The connection between Scots Socialism and Nationalism is well seen in John Maclean, but not fully dealt with in Tom Bell’s biography – “John Maclean, Fighter for Freedom” (Glasgow, 1944). Maclean believed that Russia could not produce the “World revolution.” The separation of nations was a hard fact. “I accordingly stand out as a Scottish Republican candidate feeling sure that if Scotland had to elect a parliament to sit in Glasgow, it would vote for a working-class parliament… The social revolution is possible sooner in Scotland than in England.”
John Maclean did not mean to go to Westminster. “This policy of a workers’ republic in Scotland debars me from going to John Bull’s London parliament… Had the Labour men stayed in Glasgow and started a Scottish Parliament, as did the genuine Irish in Dublin in 1918, England would have sat up and made concessions to Scotland.”
The Communist Guy Aldred expounded the same views and put them in print in “The Free Man,” Edinburgh, October, 1932:
“I would have the workers seize Scotland instead of marching to London.
“I have no faith in the irresponsible and ignorant parliamentarianism of exploitation functioning in spendthrift London.”
This is not inconsistent with the encyclical of John XXIII, “Pacem in Terris,” opposing transfer of workers and economic domination:-
“Smaller States, in the interests of the common good, cannot be denied their right to political freedom, and to the adoption of a position of neutrality in the conflicts between empires.”
