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John Scanlon is a British politician and major figure of the Maximist movement, who currently serves as the Director of External Affairs of the New Labour Association (NULA). A renowned author and journalist, with his works touching on politics, international developments and current affairs in Britain, Scanlon is well-known throughout Britain for his extensive political commentary and the sarcastic humour, ever-present in his writings. While having authored relatively few books compared to some of his contemporaries, Scanlon is noted as a prolific pamphleteer and journalist, having emerged as a leading contributor at both the Daily Herald and Action.

Much of Scanlon's early life is shrouded in obscurity, though as he became more politically active in the post-war, more concrete records have been established. A relative newcomer to the TUC, having only been elected in a 1934 by-election following the resignation of Harry Richardson, Scanlon has long maintained a career on the edges of, and at times within, left-wing politics, having first worked as a journalist and activist for the Clyde Workers Committee before later serving as a local Labour Party secretary and electoral agent-cum-parliamentary secretary for Patrick Hastings. Scanlon would later serve as Parliamentary Secretary, later Congressional Secretary, for John Wheatley, a close friend and political mentor. Through Wheatley, Scanlon would befriend his closest confidant, John Beckett, with the two men later becoming political allies of Maximist politician, Oswald Mosley. Contemporarily, Scanlon is a leading proponent, theorist and ideologue within the Beckettite tendency of NULA, responsible for crystallising many of Beckett's ideas into literary fact.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Scanlon

A sketch of John Scanlon, 1935

John Scanlon was born at Springhill Row in the parish of Dreghorn, Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1886. Scanlon was the son of a colliery fireman for the Overton coal fields, William Scanlon (née Scanleon) and his wife, Maggie Scanlon. William Scanlon had been a close colleague of Keir Hardie and Robert Smilie, and was a founder of the Ayrshire Miners Union. Following his father, a young Scanlon first found employment in the local mines and "went down the pits" as a young boy before later gaining an apprenticeship as a ship plater in the Glasgow shipyards. Moving to the Clydeside area, he would remain here for the rest of his industrial career, eventually serving as a full ship plater in his own right. Having worked in the "only yard on the Clyde" to not be engaged in war work, a feat he would boast of in later years, Scanlon would encounter the future Labourite and Autonomist politician, James Maxton, in 1917. Maxton had just been released from a year's imprisonment for sedition after organising dock strikes among barge workers and was now no longer permitted to be employed in such "necessary" work. Scanlon would agree to take Maxton on, employing him as an assistant ship plater working on barges provided to neutral countries. Maxton would quickly recognise Scanlon's penchant for writing and invite him to join the Clyde Worker's Committee.

WIP

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