The oldest, and last but one, surviving Scottish veteran of the Spanish Civil War has died at the age of 99.

Red Clyde legend Jimmy Maley, whose short but violent career in the International Brigade was followed by service with the British Army in Burma, died on Monday after a short illness.

In 2003 Mr Maley was one of the last three surviving Scottish veterans who attended an annual gathering of the International Brigades Memorial Trust in Glasgow.

Since then John Dunlop has died, and Mr Maley's death leaves Steve Fullarton, living in a residential home in Edinburgh, the last of the generation of Scots who rallied to the banner of Republican Spain after the fascist insurrection led by General Franco in 1936.

Born in Glasgow in 1908, Mr Maley survived a near-lethal childhood illness requiring removal of part of one lung, joined the Communist Party at the age of 24 and became one of its speakers and tutors.

Around that time he also joined the Territorial Army, and left for Spain in December 1936 as one of relatively few British volunteers with any military training. Issued with a fairly primitive Russian rifle, he regretted having left his TA-issue weapon at home.

After six weeks' training in Albacete, he was despatched with a heavy machine-gun company to the Jarama front defending Madrid. He and his comrades disembarked to find themselves in the midst of a rout. They spent three days covering the retreat until they were surrounded and captured. The insurgents sentenced him to 20 years, but after six months he was released in exchange for Italian PoWs.

After his release he came home and carried on speaking at public meetings.

In fact Mr Maley did not stop speaking, even when he was serving with the KOSB, and later the HLI, in the Far East. When he was not fighting the Japanese he was rallying meetings of freed Indian communist detainees, a habit which did not endear him to the military brass. Promotion evaded him even though he was decorated.

After the war Mr Maley gave up public speaking. He worked on the railways and with Glasgow Corporation, marrying in 1947. He and Anne, who survives him, raised nine children in Possilpark, where his dignified bearing and concern for the welfare of others earned him the respect of the toughest in the community.

His son Willie, professor of English literature at Glasgow University, said: "His communist beliefs were rooted in the Glasgow and west of Scotland left-wing movement, so they survived the upheavals which tore the party apart.

"He had a tremendous moral authority and got more left-wing as he got older."