James Clunie MP

Born 1889 in Lower Largo, Jim Clunie worked as a house painter and decorator. He later became a Member of the Executive of Scottish Painters Society and became Chairman of Dunfermline Trades and Labour Council in 1926. He was employed by Dunfermline Cooperative Society and was a Labour member of Dunfermline Town Council between 1933-50. Clunie was elected for Dunfermline Burghs Constituency in February 1950 and sat until 1959. He died on 25th Feb 1974.

Like many of the figures in Fife’s Labour movement Jim Clunie’s early inspiration was from Marxism and he was inspired and remained close friends with the great John MacLean until MacLean’s death in 1923. MacLean had tremendous regard for Clunie who wrote a number of books. In one of his earliest published in 1920 John MacLean compared Clunie to Robert Tressall author of the “Ragged Trouser Philanthropist”

“A wage-earning painter from the Kingdom of Fife to accomplish this feat popularising the science of Marxism” JOHN MACLEAN 1920