To answer your questions Mr. McVicar

1: Why do you think Jim started the query?

I would have thought that that was fairly obvious he posted the query in order to confirm what he already believed to be true. Probably because he was shocked to find in the course of his own searches that no such actual report of the man ever making the remark that gave both the Eskimo Republic and the Glesga Eskimos their name. Now why do you think he inititiated the query?

2: I would have more respect for you if I knew what you yourself have accomplished.

It is of no concern to me whatsoever whether you have respect for me or not, it is not something I feel I have to earn from you or anybody else.

3: I can see how good you are are criticising others who have done something of worth.

In YOUR opinion you think that they have done something of worth. Fortunately your opinion is not fact and there is no compunction at all that anyone other than you has to share that opinion of yours. What I have pointed out is that everything this crowd known as The Glesga Eskimos was based on was myth.

4: Let's take just one of your jibes. I have good friends in Russia, I had the chance to visit and work with them. None of them think that their country would be better off now had the Tzarist system continued. None of them seemed to think they had lived in 'a workers paradise', but then I would not have been silly enough to think they would think that. Some of them were unsuyre if what they have now is better than what they had under the USSR, but they live in hopes.

Now I would venture that the above would all depend on the age of your good friends and whether or not they had been fortunate enough to have been members of the Communist Party during the U.S.S.R. days - BUT

(a) None of them think that their country would be better off now had the Tzarist system continued.

Rather odd that Mr.McVicar and very difficult to understand. I take it that your good friends would realise that had the Tsar, or the Tsarist system stayed in place then there would have been no such thing as Bolsheviks or Communism. Had the Bolsheviks and the Communists never existed then Mein Kampf would never have been written there would have been no Nazi Party in Germany and there would have been no Second World War - I think everybody on the planet would have appreciated that, let alone the millions of "Soviet" citizens killed by Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. So I think that their opinion on this is rather ill informed.

(b) None of them seemed to think they had lived in 'a workers paradise', but then I would not have been silly enough to think they would think that.

Ah so your good friends were not fortunate enough to have been invited or born into membership of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R. So not for them the "special" schools, not for them the Party Pioneer Corps plus all it's advantages, not for them the special party shops and stores in which to purchase items, not for them the guaranteed access to jobs and careers reserved for loyal Party members and withheld from the bulk of the population.

5: The USSR did a lot of good and a lot of harm. All empires go bust. The British Empire did a lot of good and a lot of harm, so did the Roman Empire.

Which one of those once the days of Empire were over found itself a member of the second largest international organisation in the world after the United Nations. A group of nations made up of former members of that Empire and recently increased in size by new member states that had no historic link to the former Empire at all?

6: Gordon MacCulloch, labelled by some as a tankie, sees/saw different 'truths' from you or I.

For the uninitiated the term "tankie" means a supporter of the policies and actions of Joseph Stalin, one of history's greatest democides who was responsible for millions of more deaths than Adolf Hitler.

7: My grandfather could explain all the twists and turns of the British Communist Party from 1929 to the 1970s and make them sound sensible and necessary - while you listened to him!

It would appear that your Grandfather was obviously as deluded and naive as MacCulloch.


7: Of The Glesga Eskimos presumably you say "This is an auld sang, with some challengeable assertions."

SOME challengeable assertions, massive understatement!!! With regard to the USN and Laning and the inferred part played by the so-called Glesga Eskimos there isn't a single iota of truth in any of it.

8: I assume you will next proceed to demand that all suspect pro and anti Jacobite songs be winnowed for 'historical accuracy', and the 'truth' be proclaimed.

Nope Mr.McVicar, sorry to disappoint you, I just don't bother either learning,playing or singing the ones based on myth and nonsense (Haughs of Cromdale is one in that category that immediately springs to mind).