Maxton, James (1885–1946)

Scottish politician, chair of the Independent Labour Party 1926–40, and member of Parliament for Bridgeton, Glasgow, from 1922 until his death. One of the most turbulent ‘Red Clydesiders’, he was expelled from the House of Commons in 1923 for calling a minister a murderer. As chair of the Independent Labour Party, he led its secession for the Labour Party in 1932, and became increasingly isolated from mainstream Labour politics. His extreme views won few supporters, but his sincerity won the respect of many.

He was an uncompromising revolutionary and an advocate of ‘direct action’. A man of strong convictions, he was a staunch pacifist, and in 1916 was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment for attempting to incite a strike of shipyard workers during World War I, in which he was a conscientious objector. In 1928 he produced with A J Cook, the Cook–Maxton manifesto which criticized the Labour Party for abandoning the socialism of the party's pioneers.

Born in Glasgow, he was educated at the university there and became a teacher in the east end of the city, where the poverty he witnessed converted him to socialism.