BEING fascinated by Wednesday’s letters in response to Hamish MacPherson’s article on Wendy Wood, I was particularly struck by Councillor Andy Doig’s version. I was surprised to learn of Wendy’s support for miners during the hunger marches and other radical actions. Wendy once gave me a telling-off at the annual Bannockburn rally, when it was run by the SNP and I was part of the cross-party Scottish Republican Socialist Movement (SRSM) contingent, now left with the caretaker task of organising the annual event and delighted to hand it over this year to AUOB, now isolating until the coronavirus is over.
After some of our contingent burned the Union flag, taken from Stirling Castle on the field of Bannockburn, Wendy berated me for supporting John Maclean, along with Thomas Muir of Huntershill and James Connolly as displayed on our banner, claiming Maclean took his orders from Moscow. I was too respectful and dumbfounded at being publicly sherricked by one so famous. I did not have the heart to tell her she was so wrong.
As appointed Soviet Consul by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, his office in South Portland Street, next to the Sheriff Court and once home to the father of the famous Pilkington detective and mentor to the US spy system, Maclean’s office was not recognised by the British Government, who refused to allow deliveries by the Royal Mail. Maclean was invited to Moscow, but faced travelling restrictions.
Willie Gallacher took the usual route through Sweden and met Lenin, agreeing to form the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). This was in stark contrast to agreed public meetings to form the Scottish Communist Republican Party. Maclean bitterly condemned Lenin, Moscow and Willie Gallacher for this act of betrayal, as he saw it. Gallacher became a much respected Scottish MP at Westminster and, according to Jim McLean folk songwriter and impresario, Gallacher expressed regret to him on his sickbed in Paisley for maligning Maclean. I also heard that his daughter, Nan Milton, Morris Blythman and veteran socialist Harry McShane, and others all deceased, say at John Maclean Society meetings that Maclean and Gallacher had to be physically separated coming down opposite isles at a public meeting after Gallacher’s return to Scotland.
Maclean was furious and went on to form his Scottish Workers Republican Party, which survived into the 1930s, after Maclean’s death, aged 43, in 1924. I also heard McShane repeat this story at several public meetings. McShane went with the CPGB and wrote for the Daily Record, falling out with Maclean. Later McShane squared the circle, when he wrote from his care home to Margaret Thatcher, saying that the minimum demand for the Scottish workers was devolution and the maximum demand was for a Scottish Workers Republic.
Andy Doig mentioned the second love of Wendy’s life was an original IRA man and they moved together to the Highlands. I knew she visited Ireland in the 30s to procure an agreement not to continue their war in Scotland, but was surprised to learn from the late Hugh MacDonald, former vice-chair of the SNP, that the IRA also ratified this agreement in the 40s. At the start of the recent Troubles, when Harold Wilson sent the troops in to Ireland, I met with the late Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, then president of Sinn Fein and later the Republican Sinn Fein. I happened to be present when he walked out of the Sinn Fein conference to form his new party, although I did not fully understand what was going on. I was with John Munro, John Carlisle and Stan Green, all deceased, as a contingent from the SRSM pleading for Scotland to be spared from their bombing campaign. We were kicking an open door and agreement was immediately accepted. The only bombs released in Scotland during the recent Troubles were by North British loyalists, who bombed the Old Burnt Barns in the Calton, near the Glasgow Barras, and Derry Treanor’s and the Clelland Bar in the city’s Southside in 1979.
John Carlisle has an unfinished book about Scottish slaves in the Caribbean which is worth finishing. Stan Green was also an organiser of Wendy’s Scottish Patriots. He was also involved in the Easterhouse Festival Committee and the Easterhouse Voice paper, which secured almost every amenity in the scheme. The Easterhouse Festival Society Drama Company won an Edinburgh Fringe award for Krassivy, a play about John Maclean by local resident, the late Freddie Anderson, who was a Scottish and Irish socialist republican.
Krassivy is Russian for beautiful and red.
Donald Anderson
Glasgow
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