The early chapters rattle along recounting Maclean’s early life and teaching career before his forced ejection from the profession. The unfair dismissal gave him further impetus to develop and disseminate his political ideas and to agitate for workers’ rights and international workers’ cooperation, to participate in the Rent Strikes of 1915, all of which culminated in his famous trial in May 1918 on charges of seditious activities. This meant he played only a minor role in the Forty Hours Strike in January 1919.

And this is where Robertson’s otherwise very enjoyable biography begins to unravel. Reliance on Willie Gallacher’s 1934 memoir for what happened in the last week of January 1919 in the Forty Hours Strike has led to inaccuracies and the inclusion of supposed details which are not repeated anywhere else, most particularly in the High Court of Justiciary precognition statements and trial transcript which would have been usefully employed to understand the events of that week.

Good use is made of the War Cabinet minutes for Thursday 30 January, although the author has fallen into a common trap: the Secretary for Scotland is minuted as having said, ‘Bolshevist rising’, not the quoted ‘Bolshevik rising’. This is often a signal that either the writer has lifted from secondary sources, or in this instance has not been sufficiently accurate in quoting from the primary source. Wider academic writing has provided more nuanced research regarding the violence which ensued in George Square on Friday 31 January 1919. It was not a ‘police riot’: the violence in fact began in the south-east corner of the Square and spread as the police attempted to defend themselves after a tram became stuck in the crowd; mounted police did not appear in North Frederick Street. 

It is noteworthy that a very detailed account of a supposed meeting in the City Chambers on Friday morning is not endnoted – because it did not take place. What the author describes appears to be an amalgamation of pieces of evidence which were reported in the Glasgow Herald in the week after the riot, all said at different times but not as the ‘meeting’ of characters described here. Further, the government’s response to the Lord Provost’s telegram outlining the meeting he had had with the strike leaders on Wednesday 29 January would already have been known to members of the crowds gathering on Friday morning because it had been published in Thursday evening’s papers, so it was unlikely to be ‘difficult to predict how the crowd will react’ when the Lord Provost intended to address them with this news, something which the riot prevented him from doing. In fact, from the legal records, it is apparent the Lord Provost was rather miffed that Westminster had not communicated their decision directly to him before publication.

Researching and writing history should never be a closed shop for academic historians, but rigour and factual accuracy are the basic skills expected of anyone wishing to participate in ‘telling’ history. The bibliography and extensive endnotes indicate that this book uses a wide range of sources, but after the author’s inventions in the Forty Hours Strike and Bloody Friday chapters, belief in any authorial rigour and accuracy wanes. Further, this book would have benefited from the author’s insight into Maclean’s character. For a man whose reputation suffered the ignominy of later claims of mental instability and political marginality, this was an opportunity for Robertson’s clear high regard for Maclean to explore who he really was.

The book’s title suggested a hagiography of John Maclean; what has been written is a hagiography of early Red Clydeside, which is an important period of Scottish and labour history with a long legacy worthy of re-telling and re-telling. This version is a cracking good tale but sadly adds nothing new to the century-long discussion of Maclean’s legacy on the Clyde.

Great John Maclean has come home to the Clyde by Donald Robertson. Published by Resistance Books, 576pp, £28.