[2] The SDF became the British Socialist Party in 1911, and MacDougall attended its first conference, the following year, at which he was appointed to a committee to investigate grievances in the Aberdeen branch.
[11] The Socialist Labour Party held a majority on the committee and disagreed, at one point having MacDougall and Peter Petroff removed from a meeting for trying to debate the subject.
In 1916, he and Jimmy Maxton spoke at a meeting on Glasgow Green against the deportation of David Kirkwood, and the two were arrested and charged with inducing workers to obstruct the war effort.
They were advised to plead guilty, and were sentenced to twelve months; around the same time, Maclean, Willie Gallacher and many other leaders of the Clyde Workers' Committee were jailed.
However, Gallacher convinced a majority of delegates that it should instead seek to join the CPGB, barracking the official speakers and nearly starting fights, and he succeeded in defeating MacDougall in the votes.
[19] Two years later, the offices of the Scottish Labour College were raided by the police, and MacDougall was sentenced to sixty days in prison for incitement and sedition.
[21] As he recovered, he spent time trying to organise unemployed workers as part of Maclean's Tramp Trust Unlimited and did some work at the Scottish Labour College, but became increasingly disillusioned and gave few speeches.
[1] The CPGB unsuccessfully attempted to persuade him to resume political activity for them;[22] however, he wrote a number of articles for Communist Review in 1925 and 1926 and appears to have briefly held membership of the party.