Matt Lygate

MATT Lygate, who has died aged 73 after a long fight with Alzheimer's disease, was a political activist, orator and artist who made Scottish legal history in 1972 when sentenced to 24 years for a spate of armed robberies intended to raise funds for his revolutionary socialist party.

He was born in Govan, Glasgow, but the family moved to Sunderland when he was a teenager and there he learned his trade as a tailor. A devout Christian and member of the British Communist Party, when he was called up for National Service (and like his father during the First World War) he refused – stating he would not join the "imperialist" British Army – and fled to New Zealand.

Once in New Zealand his fervour and passion for justice as well as adventure blossomed. He travelled from village to village without map or tent, taking on local hard labour jobs as he went, founded a railway worker's union and fought for the rights of the Maori people. When he decided to return to the UK, the New Zealand secret service met him at the docks to make him aware he would not be allowed back any time soon. He excelled at and loved playing both the saint and the sinner in the eyes of different beholders.

On return to the UK his political and social work continued. He became a leading figure in the Scottish and Irish republican and socialist movements and was a leading founder of the Workers Party of Scotland (WPS). It was a Marxist-Leninist movement dedicated to establishing a Scottish socialist republic along the lines of that advocated by the great Scottish revolutionary and Red Clydesider John Maclean. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the John Maclean Society which did much work to resurrect Maclean's memory.

The radical politics of the 1960s spawned armed revolutionary movements across Europe and Matt Lygate's WPS, with a membership of about 60, was one of them. It was short of funds. Lygate planned a series of armed robberies and he recruited William MacPherson, a professional gambler, Colin Lawson, a psychiatric nurse and Ian Doran from a well-established Glasgow crime family.

Armed with guns and clubs, they robbed two Glasgow banks in quick succession. No-one was hurt but MacPherson and Doran then branched out on their own and robbed two more banks and a business. This time a shotgun was fired. But late in 1971, after a tip-off, a raid on the party's Glasgow bookshop discovered weapons and £10,000 cash. Lygate, MacPherson, Doran and Lawson were arrested.

At the High Court in Glasgow in 1972 all men pled not guilty and Lygate represented himself. He used the court to attack the system he believed aimed to destroy him and in his closing statement told the judge it was not his violence that had brought him to court, but that of the state against the working class.

All four were convicted of bank robbery and Lord Dunpark handed out some of the longest sentences in Scottish legal history for non-murder crimes. Lawson got just six years but MacPherson was jailed for 26, Doran 25 and Lygate 24. On being sentenced Lygate looked to the public gallery and with clenched fist shouted: "Long live the workers of Scotland".

Once in Barlinnie he remained a thorn in the establishment's side. Initially he refused prison clothes and an ID number and spent his early days in prison in solitary confinement, naked and on hunger strike. Later he would spend much of his time teaching some of Glasgow's most hardened criminals to read, write and paint. He would often write poems and paint miniature Burns portraits and the likes for other inmates' girlfriends and mothers.

Moved from prison to prison he set up organisations to protect the rights of prisoners and object to the antiquated Victorian style prison systems where "slopping out" and three to a cell were still commonplace. After eight years he was offered his first parole hearing but he refused, claiming parole was a sham and they had no intent of releasing him. One lawyer commented on Matt's case that he was given eight years for robbery and 16 for his politics.

He was eventually released after serving 12 years and he reinstated the Workers Party of Scotland and helped found, in the small Phoenix Press shop in Glasgow's Maryhill, what became the anti-poll tax movement, travelling the country and campaigning against Mrs Thatcher's much-loathed policy. During this period he also met his partner Linda, settled down and helped raise three happy children and look after countless others.

Despite the onset of Alzheimer's he retained his passion for life, liberty and nature and whilst his short-term memory deteriorated, his character remained the same. He never lost his love of nature, walking and talking and remained a thinker and philosopher. Even in the latter stages of his dementia he could recite Burns.

In the end, Matt Lygate was never consumed by his disease. He died the "giant inside a small man's body" he ever was.