John Wheatley

Who was John Wheatley?

John Wheatley was a Scottish socialist politician. He was a prominent figure of the Red Clydeside era.

Wheatley was born in Bonmahon, County Waterford, Ireland, to Thomas and Johanna Wheatley. In 1876 the family moved to Braehead, Lanarkshire in Scotland. Initially, he worked as a miner, as his father had done in Ireland, and then briefly as a publican, but he later ran his own successful printing business which specialised in publishing leftist political works, many of which Wheatley wrote himself such as The Catholic Workingman, Miners, Mines and Misery, Eight Pound Cottages for Glasgow Citizens, Municipal Banking and The New Rent Act.

A deeply religious man and practising Roman Catholic, he was influenced by early Christian-socialist thinkers, and in 1907 he joined the Independent Labour Party. He founded and was the first chairman of the Catholic Socialist Society.

He campaigned against the UK's involvement in the First World War, campaigning against conscription, and assisting in organising rent strikes in Glasgow.