Image: John Maclean, from the cover of Pluto Press's book "John Maclean, Hero of Red Clydeside"
Armistice remembrances often gloss over the role played by workers across Europe in ending the war. John Maclean “I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.”
A century ago, in November 1918, Britain celebrated the armistice and prepared for its first General Election since 1910. At the same time, the revolutionary leader John Maclean sat in Peterhead Jail, awaiting another day of force-feeding and solitary confinement. His place in the international revolutionary movement was unparalleled in these islands, and the growing support for him and his cause struck fear into the heart of government. For four years John Maclean had campaigned for peace, but for a peace with a revolution in it. Maclean argued that however the Great War ended, capitalism would guarantee a Second World War within fifteen years unless the workers rose up to stop it.
