearns, and he had quite an extensive family connections up here!).

I would also point out that my maternal grandfather spoke Gaelic, as did his mother, and she was born in the Kincardine O’Neil area, but he spoke Doric in his everyday speech.

Both of our native tongues have been suppressed for too long, and I support any resurgence in our Scottish heritage. The game of divide and rule has served certain sections of the British establishment well. It’s time to put an end to empire games and certainly Empire 2.0 delusions that seem to be affecting a considerable part of the population!

Sandy Allan
Newburgh, Ellon

READ MORE: Will speaking Scots in the classroom boost oor bairns’ brains?​