Who knows what drives creativity, though personal convictions do I suppose express themselves in this way, and through art, and so on.

The book says that he wanted to be a novelist at one point, and did write a novel. I think it says he wrote poetry as a child. His father tried to educate him, and bought him Darwin's Origins of Species as he did not want him to be religious, and some novels too.

The book says that his mother had some social aspirations, which may sound odd in view of her politics, but then a friend of mine whose parents were CP members was sent for elocution lessons as her mother did not want he to end up with a Scottish accent. I'm fearful of sounding judgmental here: we all have our contradictions.. So one thing his mother did was buy him a piano, which the book says was part of this project.

His father was a performer and used to give lectures mid performance if I remember correctly. So on one level, mixing politics and performance was simply doing what his father had done?

Also, again if I remember correctly, the book says that as a skilled worker (iron moulding being relatively skilled) his father considered himself somehow above the less-skilled.

So to some extent I think maybe there were aspirational elements within his background?

But the book (and maybe at some level the writer is making a point) seems to emphasise that MacColl lacked practical skills, to the point where it was a family joke that he could not wire a plug. It doesn't seem that he was suited to be a motor mechanic, despite getting taken on for an apprenticeship.

So maybe put all this together, with his interest in books and so on, and his lack of opportunity via the grammar school/education route some people in that era were able to take, some sort of arts-based career would have been attractive, especially to somebody with something to say and creative ability (which I don't think anybody is denying he had). Whether it was acting, play-writing, documentary radio making, and the path he eventually specialised in, songwriting and performance, coupled and infused with the political vision?

Does this make sense?