Swing to the SNP

All together - swing to the SNP, all together - swing to the SNP
Make up your minds and make up for those wasted years, swing to the SNP
The times they are changing - swing to the SNP, watch your sons and daughters - swing to the SNP
Labour is out-dated - swing to the SNP, the Tories antiquated - swing to the SNP
Make up your minds and make up for those wasted years, Swing to the SNP
Swing To The SNP, tune I Shall Not Be Moved, words Glasgow Song Guild
We’ll cut a trench along the border, we’ll cut a trench along the border,
We’ll cut a channel from the Solway to the Tweed, and sail away from England wi the SNP.
We’ll keek in every corner, roon the North Sea tae the Clyde,
For naebody will stowaway when we sail wi the tide,
We’ll make sure the Duke O Edinburgh’s on the other side! When Scotland sails away!
The Scottish Naval Patrol, tune John Brown’s Body, words Jim McLean

In the late 1960s political songmaker skills were harnessed by Morris Blythman in support of the developing success of the Scottish National Party, and for issues of republicanism, employment and land reform. The role of Hamish Henderson as exemplar, encourager and superlative songmaker came to the fore. In ‘The Nationalist Movement in Scotland’ Jack Brand considers that “the rise of the folk song movement” was much more important in the growth of nationalism than the teaching of history. Although the way the songs “provided a set of Scottish symbols which could be manipulated by Nationalists in order to attract the young voters” was not the major reason for “the support which the SNP has had from young people …the folk song movement gave them a direction in which to press their efforts”. Brand argues that the singing of folk songs helped develop “a general belief about the condition of Scotland, and, after this, that folk songs were used as a weapon” to organise support.

O Swing now, O Swing now, Swing to the SNP, time now to change your vote – Swing to the SNP
There’s changes here in Hamilton, Swing to the SNP. We’ve got the big boys on the run, Swing to the SNP
O Swing Now, tune Pay Me My Money Down, words Glasgow Song Guild

“Many of the young people who went to folk clubs also supported CND. The songs sung at the Holy Loch therefore gained a wide currency and with them the more specifically nationalist ones… It is not surprising then, that when the Nationalist wave started to roll they should use folk song, ceilidhs and singalongs as a method of attracting young people.” Brand goes on to detail a couple of the campaign songs developed by Morris Blythman and his crew. In his notes he acknowledges that his whole chapter is “based on the article ‘Rebel Songs of Scotland’ in Chapbook, vol 4 no 6.” In that article, which I quote from liberally earlier and later in this book, Blythman writes, “Our obvious decision was to back [the SNP] up as the movement most likely to bring Scottish independence. They had become the popular movement in the same way as the CND had been the popular movement some years before.
“So we started writing, and we decided the thing to do, to fit in with the ideas of the Scottish people, was to press home the concept of electoral victory. We felt they would go for this.” One ‘deplorable’ handicap for the songmakers was that the SNP held no demos, and only one march a year, to Bannockburn. Then came the [1967] Pollok by-election. Alastair McDonald, Susan Haworth, Ian Wade, Jimmy Ross and myself started work on a pattern of material aimed purely at election campaigning. The interesting thing about these songs is that they were not fully fashioned songs in the main. They were really slogan songs which we had developed from previous campaigns – ramming across points and playing to crowds over loud-speakers.” Morris Blythman

I’m fed up wi votin Labour, and so is big Jock ma neighbour, “Jesus freeze us, Jimmy,” Jock he says tae me,
“What the Hell dae they think they’re daein’ i’ ma economy?
I canna hae a Friday on the skite, noo, or nip in for a hauf afore ma tea,
So I think I’ll gie ma vote tae Geordie Leslie an shift tae the SNP.”
Fed Up Wi Votin Labour, tune The Means Test Man, words Glasgow Song Guild
I’m going to change my vote and swing to the Nationalists, Change my vote - swing to the Nationalists, swing to the SNP
I’m feeling sore, I’m going to change my vote, like the man next door, I’m going to change my vote
Like thousands more, I’m going to change my vote
I’m Going To Change My Vote, tune Rock My Soul, words Glasgow Song Guild

Blythman had for the 1964 West Lothian General Election written a forerunner of the approach, his ‘Billy Wolfe’ll Win' song. Blythman wrote, “We tried these songs at Pollok and they proved a central point in the campaign. We tried them again at Hamilton – and they made a major contribution to the victory. They were morale-boosters for the workers. They got over certain ideas where straight political propaganda would have failed. And we found that when there were radio and television interviews people were actually quoting the words of the songs.” Morris Blythman
The Hamilton by-election came later in 1967, contested by Winnie Ewing, who noted “Our tapes played in cars stationed all over the constituency.” Billy Wolfe recalled, “I think we were first to broadcast music from cars. In the West Perth and Kinross by-election [1963, Alec D Hume was the Tory candidate] we had a huge megaphone on top of the Land Rover. You could hear it a mile away. We had a wind-up gramophone that played 78s, we just played Jimmie Shand and similar things. There is a long straight bit of road going up from Gleneagles, and we blasted this at the countryside. There was two men diggin in the ditch at the side of the road, and they louped oot o the ditch and did a dance, birled each other in front of us in the middle of the road. I became convinced you just need to play Jimmie Shand. It doesn't appeal to everybody, but to the majority of Scots. We went into songs after that.” Billy Wolf
On the ‘Tartan Express’ train chartered to take Ewing to London on the night of 16/11/1967 were “fiddlers, pipers, accordionists, tin-whistlers and of course singers.” At Euston she was “lifted shoulder high by Angus McGillveray and Hugh MacDonald.” Both men were central in the SNP song movement.
Blythman acknowledged that “we don’t use Scottish tunes as often as we would like. For slogan songs you need swing tunes and most of the best swing tunes for our purposes are American. We are not exploiting the tunes. We admire many of them and would never use them callously.” His comments apply equally to the 1960s and 1980s Scottish CND songs. The lyrics at times attack the actions of powerful Americans, but the tunes and musical idioms used show the deep knowledge and love of American traditional music that permeates the Scottish Folk Revival.
Marion Blythman says, “He started writing songs for Winnie, and then for Billy Wolfe and Margo MacDonald (Govan 1973). These songs were made for the elections. And Morris used to say that you had to ball these songs into slogans, so that when you sang them, it was like a missile.”
Blythman himself wrote, “A friend of mine worked it out when he was talking about the various forms of folk-song. He described these songs as 'contrived banality'. No-one was given the chance to miss what we were saying. We hammered it over, clearly and carefully chosen, and kept emphasising it until they began to repeat it. It got through - operating below the threshold of consciousness. Subliminal, if you like, but it was openly subliminal. We thought along the lines of the Marxist term agit-prop - agit being agitation and prop being propaganda. Agitation is the immediate action and propaganda the long-term.” Blythman explained the ‘Swing’ songs quoted above were all ‘agit’, while ‘Shout!’ and ‘The Map’ quoted below were ‘prop’.

Scotland will be free again – Independence!
River Tweed is a great divide – Independence! Take your stand on the Scottish side - Independence!
Shout!, tune Michael Row The Boat Ashore, words Glasgow Song Guild
O ye cannae push aul’ Scotland aff the map, Naw ye cannae push aul’ Scotland aff the map’
Though ye freeze us and ye squeeze us, in the end ye’ll hae tae leave us, cause ye cannae push aul’ Scotland aff the map
Noo the Labour party are the boys in power, an’ they’re peyin’ the M.P.’s ninety bob an hour
Oor share o’ their enjoyment is double unemployment so ye see they’re just anither Tory shower
The Map, tune Ye Cannae Shove Yer Grannie, words Glasgow Song Guild

Marion Blythman recalls, “Winnie Ewing was a lawyer whose husband was an accountant. She stood for Hamilton, but they had this big flat at Queen’s Park. She had a think tank on a Sunday night, and Morris used to spend a good bit of Sunday afternoon having a sleep, because he knew he was going to be up all night.” Winnie Ewing’s nationalism is steeped in Scots song. She wrote in her autobiography that she became a nationalist at the age of nine, on a trip ‘doon the watter’ to Kilchattan Bay in Bute, when she heard a band play ‘The Road to the Isles’. “In school, during our music lessons, we heard and sang many Scottish songs which told the story of our past in a way which stays with you for the rest of your life.” When she was a lawyer, dinners in the Inns of Court were followed by ceilidhs. “I of course could not resist the singing and soon became much in demand, particularly when introducing the English to the pleasures of Jacobite songs!”
At the Glasgow Bar Association dinner dance after Ewing’s 1967 victory, “Jim Murphy (an SNP candidate in the same chambers) wrote songs which were sung in close harmony. They included one called ‘In Good Queen Winnie’s Golden Days’ and another to the tune of an IRA song, ‘Off to Dublin in the Green’.”

My name is Winnie Ewing, and I live in slavery, but I know what needs doing so I joined the SNP
So I’m off to London in the morn in the morn, for I’m Scotland’s new MP
And I’m off to heckle Willie Ross till he joins the SNP

Brand says that by 1970 and 1974 the workshopped songs had “become part of every SNP campaign at national or local level.” The singing of traditional Scots songs and newly made ones that fitted into the traditional mould became part of the SNP identity. In 2008 Glasgow SNP councillor Alison Thewliss said “political song is a way of bringing people together. It’s quite strange, I imagine it happens in other political organisations. In the SNP, at the end of the night everyone comes together and spontaneously bursts into song. Nobody has a control over it, it sort of happens. That’s a good thing. There are songs that belong to a movement, belong to an organisation. It’s part of each party or organisation’s politics. It brings people together.”
In 2009 former SNP leader Billy Wolfe said, “We sang the songs, they were our songs. There was a marvellous period in the party, in the 1970s, for about three years, you could go several places and be sure to have a ceilidh. Hugh MacDonald lived in Busby, a Gaelic speaking Highlander from Maryhill, there was a ceilidh in his house all the time. He could sing for twenty four hours and no repeat himself. His favourite song is ‘Stirling Brig’, which I think should be our national anthem.
“One of Winnie Ewing's favourite songs was an Irish one, ‘The Three Flowers’, about Wolfe Tone and two others. Winnie Ewing had a competition in Europe with an Irishman who considered himself to be a real expert in Scottish and Irish songs - and Winnie won. Her father was a singer, she learned all her songs from him.” Billy Wolfe When Ewing herself had lost Hamilton and was back working in the courts, another new song about her was sung at the Glasgow Bar Association cabaret.

Yesterday, life was like a television play, now I’m cooking spuds and mince all day
Why they voted so I don’t know, they wouldn’t say. I did nothing wrong but my salary’s gone away

At the end of his 1968 article Blythman lays out his principles of political songmaking for campaigns. Song-writers should pay attention to people’s conditions and immediate needs, read the political situation closely, know when to push a topic and when to ease up on it. However, artistic and traditional considerations are paramount.
“Never let the political aspects take precedence over artistic considerations. Most of all they need an understanding of the tradition. The Scottish literary tradition is quite clear. You speak out for the people all the time. It is a people’s tradition, a radical tradition. Whoever or whatever happens to coincide with the people’s tradition, be it CND, Sky-High Joe, the people who took the Stone of Destiny; you back them up and you don’t split hairs.” He emphasises that his aim is always a Scottish Workers Republic. The first thing is to establish Scottish independence and you can argue afterwards”. Morris Blythman

Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Songs
I've heard it's been said, there's trouble for Ted, if ever he steers oot o' the channel,
If he tries the Clyde, we'll boot his backside and make Edward sign on the Panel.
Noo Nero was fiddlin' when Rome went on fire,But Edward's been fiddlin wi rowlocks and wires.
Let's finish his trick wi' two well placed kicks, and stop all his fun up the channel.
Head Teeth, tune Messing About On The River, words Jim McLean
Monday morning early by the clock, the Clydeside men were working on the dock
When the gaffer comes round, he says “Bad news, the Upper Clyde is bound to close”
S pack your tools and go. Pack your tools and go, for the word’s been said, the yards are dead,
The big old gates are closing, So pack your tools and go
Pack Your Tools, tune Drill Ye Tarriers, words Jimmie MacGregor

As well as party political songmaking and remaking, political songs on social issues were appearing. Chapbook vol 5 no 1 featured 20 ‘Songs for ‘68’. As with vol 4 no 2, nearly all the makers were active writers or Revival singers. The politically committed songs include a soldier’s account of the ‘bloody affair’ of Aden, one blaming the ‘‘perfervidum ingenium’ of the English and one castigating Harold Wilson personally, another on Goverment finance mismanagement, a lyric about a ‘born overtimer’ who is ‘fechtin for the shorter week to get mair overtime’, a song on racial prejudice, songs on war and injustice from Ewan MacColl and from Peggy Seeger, and an anti-Lizzie complaint on the naming of the liner Queen Elizabeth.
Also included was a page of three hard-hitting song lyrics written to support the campaign for revolutionary Daniel Cohn-Bendit to be Rector of Glasgow University. The songs are given as ‘Anonymous’, but Morris Blythman told me that Jimmy Ross and he were main contributors, and that one chorus was self-censored as too explicitly challenging.

Chase the Senate and the Court, chase them down to Dover. Chase the Senate and the Court, wee Dannie’s takin over
had been
Chase the Senate and the Court, chase them holus-bolus. Chase the Senate and the Court, and chase the Glasgow polis

The following ‘Chapbook’ was the final one, Vol 5 No 2. In that final edition Andy Hunter made criticism of some other songmakers. “Patriotism need not be an inhibiting factor in your life, especially if you succeed in eradicating racial (anti—English) prejudice from your outloook. This is the great tragedy of many of the recent Nationalist folk-songs which frankly drag a long way behind the new and praiseworthy objective of the S.N.P.” He mentioned no names. Who did he have in mind?

Jim Mclean song lyrics
Remember what Marx said to you and me, ‘No one who rules another can be free!’
So while the English crown keeps another nation down, every Englishman’s denied democracy.
Workers of the World
We stood with heads bowed in prayer while factors laid our cottages bare,
The flames fired the clear mountain air and many were dead in the morning.
Where was our proud Highland mettle? Our men once so famed in battle
Now stand cowed, huddled like cattle, aAnd soon to be shipped o’er the ocean.
Smile In Your Sleep
While Scotland is bound to Elizabeth’s crown, we’re held down by the blue-shirts and green,
Let’s put all our hate on the Sasunnach State and forget the old Orange and Green.
Forget the old Orange and Green, forget the old Orange and Green
The Queen’s Union Jack’s been too long on our backs. let’s forget the old Orange and Green.
Forget the Old Orange and the Green

In the same year of 1968 Jim McLean showed rebel outright bloody-minded defiance. He gathered 25 of his trenchant and uncompromising songs into ‘Scottish Rebel Songs’. His introduction note says, “He is a dedicated Republican and fighter for Scottish Independence,” details international experiences, and ends, “To dismiss him therefore as a ‘narrow nationalist’ is witless”. His songs are fiercely and inventively anti-Royalist, anti-Polaris, anti-privilege, anti-Unionist politician, pro-republican and pro-Scottish. His humour is trenchant verging on black. McLean wrote and organised the recording and release of several themed albums of his own and traditional Scots songs, first with singer Alastair McDonald, then later Nigel Denver. McLean in his own song book and themed recordings does not make use of the simple ‘agit-prop’ songs he had had a hand in.
“In 1972 I wrote ‘Head Teeth’ for an LP called ‘Unity Creates Strength’, an Upper Clyde Shipbuilders album. Danny Kyle approached me and asked if we could make an LP celebrating the shipyard work-in at the Clyde yards. I had a meeting with Jimmie Airlie and Jimmie Reid in Glasgow. Danny and I gathered a few singers including Dominic Behan, Alex Campbell, Iain Campbell (from Glasgow), the Laggan, and I produced the LP in London. We all gave our services free and I delivered 1,000 LPs to the yards at a total cost of £500, which paid for studio time, sleeves and the cost of pressing the LPs. They were sold by the workers at a higher rate and helped to fund the work-in.” Jim McLean
Into the 1970s there were twin developments of the emergence of more singer songwriters under the influence of Bob Dylan, and a performance style that emphasised comic material and monologue over song, so that the fare in folk clubs and concerts moved from communal singing towards solo performance and a more passive audience. The 1960s wave of political songs suddenly faded from the repertoires of professional singers, though political songs were still sung on protest platforms, on marches and on recordings.
Political songs in one theatrical show had powerful strength. Billy Wolfe recalls that in 1972 the 7.84 play ‘The Cheviot the Stag and the Black Black il’ was performed in Edinburgh. “It had a tremendous effect on the audience. I said to author John MacGrath, ‘That was my total political message.’ We asked him to put it on at the SNP Conference. The Corran Hall was packed, the players became involved in an emotional way. John MacGrath spoke to the audience and said, ‘I think I should tell you that none of us are nationalists.’ He was wrong. Within a year half of the players had joined the SNP.”
Dolina MacLennan was one of the cast. “At the SNP Conference Liz MacLennan came out of character, angry because there was a standing ovation, and both she and her husband John MacGrath were totally against nationalism. We all made the songs in the ‘Cheviot and Stag’ together. I was the only singer there, so I introduced the tunes, e.g. I Will Go, for coming back from the war and no land left for the soldiers. Marie Mhor’s song ‘Remember you’re a people and fight for your rights’ – nobody had ever heard of it till I introduced it. Only one song did not use a tune suggested by me, but a Gilbert and Sullivan tune.”
Rob Gibson recalls, “I saw the first performances, it was inspiring. In Oban the SNP ‘petit bourgeois’ lapped it up, which was educational for 7.84. In Alness the play got a hostile raw reception, people there were working for the oil industry.yrdo Baord well liked, taking If there had been no ‘Cheviot’, then there would have been no ‘Black Watch’. The ceilidh play changed the form of theatre in Scotland.” Rob Gibson
Also in 1972 came Morris Blythman’s next work, co-edited with T S Law, the booklet ‘Homage to John Maclean’. Blythman had been instrumental in the 1967 forming of the John Maclean Society, and became Convenor of the Research and Publications Committee, then Society Chairman. Most of the works in the booklet are poems, a few are songs. Ronnie Clark instances one of them, ‘Dominie, Dominie’ by Matt McGinn, to illustrate how we could scale songs “on a ‘folk idiom’ spectrum, a spectrum that needs to be quite broad, if not re-defined, when it comes to political works as opposed to the everyday songs in the ‘folk idiom’. [Hamish Henderson’s] ‘The John Maclean March’ ticks all the boxes. In Matt’s ‘Dominie’ the language is OK, the veracity of the events is not, the tune is like something from a ‘50s cowboy series.” Ronnie Clark
Jim McLean develops a related point. “Political song is not just a matter of expressing what you feel. When I was writing, I did it trying to convince other people, whatever the politics I had in mind and I thought were important. I wrote these songs basically as propaganda, you can call it that. That's what political song means to me, basically it's propaganda.“You can write about someone, maybe John Maclean, but to me that was very obliquely political. A lot of people just wrote about what he did, his life story. You could do that about anyone. My point would be, "This is what this man's done, and you should emulate Maclean". In my song 'The Man in Peterhead' I said, "He's there for you", so emulate him, not just write a wee life story, pastiching about him, follow that man's life.” Jim McLean
In 1973 another collection of ‘118 modern and traditional folksongs’, ‘The Scottish Folksinger’, was edited by Norman Buchan and Peter Hall. It was intended as ‘a handbook for singers’ in the Revival. The sections on ‘The Warld’s Ill-Divided’ and ‘Come, Lay Your Disputes’ contain several songs quoted in this book.
For author, playwright and cultural projects organiser Donald Smith, “It wasn’t until the 70s that that really began to connect for me, and it was a heads-up scene – the language, the culture and the politics all working together, and these things actually happening, here and now. And that was, of course, the beginning of political activism. You know, we were fighting, then moving towards the devolution debate and campaigns, moving into the ’79 referendum.
“So you were activated from then on in, it was battle, either political or cultural, after the ’79 defeat. It was almost like that shoved more emphasis on to the cultural side. In a sense, the song, the theatre, the story, were all feeding off each other.The song would be part of the public utterance. This is Hamish again, and this is the extraordinary thing, that somebody like Hamish Henderson, he’s a senior academic, he stands up to give a speech or a pronouncement about something – cultural, political – and he’s quite a declaimer, you know, and – he’ll sing. In the middle of it he’ll sing and that was “not culturally appropriate.”
“At the same period, you’ve got James Hunter and ‘The Making Of The Crofting Community’ and looking at the whole history of land use in the Highlands. When you go back to the land struggles, the 19th Century Napier Commission and the various campaigns for land rights in the Highlands, that directly picks up on the Gaelic tradition of using song made for a specific purpose, to announce, to lament, to denounce, whatever. It seems to me that that was an important bit of the jigsaw as well, but maybe we’d rather lost touch with that as the 20th century went on.
“In the Gaelic tradition, the song was part of the public utterance, it wasn’t a private “I’m moodily reflecting on my state of being, in this lyric”. It was a powerful public utterance that sat alongside speech, story, ritual, event. So that was maybe an underlying energy in Scottish culture, never lost, that speech and song would go together in whatever public thing was happening.” Donald Smith

Hamish Henderson song lyrics
Ye can talk aboot your Moray loons, sae handsome and sae braw; the Royal Scottish Fusiliers, a scruffy lot and a’
The Cameronians frae the South, they sure are mighty fine, but in the Battle of Anzio twas the Banffies held the line.
Ballad Of The Banffies
O horo the Gillie More, whit’s the ploy ye’re on sae early? Braw news, sae tell it rarely, O horo the Gillie More
News o’ him, yon muckle callant, whistlin’ at the smiddy door. Tak yer bow, for here’s your ballant, O horo the Gillie More
Song of the Gillie More

In Edinburgh Hamish Henderson was continuing to collect and write songs and to influence performers from his base at the bar in Sandy Bell's pub, Foresthill Road. Singer John Greig says, “If you were interested in folk music you would at some time find Sandy Bell’s, and you would run into Hamish Henderson. Hamish would just be sitting at the corner of the bar delivering lectures to anyone who was prepared either to drink or to listen. He was an academic and he talked like an academic, that’s the way he worked. From the things he said to me, especially round about the late 60s, when I spoke to him most, he wasn’t very keen on the folk scene at all – at least if he over-drank, he wasn’t.
“He was obviously very enthusiastic about anyone doing anything – that’s part of his persona, his nature, he wasn’t putting people down, in that sense, but I don’t think he thought [the folk Revival] was going the right direction. I don’t think he was overwhelmed by what was going on. He had one or two people he particularly disliked, but I don’t think he particularly liked a lot of things that were going on. I don’t think he saw it going quite where he had envisaged it. And that was the attitude he took to a lot of things – he was an intellectual whose interests took in poetry, literature, politics and who knows what else. He used to feed me songs that he thought I should sing – “You’ve got the right sort of voice for this” – that sort of attitude. And up to a point I thought that was OK, but I didn’t like that attitude either – he was always trying to not bully, but corral people into where he wanted them to be! “ John Greig
John Barrow gives an example of Henderson’s approach. “The Edinburgh Folk Club Songwriting competition arose from a conversation with Hamish. He said if you get a lyric, set a tune to it. It is not written anywhere that 'this is where the tradition ended', so use tunes. Or if you found a tune, write a lyric. Or like MacColl, take a tune and bend it. I went away and said to the guys, we should have a folk song writing competition. Hamish was a great proselytiser, wanted to expand. Lesser mortals felt there were songs, and we sang them that way.”

Nancy Nicolson song lyrics
Cuddle, cuddle, cuddle against the war, use your arms for cuddling, that’s what arms are for
Escalation could be bliss, start off with a cuddle, end up with a kiss
Cuddle a Russian, peasant or Czar and he may show you his samovar
hey say the Russians answer “Niet!” I’ve never had that answer yet
Cuddle
Listen tae the teacher, dinna say dinna, listen tae the teacher, dinna say hoose
Listen tae the teacher, ye canna say munna, listen tae the teacher, ye munna say moose
He’s five year auld, he’s aff tae school, fairmer’s bairn wi a pencil an a rule
His teacher scoffs when he says “hoose”. “The word is ‘house’ you silly little goose”
Listen Tae The Teacher

Nancy Nicolson found in the Edinburgh Folk Club in George Square the impetus to begin to sing solo and to write songs. “There was brotherliness, friendliness, mutual support in the Folk Club for everybody. The feeling of togetherness, and also the fact that a large number of the songs were what we would call protest songs. We didna feel we were just there to look at how clever or how pretty our voices were, we had a bit of purpose in it. Then John Barrow started the Club’s Songwriting Competition, and told us all to go home and write a song. I wrote a little song, and was utterly delighted to come second to Sheila Douglas. A whole squad of us then started to write towards the song competition. I remember in particular Andy Mitchell from Ullapool, and Dennis Alexander from Fife. We greeted each other as a threesome of sisters and brothers at each annual get-together.” Nancy Nicolson
Nancy Nicolson’s song ‘Cuddle Against The War’ makes a positive statement about what the individual can do. She took the central idea from a badge she was given at a peace gathering. The tiny badge had two stick people reaching out to each other. The legend said “Arms are for cuddling with”. Her ‘Once There Was A Lion, Once There Was A Bear’ makes a wry statement about being ‘piggy in the middle’ between two fierce warring animals, and her ‘Ah’m I Man At MUFed It’ jams a tickling stick into the ribs of the embarrassed staff at Dounreay Nuclear Power Station in her native Caithness, and in her native dialect suggests what may have happened to the nuclear MUF [material unaccounted for], and how local people were turning it to useful purposes.
John Greig tells in detail about the Edinburgh folk pub, Sandy Bell’s. “You start to socialise with all these people because you’re in Sandy Bell’s, and the list is endless of people you meet. Some were people coming up from England, not so overtly political, more historical with their politics. They were singing about the blackleg miners when they’d never met a miner. But that gave you an impetus, it was all happening and somehow in Edinburgh you seemed to catch everybody. I’ve seen concerts with Tom Paxton and Matt McGinn. What was that like? Pretty strange, but good.
“You couldn’t avoid it unless you were in the mind to avoid it, which you weren’t – you got the whole thing. There’s nothing like that whole movement today. I don’t mean that people today aren’t good at what they do, but they make records which in some ways is the death of politics in the folk club. I’m very ambiguous about the whole notion of writing it down or setting it down – I realise it has to be done – but it’s a double-edged sword in many ways. It kills a lot of things off or it kills people’s willingness to act, to be part of it.
“Hamish Henderson didn’t exactly steer clear of it, but for him all this was probably old hat, he’d been through a lot of that stuff and he didn’t seem to have a lot to do with it. He spent a lot of time having minor battles with people in the literati scene that turned up at these things. I thought, just keep out of corners, otherwise somebody’s going to get stabbed and I hope it’s not me! But quite often it was me in a weird way. Hamish would say to sing a particular song and I’d stupidly do it and realise he was only wanting to really annoy someone else. You got to know what Hamish was up to – if not you’d soon find out because this person would be coming towards you with a sword in their hand more or less, ready to stab you and you’re going “It wisnae me, it wis the Big Guy over there!” That never worked. I was astonished by what would cause fights.” John Greig
Nicolson and Greig sang and occasionally were paid for performing, but got their primary income elsewhere. So did the songwriters who made and contributed new songs for a fundraising cassette of ‘Songs for a Scottish Parliament’ in 1979 – John McCreadie, Sheila Douglas, Jim Brown and the author.

We used to be a nation but we’re not right now, we seem to be short of a lot right now
We used to have a parliament, we used to have a government, take a look at what we’ve got right now
We Used To Be A Nation, tune I Used To Be A Hippy, words Ewan McVicar

A small group of Scottish folk singers had the performance and presentation skills and commitment to become professional touring musicians. They sometimes collaborated with others, or engaged in theatrical or musical productions. Those who featured political and social comment songs prominently were Matt McGinn, Hamish Imlach, Iain Mackintosh and most prominently Hamish Imlach and Dick Gaughan.
Gaughan became identified as a political singer. One key song he wrote is ‘Do you Think that the Russians Want War?’ ‘Both Sides the Tweed’ is a James Hogg lyric to which Gaughan made a few crucial lyric alterations, turning it from an anti-Jacobite song to an aspirational appeal for peace and harmony, and then creating a beautiful new tune to carry the words. The above singers, and the McCalmans group and others, increasingly found their work touring the Continent.
Other singers who had learned their trade in the Scottish folk scene left to become well-known in other music and drama genres – Barbara Dickson and Rab Noakes of Fife, Billy Connolly and John Martyn of Glasgow. Although neither Connolly nor Martyn were tagged with political songmaking, both made over the years a few songs with marked political content, for example each made a poignant anti-war song. Connolly wrote ‘Sergeant Where’s Mine?’, and Martyn made ‘Don’t You Go My Son’. Archie Fisher has remained one of the best-known Scottish Folk Revival singers, and has written several songs of social comment.

Watch your daughter’s children play, thirty years ago today, echoes of your last young summer never seemed so far away
Smiling at the gathering storm, in your khaki uniform
As you marched along the High Street, did you listen to your heart beat? Did you find what you were looking for in the somewhere over there?
Was the answer found on the battleground? Was the question really fair?
First Of The Few, tune and words Archie Fisher