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William Oliver Brown


William Oliver Brown (1903 – 28 May 1976) was a Scottish nationalist political activist.

Born in Paisley, Brown studied Latin and French at the University of Glasgow before teaching French at secondary schools, spending most of his career at Whitehill Secondary School and Pollokshields Secondary School. He contributed to both the English- and French-language editions of the Grand Larousse encyclopédique, and worked both as a courier for the British Council and a broadcaster on the BBC.

He was married to the painter and illustrator Margaret Oliver Brown (1912 – 1990).

Brown was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland in 1929. He stood for the party at the East Renfrewshire by-election, 1930, becoming the first National Party candidate to hold his deposit. He stood again in East Renfrewshire at the 1931 general election, increasing his vote to 6,498. In 1934, the National Party merged into the new Scottish National Party (SNP), and Brown spoke at its first public meeting, alongside Compton Mackenzie. He was selected as a candidate for the new party at the 1935 general election, again in East Renfrewshire. Although he took 6,593 votes, on this occasion, it was just under one-eighth of the total, so he lost his deposit.

By the late 1930s, Brown had left the SNP and joined the Labour Party, serving on the executive of the Labour Council for Scottish Self-Government. He was a pacifist during World War II. In 1940, he launched the Scots Socialist journal, with Archie Lamont, Douglas Young, George Campbell Hay and Hugh MacDiarmid, acting as its editor until it ceased publication in 1949. Initially, the Scots Socialist was associated with the Scottish Secretariat Study Group, but by 1942, it was published in the name of Brown's own Scottish Socialist Party. In 1943, he affiliated the party to the SNP, but the relationship remained semi-detached, and the Scottish Socialist Party was soon acting independently once more. It remained small, based around speeches he would give from his soapbox on the corner of Sauchiehall Street and Wellington Street in Glasgow, generally with fewer than ten supporters.


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