On 26 November the Revolutionary Communist Group (Glasgow) joined the annual march, organised by the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement (SRSM), to mark the 94th anniversary of the death of revolutionary John MacLean. After graveside orations marchers, led by the Coatbridge United Irishmen Flute band, made their way from Eastwood cemetery to the John MacLean Cairn at the Square at Shawbridge Shopping Centre.
Despite the significance of this year, the centenary of the Russian Revolution, and MacLean’s own appointment as British consul for Bolshevik Russia in 1918, there was to be no talk of revolution on this march at least not if it meant criticising the Scottish National Party (SNP).
Before being given the mic at the end of the march the RCG speaker was asked by SRSM chair Donald Anderson ‘not to slag the SNP’. This craven attempt at censorship, which we caught on camera (see footage below), was unsuccessful as the speaker went on to layout the facts of the SNP’s warmongering and their defence of the racist immigration system in Britain.
Earlier on in the day career opportunist Tommy Sheridan of Solidarity was invited to give a graveside oration about the significance of MacLean and his politics. Before the last General Election Sheridan had openly called for people to vote for the ‘progressive SNP’ in Scotland and Labour in England (Quoted on March for Independence, 3 May 2017). To be clear Sheridan was calling on the working class and poor to vote for parties cutting living standards, enforcing racist immigration controls and waging war on working class and oppressed peoples across the world.
This support for the SNP and Labour is the very opposite of what MacLean stood for and he would be turning in his grave if he knew this crap was being sold in his name. Just as MacLean fought and exposed the opportunism of the socialist and labour movements of his day now the task falls to us. Long live MacLean! Long live his revolution!
Dominic Mulgrew
