A short account by a participant of the UK's largest working class anarchist movement (with the possible exception of the better known movement among London's East End Jews); in Glasgow during the first half of the 20th century. The movement contained an unusual combination of Stirnerite egoist and anarcho-syndicalist influences.
Source; Workers City, ed. Farquhar McLay; Clydeside Press, Glasgow 1988.
Thank-you so much for sharing this. This was wonderful to read.
Good to see this- Great read.
"This is not any condemnation of Anarchism. It is a condemnation of Bill Johnson." beautiful.
A song by Matt McGinn A Scottish singer/songwriter/poet of the West of Scotland radical movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Matt was politicised at an early age by Robert ‘Bobby’ Lynn, fellow Ross Street resident and stalwart of the anarchist movement in Glasgow from the 1940s through to his death in 1996. ‘The Depth of My Ego’ is a song inspired by the ideas of Max Stirner as introduced to Matt by Bobby Lynn.
Matt McGinn and Bobby were both born in the nineteen twenties. I didn’t know Matt to speak to, though saw him several times in the sixties and early seventies (he died January, 1977).
At this time during the May Day Parade in Glasgow, after crossing to the south side of the river using the Jamaica Street Bridge, the peaceniks and anarchists, who always marched at the back, would usually be greeted by Bobby and a large crowd of people, men, women and children. They would join us as we marched along the road. Several times, Matt McGinn, often with an infant on his shoulders, joined us as part of this group.
Matt was not an anarchist, he was a radical freethinker, who was expelled from the Communist Party because he was a Scottish Nationalist (in the mode of John McLean, the Govan school teacher), and expelled from the Scot Nats for being a communist. Never met anyone who disliked him or Bobby.