1970-1999 Songs From All Directions

I’m dreaming of a Labour victory, just like the ones we used to know. When the votes were counted, and the press surmounted
And to the ministries we’d go I’m dreaming of a Gannex raincoat, the one that Harold used to wear
When government appointments were a matter of convenience, and party members didn’t care
I’m dreaming of a Labour victory, like 1964 again. May we all get back to Number Ten, and will someone shut up Tony Benn
Tune White Christmas, from the Red Review Songbook
Bobby Moore collects another trophy, Jimmy Saville plays another song
Barbara Castle clashes with the unions, Jim Callaghan says Barbara’s got it wrong
The white hot heat would conquer all our problems, Lord George Brown reveals his National Plan
Hillman Imps and high-rise council houses, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d rule the country in the Labour way
We’d do the things we’d choose, we’d fight and never lose cause we had power, oh yes, those were the days
Tune Those Were The Days, from the Red Review Songbook

In the 1970s the riptide of folk club action began to recede, and festivals, concerts and recording became more prominent. While political folk song grew gradually less visible in professional performer repertoires it became more prominent in 1980s and 1990s protest demos and campaign support concerts, and was documented on recordings and in publications. In 1999 one of Robert Burns’ political songs had pride of place at the reopening after 200 years of the Scottish Parliament. After the 1979 Scottish Parliament electoral victory that was deemed a defeat, support for the SNP waned for the time being, and less use of campaign songs was made. But there had been a 52% vote in favour of devolution. In 1980 Scottish Labour Party supporters took the political song fight to their enemy. Scotland had for many years been a Labour fiefdom; the SNP threatened that situation.
’The Red Review’ 1983 songbook tells us that in 1980 the Review was formed by “a group of young Labour Party members based in Glasgow University Labour Club and active in Constituency Labour Parties in the west of Scotland. “They first performed at conferences, then to a wider audience including election campaigns… The Review writes all its own material,” and the 34 songs in their book include recent songs and ‘the best’ of previous shows. The songs are a step further from traditional Scots or American idioms, the tunes used and songs parodied include four from the film ‘White Christmas’, and many others from current pop songs. They do not concentrate all their fire on the SNP, but spray buckshot at the new SDP ‘Gang of Three’, the Tories, and personalities within their own party.
Their ‘Red Songs 1985’ booklet is “the fourth edition since we started”. This time they include under the term ‘Something Old’ ten staple political folk songs. Seven of these – four international favourites, two from Hamish Henderson, one from Eric Bogle - are considered elsewhere in this book, the exceptions are ‘Rosa Luxemburg’, ‘Bread and Roses’, and ‘Blackleg Miner’. They also borrow without acknowledgement the tune, shape and many lines from the ‘Old Man’s Song’, made by Birmingham based Scot Ian Campbell, for an all-out assault on an old comrade who has stuck to the Communist Party through the years.

Titles from Songs For Scottish National Liberation include
Freedom’s Sword , Now, Free Scotland , No More British Soldiers, Scotland Is Waking, London Is Drowning, The Rebel Heart Of Scottish Resistance
You Are Not Conquered Yet Scotland, By The Saltire, The Lands Of Liberty, Scotland Will Rise Again
Sometime in the 80s a shadowy radical pro-independence group produced a different booklet of old, new and reworked songs, ‘Songs For Scottish National Liberation’. No date, publisher or editor is given inside, instead are the slogans, ‘Victory to the Scottish Resistance. Forward to National Liberation’, and an inspiring quotation from Scot James Connolly that includes “Until the movement is marked by the joyous defiant singing of its own songs it lacks one of the marks of a populist political movement; it is the dogma of a few and not the faith of a multitude.” The songbook producers were surely linked to one of the small groups who carried large Saltire Flags on peace demos, supporting the cause of peace abroad while calling for violence at home.
The 35 songs are a mixter-maxter of the usual Burns suspects, songs made by Morris Blythman, Hamish Henderson and Jim McLean and a few crudely polemical ditties. I illustrate how one of Blythman’s songs was reworked in this songbook later. The songbook was I assume linked to a couple of 1980s Glasgow folk song clubs where the author and other singers were invited as guest performers, and found that the resident club singers had a fund of obnoxiously unattractive ultra-nationalist songs.
At this same time fine Revival singers and performers like Davey Steele, Iain Mackintosh, Brian MacNeill and Ian Walker began to develop songwriting skills. Walker in particular created songs of such high quality and character that other singers seized on them.

Ian Walker lyrics
As I was walking down the road I saw my brother with a heavy load
I said to him “What have you seen?” He said to me “I have a dream
In 1960 I thought I’d died in Sharpeville’s bloody town
But I got up, I walked on tall, nobody’s gonna put me down”
Hawks And Eagle Fly Like Doves
Proud lancers, guides and grenadiers paraded for the grand show
All waiting with their flags and fears. Remember Solferino
Like tigers that have tasted blood, hand to hand, no quarter
Savage maddened butchery. Remember Solferino
But one man was witness, Dunant was his name, he cried
“Never, never again”, for he heard the cries of the wounded
He turned his face to the sound, and high above his head
He raised a cross of red, he heard the cries of the wounded
Remember Solferino

Left wing politically committed Glasgow continued to identify itself with folk song, in that the only substantial Glasgow folk club to last from the 80s right to the present day in other premises, was the Star Club, which singer Arthur Johnstone of the Laggan group had started in the late ‘70s in the Communist Party’s Carlton Place home. Johnstone, a dedicated singer of politically committed songs, also became a fixture at the annual Mayday march to and celebrations on Glasgow Green. One Mayday Dick Gaughan and Billy Bragg duetted on that stage, singing ‘The Red Flag’ to the original ‘White Cockade’ tune.
As well as performance of songs it was becoming financially easier to create short-run cassettes of new songs. John Greig tells about his work in Edinburgh creating ‘Songs From Under the Bed’, a cassette recording label whose name arose because the cassettes featured newer political songs that had been made, but the makers did not know what to do with them since there were few places or demos at which to sing them, and no chapbook style publications in which to get them printed. So the lyric manuscripts were stored under the maker’s bed. Greig felt they should be brought out into the light.
“Morris Blythman was again working on creating the Republic. I would be taken along, to sing ‘Sky-High Joe’ or ‘Bonnie Wee Prince Chairlie’. They're quite funny, they work OK. I met people writing at miners’ benefits, I was running a folk club and people were writing songs and singing them about what was going on, the fall of the Berlin Wall, necklacing in South Africa. Ukes Against Nukes and Nancy Nicolson were writing and performing songs.
“I began to build up the ‘Songs Under the Bed’ idea. Thatcherism was coming in, things were turning nasty. I got cheesed off with people's attitudes, some avoiding getting involved in miners’ support gigs. I decided at some point to start collecting songs and recording them, then put a tape together. Artist Fred Crayk, originally from Inverness, did a drawing depicting a song from each tape as a cover design. I thought, I'll go for it, do it once, others will copy me and do it themselves. Quite the opposite, I became the shit the flies wanted to land on, people felt I should be doing it for them. So there were huge time gaps between each cassette. I didn't make money, and it cost a lot - £500 to get 100 cassettes together with all the technicalities involved. It costs so much less now. I felt pleased with what I was doing. The Folk Club was very satisfying, we had no policy, we let anyone on. Morris had died before that, in 1981. I felt that gap, he was a great encouragement, he made things happen.
“‘Songs From Under The Bed 1’ had Ukes Against Nukes, Tony McManus (the singer and poet not the guitar player), Jim Ferguson, Nancy Nicolson, Eileen Penman and myself. I liked ‘What Ever You Do Do Nothing’ by The Nukes (the title says it all) and Tony's ‘Song For The Miner’. 'You who would not applaud with them, all those upstanding women and men, the well intentioned, the full of grace were laughing like fools in my face. and of course all of Nancy's songs, particularly 'Maggie's Pit Ponies' which is a bit of a classic!
“I think Hamish Henderson took some notice of the first cassette. He’d come across it or I’d shown it to him and he’d sent it to a couple of people who managed to get reviews done of it. So I think when he saw the reviews, he thought “Oh aye, this could be quite good” because he’d never really recorded much of his stuff at all. It appealed to him at two levels I think. One was that it was quite small and wasn’t going to get involved in big sales and the other was that he had total control over what was going on. I had just said “Do what you want to do.” So that’s the reason he did it. I think too the idea was to try and lend his name to the whole business. But mostly if the truth be known, it was Hamish seeing an opportunity to do it the way he wanted to do it and not have to deal with BBC producers or whoever who wanted him to go on about the War or something.
“So he went on the cassette, but this didn’t work out too well in many ways. He kind of blew the face off it. People started looking at it as something other than it was. ‘Songs From Under The Bed 2’ had Eileen Penman, Hamish Henderson, Ray Ross, Lucy Johnstone, Allan Dickson, the Allan Johnston Band (aka Seddy) and Sheila Douglas. I think Hamish overshadowed most people on this one but that is only to be expected and no shame to the rest. I think he said this was the first time he knowingly recorded ‘Free Mandela’. I liked ‘Glasclune and Drumlochie’, a cautionary tale from Scottish history reflecting the madness of the arms race. It is a three verse poem that describes the same tale as Akira Kurosawo took three hours of cinema to tell and it ends with a chorus which is sung, Then shame, black shame, ay, shame on the bluidy Blairs!, Shame on the Blairs, an sic wuddifu races They think nae sin when they pit the boot in,in the eyes of all ceevilised fouk tae disgrace us.
“It also seems quite a good description of Tony Blair's foreign policy. There was a dreadful review of it in ‘Chapman’ that compared Hamish Henderson to everybody else and everyone else was shite and Hamish Henderson was great. Ugh, slash my wrists, you know? I told Joy [editor Joy Hendry], ‘Look, Joy, I can’t ask people to do this if you publish things like that about them. These aren’t people on the make, they’re not looking for publicity, they’re people who are trying to put out what they’re doing. We’re trying to encourage them, no cut their heids aff.’
“It made me think twice about the whole business. And then I decided to do another one because it made me so annoyed. ‘I’ll do one more anyway, just because I’m seek to death of that attitude.’ And it happened. Fred, the artist from Inverness, he was keen on doing one, I was going to put some stuff of Freddie Anderson’s on it, because he’s indestructible in those sort of circumstances. And you [the author] were on that one. The point was to get people who would come back at anybody who wrote like that about them. And that’s what I did.
“‘Songs From Under The Bed 3’ had Freddie Anderson, Steven Shellard, Ewan McVicar, John Milligan and Jim Ferguson. I liked your own ‘Ga's Song’ and Stephen Shellard's ‘Dog Man’, it is a bit like a latter day Tom Joad. John Milligan has to be congratulated for rhyming ‘Evening News’ with ‘screws’. The bit I would like to quote is from Freddie Anderson's ‘Blackberry Man’. The children, while fearing God nor Man, find the World on the rim of a blackberry can.
“All the cassettes are still sitting up in a drawer because by the time I’d done all that, I just didn’t have it in me to go and sell them. As we’ve said before, we can do everything else about recording but selling them takes a different attitude. Maybe today they would sell, but I just put them away and went ‘Right, get on wi your life in some other way.’
“Having said that about the whole thing, Hamish must have read that review. What he took out of it as far as I could see, not immediately, but pretty quickly after that, was to produce a whole tape of himself, through Tim Neat. It was a virtual copy of what I did with no reference at all to my work. I’m not asking for the world, but it was my idea to start off with.
“The problem you’ve always got is how to do these things without actually becoming a control freak, and looking for money out of it and saying it’s got to be commercial, got to be this, got to be that. And the only way I can get out of it.
“My view was, look in the other direction, never mind about the critics, look at how many people are doing it. Get all these people down. Because there was no record of it. Martin Carthy for example was going round saying there were no songs being written about the Poll Tax campaign. Obviously there were no songs down there about it. And up here there were – we did them.” John Greig
In 1986 Dick Gaughan recorded an album for the STUC as “truly a labour of love”, ‘True and Bold, Songs of the Scottish Miners’.

In March of 1984 the gauntlet was thrown down, when MacGregor told the NUM “These pits are closing down”
“Get on your bike, MacGregor”, the miners’ answer came. “We fought the Board in ’74, and we’ll fight you once again”
From South Wales across to Yorkshire, from Scotland down to Kent, the miners showed the NCB that what they said, they meant
Except the scabs who sold their future out to Thatcher and her gang and turned traitor to their class, their names forever damned
The Ballad of 1984, Dick Gaughan

In fact four of the songs are from England, one is from the USA, and Ewan MacColl’s ‘Schooldays’ End’ ranges over Scotland, England and Wales. Two of the songs (Norman Buchan’s 1959 ‘Auchengeich Disaster’ and ‘The Blantyre Explosion) are about Scottish pit disasters, and one (‘Collier Laddie’) is a love song that Robert Burns collected a version of. Gaughan himself rewrote an angry US miners’ strike song, ‘’Which Side Are You On?’ and made the defiant ‘The Ballad of 1984’. Gaughan is undoubtedly Scotland’s best known interpreter of political song, as well as a superb performer and musician.
The Scottish peace movement had drifted into the doldrums for some years, until in the 1980s it was invigorated by fresh blood, in part sparked by the failure of the Labour government to stop the British Polaris project. In part through the 1982 establishment of the Faslane Peace Camp, and in part by outrage over the US bombing of Libya in 1986.

Doon in the shelter, underneath the stair,
Everybody's dirty; everybody's bare;
We huvnae got much culture; we huvnae got much hair;
Doon in the shelter, underneath the stair.
Tune Doon In The Wee Room, words John Gahagan and Ian Davison
You've got to give your life, for Maggie-the-Knife, the-Knife, the-Knife,
If she says 'Jump in the sea'. she has to act tough,
She has to fight rough, And blow us all up, for Victory.
Tune Lily-the-Pink, words Ian Davison
Underneath the table, hiding from the Bomb, there I met a stranger, he said his name was Ron.
O, how he sang so sweet to me, that he would see he kept us free.
My cowboy from the White House, my cowboy from the West.
Tune Lili Marlene, words ‘An English peacenik’

Scottish CND gathered new strength, supporting the Faslane Peace Camp and creating a need for up-to-date songs to support action in demos at Faslane. Then SCND rather over-reached itself financially by organising lossmaking largescale events and was in financial trouble. A fresh coalition of street-focussed songwriters had gathered together by now. Singer and songwriter Ian Davison was a SCND committee member and had already created a raft of new protest lyrics to old tunes. His cyclostyled ‘Parodies For Peace’ gathered in lyrics and choruses for 29 songs, of which only three had originated with the ‘Eskimos’. Ian remembers that he and the author shared a seat in the back of a bus coming back from Faslane, and agreed on the need for a strong singing movement.
At a song-developing workshop organised by Ian in a tent in George Square, Glasgow, I shared a couple of verses of a lyric I had developed for a parody of 'The Hokey Cokey'.

It takes your left leg off, it takes your right leg off. Your eyes fall out and the dust makes you cough.
You feel the radiation turn you inside out, that's what the bomb's about - kick it out!
It knocks your house down, my house down, the whole town down and fifty miles around.
Then you get the fever from the Old Fall Out! That's what the bomb's about - kick it out!

A singer in the workshop, who I never saw again, and whose name I have forgotten, came up with a chorus hook of ‘Oh, goin up in smokey’, so the chorus became

Oh, goin up in smokey, oh, goin up in smokey, oh, goin up in smokey, that's what the bomb's about - kick it out!

Ian Davison was Secretary of SCND, and as one strand of the effort to improve the organisation's finances the Scottish CND Buskers were formed, a motley band of musicians and singer-songwriters - Harry Bickerstaff, Nancy Dangerfield, Ian Davison, the author, Pat and Joe Plunkett, and Carol Sweeney. They performed widely, and eventually recorded and sold a songbook and cassette, Gies Peace, with 20 songs, half of them written after Parodies For Peace had been put together. When a 'Blowup Songbook' version was published in 1989, it held 41 songs. The object was to raise money, and raise morale, “Plus you always hanker after converting or enthusing someone about ideas or about using music and song in this way. That’s the third, secret, motive, about your own achievement.” Ian Davison

Hey, Mr Younger, come and get your banner, CND is the one to be with.
Join the peace movement, it is a winner, CND is the one to be with.
Tune The Banana Boat Song, words Pat Plunkett
O, the bogey man's coming, and he steals your pup. He takes your teddy and he eats it up.
He drinks your blood in an iron cup, but I kill him with the nuclear - weapons.
Tune The Tennessee Wig-Walk, words Ian Davison

Many of the songs performed by the Buskers were Davison's own product, but at least eight other songwriters were represented. One of them, Pat Plunkett, had herself been a resident of the Peace Camp. Others like Nancy Dangerfield were peace activists and supporters, none of them seeking personal glory as song writers. The songs continued the Eskimo theme of the absurdity of nuclear weaponry. A few lyric songs yearned for peace, to original tunes.

We can reach our rocking rhythms into every city and street, We can mix the mood of the music for a billion dancing feet.
We can save the dying children with our pictures from the sky, we can make ourselves take action, and we only have to try.
Yes we are the human miracle, with our magic in the sky. We can save ourselves, and save the world, and we only have to try.
Ian Davison
Time and time we told you so, time and time you answered 'No', peace will rain, sing it again, time for peace to rain.
Ewan McVicar
Other songs included 'We can't live in a Trident Submarine', 'Reagan's fine men are at it again in Grenada', 'If Maggie wants to die, fair enough', and 'Will ye go, Maggie, go?’
That old cowpoke gave orders out - Gaddafi must be killed. The generals and CIA were absolutely thrilled.'
We'll get the Europeans to back up all our plans', but Maggie was the only one to give the boys a hand.
Yippee-aye-ay, yippee-aye-oh, Old Reagan's raring to go.
Ghostbusters In Disguise, tune Ghost Riders in the Sky, words Pat Plunkett
Everybody's taking about Thatcherism, Fascism, Goodism, Badism, Don't-you-wish-you-hadism, Just-a-passing-fadism, politics is madism
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
Give Peace a Chance, new words Ewan McVicar

When the SCND Buskers formed in the 1980s, the 1961 lyric of 'Glasgow Eskimos' was too much of its time for the Buskers’ needs, so the author updated it to consider our current foes. We'll gaff that nyaff ca'd Lanin, we'll spear him where he blows became We're no husky Russkies, like Maggie might suppose, but I retained the central image of the peaceful purposeful Eskis, urging the passerby to join the Eski movement, seesome Eski sense. Would that they had.
“The Buskers have performed on street corners, bandstands, opentop buses and concert platforms, combating the lunacy of the Bomb, and the absurd attitudes adopted by politicians. They believe that peace can be fun. Their songs are written to "work on the street", where a few lines must contain the message, and a well-known tune helps catch the ear. “Some of the Buskers songs cannot be recorded because the tunes are copyright. Some were written in the 1960s for the Clydeside Anti-Polaris demos, and have been updated. Politicians come and go, but the Bomb keeps its grip on our collective throat.” From the ‘Gies Peace’ cassette insert, 1988

As with the Eskimos, the energy that had fuelled the Buskers dissipated once SCND's finances returned to a more even keel. They could have carried on raking in the cash far longer, just by endlessly singing the line 'All we are saying is give peace a chance' on Glasgow's Argyle Street on a Saturday, but other actions and activities beckoned.
There is an East-West divide of Scottish political song – Glasgow’s deliberately simplistic demotic communalism versus Edinburgh’s poetic anarchic individual expressionism. This is neatly demonstrated by the two peace and political song groups that were formed in the 1980s, Glasgow’s SCND Buskers and Edinburgh-based Ukes Against Nukes. The Buskers disbanded, but Ukes Against Nukes continues to issue communiques in the form of not-for-sale CDs and hand-corrected songbooks.

Ukes Against Nukes lyrics
In 1945, with not many left alive, the Germans they did surrender, and down in a bunker with his brain in a canker, old Adolf ended his bender
And now forty years on from this European con we’re asked to respect and remember
You can try to forget, but on one thing you can bet, this peace time so-called is slender
There’s a Berlin Wall, and Chancellor Kohl, Ronnie Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
There’s Cruise missiles, economic turnstiles, and a VE day to remember
V.E. Blues
I’m a marine infantry officer, I’ve got a green beret, I don’t need no university professor to tell me to shred it all away
I started a war up in Chile, put the slammas into their lammas day by day
They wrote the cheque on the back of my neck and it bounced in that funky Caribbean way
I’m a marine infantry officer, the man with the briefcase demands
That at the end of all my operations it’s trains leaving downtown stations. I’m a marine infantry officer
The Ballad Of Colonel Oliver North

Their spasmodic performances are a riot of ukelele, kazoo, bodhran beaten with a wallpaper brush, and a welter of complex declaimed lyrics. The whole approach assaults expectations. The notes for their 2005 CD, titled ‘Mmmmmmm. That Great Event, twenty years of uproar’, tell us “First appearances during miner workers’ strike of 1984-5 at benefits in Cumnock and Edinburgh, and at the Glenelg Hotel and Southsider volkbars.

Long distance information, won’t you listen to my plea, I’m stuck between a hard place and a soft core in Dounrea
The foreman’s left a message that he wrote upon the wall, “I’ve met my match and blown the thatch. Cheerio”, that’s all
Long distance information, what d’you think this message means? Is it some nuclear poopy that’s been left behind the scenes?
I need to have your answer quick, ma dentures goin yella. Ma semmit’s mingin, the scones are singin and tomorrow is the gala
Tomorrow Is The Gala, tune Memphis Tennessee, words Ukes Against Nukes

“Later, at the all-Edinburgh-ukeleles-cabaret (Café Grafitti) and briefly, on the Royal Mile, opposite the access point for the secret service on the night of the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to the Tattoo. (Cameron’s Knitwear) Where are they now? Went on to demolish the 1990 Folk Festival at the Teviot Union downstairs (Sportsman’s) bar during a recording for the School of Scottish Studies. Less impact (several attempts) on the main gates of the nuclear submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde. Good gigs at the Not The Burns Suppers, Anti-Nazi league and ANC benefits. But unfortunately torpedoed the Save The Whale rally in George Square, Glasgow. These days it’s mostly street corners.” Ukes Against Nukes
In their 2009 songbook accompanying the CD ‘Blues My Decommission Gives to Me’, they add “But the work goes on, gulfenised by this country’s terrorist invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. And, right now, by the ever increasing hazard and cock-ups associated with decommissioning the nuclear power plant at Dounreay. George Gunn is a poet and playwright and now Artistic Director of the Grey Coast Theatre Group in Thurso. Bob Macauley lives in Edinburgh and has worked in more mortuaries than most people have had hot dinners. They write the songs together on wine soaked memo pads. The tunes are filched from George Formby, the Scottish hymnary, pop, folk, ‘trad’ jazz, and skiffle. Digitised hooting, tooting, dub (and over-dub etc) takes place at the kitschen sink in Bob’s Fountainbridge bunker.” Ukes Against Nukes
The Ukes tune sources echo Morris Blythman’s account of ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ references, and the melodies used and abused by the SCND Buskers. Their song titles tell of their topics. In 1984-90 the ‘Boak On Ma Semmit’ album included ‘Ukelele Malvinas’,

Oh see, say see, ought to be with Maggie, from the Falkland Isles
If You Knew Cruisey Like I know Cruisey,
In the words of Nietzsche, it’s a wow
Blood, Soweto and Tears’ which forecasts that
The blacks are going to light a flame under the Bruderbond
Burn all the Old Testaments in the Transkei”

The title ‘Semmit’ track complains about the unadventurous backwards-looking fare offered in folk clubs, and invokes the ghost of Rabbie Burns with a big tambourine, demanding we sing about the present day. On their next offering, from 1990-2000, is Bones flesh and gristle is what you get from a friendly missile and the tune ‘The Sash’ is grasped for I searched through all the poetry books for a rhyme with East Kilbride. Their most recent two CDs include ‘We’ll re-mortgage your nosebag’, O little town of Beslan, how deep we see the lie and We found your man down a spider hole, Praying to Allah for gun control.
Gunn and Macauley’s periodic unleashing of flash flood thoughts expressed in manic musical formats began as many all around them were also beginning to write and perform their own songs, at first as occasional flourishes in parodic rhyme, but growing to a mighty tide of new songwriting and songwriters which by the 21st Century swirled and lapped around the venues that had formerly presented traditional music. The technical quality of the songmaking and performing increased just as the opportunities to present the new work faded away in number and variety. Folk clubs diminished, folk festivals multiplied then gradually the energy leached out of them too, as the age group audience who had fuelled the 1960s Revival grew older.
Some of the numerically much smaller intake of new performing blood sang only their own new songs, and if they had exceptional creative and performance skills became labelled singer-songwriters. They presented in concert and on disc their own work, drawing in various degrees on traditional song models and forms. Other professional or semi-professional performers presented programmes that mixed traditional songs and the work of other songmakers with their own compositions.

Ah’m a friend of Maggie Thatcher. If ye don’t believe me go and ask her.
When she puts another million on the broo I get the wire sayin “Over to you”
I get out ma calculator, to see how many I can ban,
So you’d better be polite, or you’ll no be treated right, for I am the Means Test Man
Tune Means Test Man, words Ewan McVicar

Rising standards of instrumental skills led to the formation of groups combining traditional and electronic instruments and featured singers and songs in the mix. These singers had the outlet and need for new songs on the succession of new albums – on LP, cassette, then CD – the groups needed to produce for income and promotion purposes. The economic process of recording and pressing LPs required a minimum quantity of sales, typically 500 or 1000 copies, cassettes could be recorded and duplicated on the home recording machines that were becoming increasingly available and affordable, so a cassette release met production costs on a run of a dozen. When CDs replaced the older media, they were initially only issued by the record companies, but gradually the use of the PC, and the development of small recording studios and inexpensive duplication facilities have meant that songmakers and groups can create and distribute their own recordings, selling them at performances as a major part of their performing income.
As the skills of and opportunities for occasional or frequent songmakers increased, their compositions reflected their interests, knowledge, priorities and the influences and models they drew on. Most makers included a few songs of social and political comment in their output and performances. Some who were strongly politically committed. Eric Bogle, Nancy Nicolson, Jim Brown, Davey Steele, Brian MacNeill, Iain Macintosh, became known for such songs. A few performers e.g. Dick Gaughan, Alistair Hulett, Ian Davison, featured political song so strongly they became identified with the genre.
The creation of new songs and their performance on stage and on CD was a continuing process, not so the explosive events that generated demos, marches and support events. As I have commented above, the 1984/5 Miners Strike generated oddly few new songs, and I know of none about the 1986 bombing of Libya by the USA.

First Gulf War lyrics
Oh Mary love, oh Mary, the countdown has begun, and waves of planes have set us here, beneath the blazing sun
The Proud have lost their patience now, and set the slaughter date, and marked us down for death, my love, in the deserts of Kuwait
The arms investors, politicians, generals and the rest, they’ll have the thrill, in armchairs, as we’re put to the test
The Press will sell your bitter tears, as we come home in crates, as victims of the war, my love, from the deserts of Kuwait
The Deserts Of Kuwait, Ian Davison
Everybody knows about Guernica, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Clydebank
Coventry, Bikini, My Lai, Tienamin
All we are saying is Give Peace A Chance
Everybody knows about Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cambodia,
Algeria, Uganda, Nicaragua, Korea, Biafra
All we are saying is Give Peace A Chance
Give Peace A Chance, New words Ewan McVicar

In 1991 John Greig supported the resistance to the Poll Tax with a cassette,
‘Songs from Under the Poll Tax’.
It included a blues and a ‘Dodgers’ song from Eileen Penman,
a rap from Stuart McHardy and a tango from Aidan McCorry.

Nancy Nicolson responded to the 1988 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster in the North Sea with her song ‘Who Pays The Piper’. The McCalmans group drew on her lyric for the title of a 1990 album, ‘Flames On The Water’. “The McCalmans surprised everyone with a completely contemporary album.” John Barrow

Lyrics from ‘Flames On The Water’ album by The McCalmans
Who pays the piper, who pays the piper, who pays the piper, who calls the tune?
Who pays the piper, what is the fee? Flames on the water, death on the sea
And the tune is old and has often told how the great, brave and bold they do flourish
How bravely they gamble with other men’s lives and profit as other men perish
Who Pays The Piper, Nancy Nicolson
Leave the fishing trade laddie, there’s money to be made.
The hand-line and the Shetland yawl are from a bygone age
Come to Aberdeen laddie, sights you’ve never seen
Be a welder on the pipeline or a fitter on Nigg Bay
But when the job is over and my boat rots on the shore,
How will I feed my family when the companies move away?
Men O Worth, Archie Fisher

Six of the songs are explicitly political in tone, topics including nuclear power, devolution, whaling, peace and war and the oil industry. ‘Flames on the Water’, on Ian Green’s Greentrax record label, was a commercially released LP, but from a record label and a group deeply committed to supporting, celebrating and spreading the word about Scotland’s traditional song and music. Posters and fliers announced and detailed peace-seeking events that united poetry, song and speeches. A programme sheet for ‘Vigil For Peace St Andrew’s Night 1990’ in Glasgow’s George Square includes songs from Ian Davison, John McCreadie and the author alongside readings from Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Cathy Galloway and Hindu and Muslim groups. A 1991 printed flyer during the gallop up to the First Gulf War announced a Friday night vigil in George Square. “5-30pm – 6pm, War is not inevitable but time is running out. Come and show that you want a peaceful settlement in the GULF. Organised by the Ad-Hoc Committee for Peace in the Gulf.” On several Fridays up to thirty people gathered and sang a mixture of Scots and American songs of peace together in a circle, holding a heavy rope to signify group identity and unity. ‘Blowing in the Wind’, ‘Peace Will Come’, ‘If I Had A Hammer’, ‘The Freedom Come-All-Ye’ and others.

From Ewan McVicar’s squibs
If you see Major Major, tell him what you want, all together, tell him what you want.
If you want some peace! Now! Tell him what you want.
Tune: Jesus Is On That Mainline

As we were walking down the street we met a Scottish soldier.
We said, 'Hey, Jock, it's time to stop, the time for battle's over.
Stop the War. You know what for. We don't care who began it.
Stop the War. You know what for. We've got to save our planet.
Tune: We're No Awa Tae Bide Awa

Every other Saturday a march down the hill from Glasgow’s Blythwood Square to a meeting in George Square would be led off singing by Eurydice, the Glasgow Women’s Socialist Choir. On the George Square stage the group Diggery Venn featuring John McCreadie welcomed the march in song, and would be joined by the author to introduce my latest squib, already taught to Eurydice. Singer Gordeanna McCulloch, then leader of the Eurydice women’s choir, was a key presence in both the Friday night and Saturday morning events. “I remember the [First] Gulf War Saturday demos hazily, and a couple of the songs - ‘Major Major’ and the one I really liked ‘You Know What For’. I also remember the Friday nights, the nights were dark and dreich but everyone sung their hearts out - and we made a noise.” Gordeanna McCulloch
These squib lyrics, and the more considered lyrics of Ian Davison and other more established favourite peace songs, were included in a ‘Old And New Stop The War Songs’ lyric sheet. The other songmakers included on the songsheet were Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Moyna Gardner and Paula of SCND, and H Chapman. This was a modern B4 double-sided broadsheet of old favourites and new squibs, anthemic or angry, elegaic or energetic, one of several that were produced for peace marches and demos and sold for the penny or tuppence that covered printing costs.
The ‘Flames on the Water’ album was the modern equivalent of a song anthology, a selection of the newest “popular and fashionable songs”. The SCND Buskers cassette and songbook ‘Gies Peace’ was the modern equivalent of the slim volumes of poetry printed and sold by the makers to their friends to raise money. he ‘Songs From Under’, the Ukes Against Nukes cassettes, and the other cassettes or lyric sheets of new songs sent hot from the creating by the makers to other makers or singers, were the new version of the self-published not-for-profit slim volume that was a report on the maker’s work, to be presented to one’s friends and to the newssheets seeking appreciation and reviews.
Substantial books that addressed aspects of Scottish political song and the Folk Revival began to appear in the 1980s and 90s. The first, ‘The People’s Past’, was edited in 1980 by academic historian Edward Cowan from talks delivered at the ’academic fringe’ of the 1979 Edinburgh Folk Festival, on “various aspects of Folk as well as a day conference on the subject of ‘The People’s Past’, designed to investigate the place of Scottish Folk in Scottish History”. Many aspects of Scots political song were discussed in this volume. In 1984 came a general account of ‘The Folk Music Revival in Scotland’, updated in 1996 as ‘The Democratic Muse’, written by musicologist Ailie Munro.
In 1989 a weekend event hosted by the London-based Political Song Network brought together song activists in Glasgow, and in 1990 issue 9 of ‘Political Song News’ was a Scottish edition. ‘Radical Renfrew’, edited by poet Tom Leonard, appeared in 1990, and in 1992 came ‘Alias MacAlias’ a collection of the writings of Hamish Henderson on Scots song and singers.
In June 1994 a concerted exercise in political song nostalgia put over 20 singers on the stage of Glasgow’s Tron Theatre for a show titled ‘The Eskimo Republic’. Most of the performers had been active in various political campaigns over the years of the Revival, and the audience was also of comfortable years. The singing Folk Revival had run its race and was settling into a mood of reflecting upon old glories. The professional and semi-professional performers were beginning to retire from the stage.
Some protests that might have been expected to produce songs did not do so. From 1992 to 1997 there was an ongoing vigil for a Scottish Parliament. Stuart McHardy wrote a political song for the Vigil. “It’s on a tape somewhere. I wrote it in the Doric. I have it on file, but once the issue has gone the song has no need to be remembered. I used it for an awfy lot of events on Calton Hill.” Stuart McHardy

The buzzing bee can fly for miles, spread GM pollen all the while.
No containment for the trial, is this their very purpose?
Hey Jamie Grant have you cashed yer cheque, or is yer conscience prickin yet?
Accept your GM? Will we heck! We’ll be its terminator.
Munlochy Vigil, tune Johnnie Cope, words Rob Gibson

From 1995 on there was a protest campaign about tolls on the new Skye Bridge protest which occasioned a fund raising CD, but the tracks were all ‘donated’ by performers from their previous recordings, and the author has been told of only one new made song about the protest. I tell elsewhere about some post 1999 elements of Scots political folk song, e.g. the Glasgow South Side Baths campaign, the GM crops vigil, the creation of the Political Song Archive. But the chronological account part of this book began with the lifting of the Stone of Destiny at Christmas 1950, and the resulting returning assertion of pride in Scottish identity and nationhood, expressed and celebrated in songs new and old. This part of the narrative should end with an event that most of those 1951 ‘Sangs o the Stane’ poet songmakers would have greeted with jubilation if they had lived to see it.
Winnie Ewing became a Member of the reconvened Scottish Parliament. She wrote that at its formal opening on 1st July 1999 “the highlight, however, was Sheena Wellington’s singing of ‘A Man’s a Man’, during which she encouraged the MSPs to stand and join in the final verse. It was a sensational moment of unity and plain Scottish speaking which typified the best things of our country. I have to say that the Duke of Edinburgh looked most uncomfortable, particularly at the verse which goes ‘A prince can mak etc’. Winnie Ewing
Burns, as he often did, based his ‘A Man’s a Man’ song on an older one called ‘For a’ That and a’ That’. Burns’ song was first published anonymously, minus the now well known first verse, in ‘The Glasgow Magazine’ in August 1795, then in October reprinted in the radical Belfast-based ‘The Northern Star’. Burns’ name was first attached to it when on 2nd June 1796, just before his death, it appeared in the pro-government London ‘Oracle’. The ‘Canongate Burns’ says, “There can be little doubt that the governmental spy network would have taken notice of the song and judged it as seditious,” and that Burns “must have known about this named publication which could have had him arrested at any moment from 2nd June 1796 onward and charged with sedition”.
Here is irony. Robert Burns died probably worrying that publication of this new plain speaking political song founded on an older folk song could lose him his job, or even have him transported to New South Wales. 200 years later the singing of it personified a moment in his nation’s rebirth.

Is there for honest poverty, that hangs his head an aa that. The coward slave, we pass him by, we dare be poor for aa that
For aa that an aa that, our toils obscure an aa that. The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, the man’s the gowd for aa that
What tho on hamely fare we dine, wear hoddin grey, an aa that. Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, a man’s a man for aa that
For aa that an aa that, their tinsel show an aa that. The honest man, tho e’er sae poor, is king o men for aa that
Is There For Honest Poverty, Robert Burns