Letters
Dogmatic refusal
Gerry Cairns of the John Maclean Society (Weekly Worker 112) condemns Jack Conrad for a “disgusting diatribe” against Maclean. This seems a bit unfair on comrade Conrad, who was merely summarising, in a short review article (Weekly Worker 106), some of the conclusions presented in my pamphlet John Maclean and the CPGB. If Cairns had taken the trouble to read the pamphlet itself, rather than just the review, he would have discovered that it answers many of the points he raises.
With regard to Maclean’s Scottish republicanism, it is untrue that he “signed Ruaraidh Erskine’s petition to the Paris Peace Conference calling for Scottish self-determination”. Erskine’s petition was in fact addressed to US president Woodrow Wilson, on whose initiative the conference was called, and Maclean refused to put his name to it. Replying to Erskine in January 1919, he explained that it was absurd to expect backing for home rule from “the representative of brutally blatant capitalism in America”, which had an established record of crushing the rights of small nations.
At this stage Maclean, along with many other leading figures in the Scottish labour movement, was certainly a supporter of home rule for Scotland, but he held the view that it was dependent on the struggle for power in Britain as a whole. In line with this view, most of his agitational work in 1919 was carried out in England and Wales, and he remained a loyal member of the British Socialist Party until 1920. This is clearly a very different position from the one Maclean later adopted.
It was only after the foundation of the CPGB in July/August 1920 that he came out in favour of an independent struggle for a workers’ republic in Scotland, to be led by a separate Scottish Communist Party. That he adopted this new line pragmatically, because he was opposed for other reasons to joining the CPGB, is scarcely a novel idea. It was persuasively argued by Ripley and McHugh in the Scottish Labour History Journal back in 1983 and is repeated in their 1989 biography of Maclean.
If, as Gerry Cairns claims, Maclean “was consistent and supported independence for Scotland as a principle”, why did he then become a member of the Socialist Labour Party, an organisation which explicitly rejected the struggle for Scottish independence and poured scorn on the idea of “a Scottish Communist Party” for “pure Scotsmen”? In his open letter to Lenin, written in January 1921, shortly after he joined the SLP, Maclean makes no reference at all to the need for a Scottish workers’ republic or for a separate Scottish revolutionary party. One of the features of Maclean’s attitude to Scottish self-determination was precisely its inconsistent character.
On the matter of Maclean’s psychological problems, Gerry Cairns asks rhetorically: “Where is the evidence?” If he had bothered to read the pamphlet, he would have found out. Maclean’s antagonism towards the formation of the CPGB stemmed not from political differences but from his conviction that the communist unity movement was headed by state agents. Among those he publicly named as spies were BSP leader Theodore Rothstein and Lieutenant-Colonel L’Estrange Malone, the first Communist MP. When Willie Gallacher wrote to the SLP warning them that Maclean was suffering from “hallucinations”, he too was accused of being a government agent.
These charges were entirely without foundation. Either they were politically motivated slanders, or Maclean was indeed suffering from delusions. My own opinion is that he was the honest victim of delusions. Which explanation does Gerry Cairns prefer?
The issue of John Maclean’s relations with the CPGB is obviously one which arouses strong emotions. This is understandable. But Gerry Cairn’s dogmatic refusal to consider any new material that contradicts an established belief about the past is worse than useless. It reduces historiography to mythology. A major political figure like John Maclean deserves better than that.
Bob Pitt
Author of John Maclean and the CPGB
Time wasting?
I read with dismay the section on women in your draft programme. Does Jack Conrad really believe that child rearing should be described as “enormously time wasting ... dull, demoralising and does not allow for any kind of cultural development”? If so, then he clearly has a very sad life.
Admittedly bringing up kids is hard work and very time consuming. But many women (and some men) know that it can also be pleasurable, exciting, creative and immensely satisfying.
Children are our future and their care is an important responsibility which should be valued and recognised as such. At the very least, this task deserves to be in a separate category from cleaning toilets.
Julie Mills
West London