A MARCH was held in Glasgow yesterday to mark 100 years since socialist John Maclean was released from jail.
In 1918, more than 100,000 greeted the anti-war campaigner and champion of social justice when he arrived back home at Buchanan Street Railway Station in Glasgow where he lived in Pollokshaws.
Yesterday, 100 years to the day, part of the march from Buchanan Street to Carlton Place, near Jamaica Bridge, was retraced as far as possible by a group of 50 marchers celebrating the centenary.
A Facebook post on the new march says that a crowd “well in excess of 100,000” gathered outside the Buchanan Street rail station on December 3, 1918. By the time it arrived at Carlton Place it had swollen to twice that size as feeder marches arrived from Parkhead Forge and the Singer factory in Clydebank. “At this precise moment,” the post adds, “Glasgow was the centre of the world. And John Maclean had put it there.”
Maclean first came to the fore as an early member of the Social Democratic Foundation (SDF), Britain’s first organised socialist political party.
Maclean established a branch of the SDF in Pollokshaws in 1906, assisted by 16-year-old James MacDougall who would become Maclean’s chief supporter.
He became known for his speeches and his writing in pamphlets, and was seen as a pioneer of working-class education through the many lectures he gave in west central Scotland to large audiences.
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