Our traditional windowpane check fabric design ‘MacLean’ is named after John MacLean (1879-1923). A man who always stood by his principles and stood for what was right. A teacher, an anti-war campaigner, and a general carer for other people.
Born in Pollokshaws, MacLean grew up in a very poor household as the second youngest of 7 children to parents who only spoke Gaelic. At the time, Pollokshaws was an area largely dedicated to weaving, with several established weaving factories as well as dye and print works. The wealth and power difference between the millworkers and the landowners were extreme; such was the Victorian era MacLean was born into.
Through the Free Church Teacher Training College, he became a schoolteacher whilst also attending part time courses in Political Economy at the University of Glasgow. MacLean came to insist that the working-class living standards would only be improved through social revolution.
Once dubbed ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’ by the head of British Military Intelligence of the time, MacLean was strongly opposed to Britain’s involvement in the First World War. In a speech he delivered in Edinburgh at the High Court in 1918 he said: ‘I wish no harm to any human being, but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind’. Under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act he was later arrested and served over a year in prison.
Overwork, imprisonment, and incidental hunger strikes took their toll on MacLean. Aged 44 he collapsed during a speech and died of pneumonia.
In 1973 a memorial was placed in Pollokshaws which reads: ‘In memory of John MacLean’, ‘Famous pioneer of working-class education. He forged the Scottish link in the Golden Chain of World Socialism’.