MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Piers
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 04:58 PM

Ifor, It's in here. Lenin's work is available on the internet. His philosophy was one of contempt for working people, in theory, and in practice.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 04:37 PM

You could hardly avoid hearing what was going on in Russia in the 30's, 40's and 50's, the period we are talking about. there was a continuous stream of refugees getting out.Some people chose to ignore what was going on,` because they thought there was a Higher Good being served in the turmoil.
    I don't find it takes any great leap of the imagination to admire part of someone's life, but not others. My deep admiration's of MacColl's achievements are something I have made very clear throughout a working life in the theatre, directly inspired by McColl's and Littlewood's extraordinary work. But that does not tempt me to act as any kind of apologist for the man's politics. Someone suggests I am "vilfying" him. Nonsense: anybody who worships Stalin after finding out the truth vilifies himself..

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,J C
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 02:51 PM

There are those (like Greg Stephens) who will continue to vilify MacColl and not let a small thing like lack of evidence get in the way of a good bit of grave dancing. I notice he doesn't say why MacColl should have known the truth about Stalin - very few others did at the time. Was MacColl a party official? Did he have a hot line to the Kremlin? - we need to be told!!! Or maybe all the old socialists and communists were really sado - masochists who not only didn't give a toss about the people of Russia but, by fighting for a communist society were prepared to undergo the same fate.
I really thought that the folk song revival had reached a stage of maturity where it was possible to discuss calmly and intelligently some of the important aspects of our song tradition without our still having to plouter in the mire - there have certainly been enough well balanced and thoughtful contributions to this discussion to indicate that this is the case. But it seems we still have to wait for the sound of grinding axes to die down before we can get round to the important issues - like the songs (remember them?) and how best to ascertain that they don't disappear under a barrage of invective or indifference.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: ifor
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 02:24 PM

I can't agree that it was Lenin who drove a wedge between socialism and communism.
Firstly it was Lenin and the Bolshevik Party in Russia that was opposed to the First World War with all its horror and barbarism.
Only a very small of other parties across Europe opposed this war.Think about it.In Britain and in Germany the young Labour Party and the huge Social Democratic Party rushed to support the most reactionary and militaristic warmongers [sounds a bit familiar]
.Lenin was astounded and didnt believe this at first because right up to the outbreak of war the socialists and democrats were opposed to the coming war but collapsed in the face of the war hysteria.
Not Lenin.The situation was so bad that at the socialist called peace conference in Zimmerfeld in Switzerland in 1916 only a couple of dozen delegates managed to turn up to attend.
Within a little over a year Lenin and Trotsky had led the Bolshevik revolution and had pulled Russia out of the war.This had a huge destabilizing effect on Germany and the allies and hastened the end of the conflict which had caused so much death and suffering.

It was Lenin that saved the honour of international socialism and we should remember that today.
When workers and artists like McColl flocked to join the communists it was because of this sort of achievement not the grotesque tyrannies of Stalin who picked up the pieces after the Revolution had been choked and exhausted.
Ifor

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Paul Burke
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 09:24 AM

I didn't say it was, and I know it isn't. But "why Christian"? was the point. It's the motivation I'm talking about- Christians know their reward shall be in Heaven.

Communists of the 30s-50s knew that Stalin wasn't the end point of communism, but accepted his function as a step on the way- just as Christians don't think of Constantine or Calvin as defining their aspirations.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 08:57 AM

Paul,
Christian Aid is not like that.
It does not evangelise. It will help communities build mosques and temples.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Piers
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 08:43 AM

Purple Foxx, In that paragraph from the historical preface Fred is talking about the popular reception to the words communism and socialism at different times. Engels himself wrote a book called Socialism:utopian and scientific, advocating the latter against the leagues of religious obscurantists and utopians (blueprint formers) that called themselves socialists.

As I understand it Marx and Engels began to drop the use of the word socialism in their later days for the reasons he describes.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: shepherdlass
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 07:52 AM

Among the "useful idiots" there were an awful lot of very clever people (EP Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm et al spring to mind) who were fooled by Stalin at least for a time. And some stayed with the CPGB after Kruschev's denunciation of the old regime ... because they wrongly believed that they could change it from within and create a shiny, new improved revolution in already-industrialized countries that better fitted the Marx-Engels template than poor old Russia. When you've held a dream then disillusion is hard to accept and you might perform all kinds of moral gymnastics to continue believing. (Just look at how many bizarre justifications are trotted out by the religious when a natural disaster calls their faith into question.) Can we really say that, just because some people (like MacColl) were a bit better informed than most, they were therefore complicit in the worst atrocities? Or were they just hanging on for old times' sake and fear of the alternative?

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Paul Burke
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 07:36 AM

You can't look at things that simplistically. The choice was not entirely Stalin or not-Stalin. It was Stalin or Hitler, then later Stalin or McCarthy.

Remember that the threat of Communism forced western capitalsit society to make huge concessions to the workforce. Even the thirties were less brutal, less raw than the recessions of previous eras- purely because the lower orders had an outside force to which they could threaten to transfer their allegiance. Capitalism operated best (for most people under its control) when it had competition- ironic?

As for people knowing about Stalin... people partly knew, but partly didn't want to believe- after all, there WAS black propoganda, our lords and masters haven't always been totally open about the full facts.

I suppose in a way it's like famine relief- if the churches didn't do it today, probably no one would. Because religion gives people the ability to think in black and white, they can motivate themselves to do what they see as totally virtuous, no need to ask questions. The side issued (why does it NEED to be called "Christian" Aid? Are you pushing an updated version of what the Chinese called "Rice Christianity?)

Similarly, a strong belief like Soviet Communism could give people the ability to act unhindered by second thoughts. The welfare state in Western Europe, the NHS, and the whole tenor of European society today makes me glad that they did.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 07:18 AM

(On The Communist Manifesto)"We could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto ... Socialism was a Middle-Class movement,Communism a Working-Class Movement.Socialism was,on the Continent at least,respectable;Communism was the very opposite."
Friedrich Engels(1887)
Fred's words,Charlie's rationale.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 07:17 AM

Apologists for MacColl's politics tend to say "he was fooled about Stalin,like everone else"
    Granted, there were a lot of fools about dutifully selling the Daily Worker etc, and very nice humanitarian people most of them were too, and great supporters of folk music, and friends of mine. They were, in Lenin's rather chilling phrase "useful idiots". But for every hundred people being fooled, there was one of the clever people doing the fooling. And MacColl, I am afraid, stunningly eloquent and educated man that he was, was one of the foolers. He knew about Stalin. He made his choice.
    Fascinating piece by Peggy Seeger, wasn't it? Bit rude of her publicly laughing at some poor sod's performance because she thought the accent was a bit funny, wasn't it? MacColl sang in some remarkably dodgy accents (witness his recording of John Henry), but I bet she didn't howl derision at him.
But all in all, I think they were quite right to try to run a club with some high standards that they believed in. As Peggy Seeger pointed out quite fairly,that was the rules for their club, and their club alone. Nobody had to go.. They weren't imposing the same rules on anyone else.Unlike any folk club run by Stalin, for example, when anyone singing Rock Island Line would have been shot.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Piers
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 07:07 AM

Purple Foxx, unless you can show me otherwise I only know of Marx using the term socialist perjoratively when prefaced by terms such as utopian, reactionary or "true". It was Lenin who drove the wedge between socialism and communism, created state capitalism and set back the project for human emancipation by an era, the tosser. Socialism cannot be a nicer kind of capitalism, this is a great misunderstanding, and indicative that not much is known about socialism.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Wolfgang
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 06:38 AM

Ake,

you did not understand my point. I consider Dirty Old Town (and many other songs) as brilliant and Ballad of Stalin as crap.

A very noble feeling can lead to a very bad song (rather not vice versa) so motives are not a good guide to discuss song quality.

I agree that MacColl's political ideas have led him to select the themes of his songs and the radio ballads. His ideas led him to portray workers, gipsies, outcasts instead of "normal people". A good choice in my eyes. But that's not what makes him a great song writer.

The way he writes is what makes him great. He gives voice to the people he writes about. He lets us look at life how it is for them (fishing, boxing, mining,...) The morale and the politics are between the lines. We are moved for he can make us feel how injustice, hard work, laughter, losses feels for the people he writes about. He makes them alive for us. That's what makes him great in my eyes. His songs are in a subtle and very efficient way propaganda for humanity.

The Stalin song however is crude, blunt propaganda without any subtelty.

We (in Germany) have a legacy of such songs from the GDR. The "happy worker" songs of the "real" socialism or the anticapitalist propaganda songs always with the socialist morale being directly spoken about in the last verse. These songs are only useful today to make people laugh. Ballad of Stalin is one of the very few MacColl songs that comes for me in that category.

That anyone can have shed a tear about Stalin's death and claims not to have known is just as believable to me as statements from my parents' generation that they hadn't known about Hitler's crimes. It may even be true for some people but they have blinded themselves by only attending to propaganda from one side.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 06:22 AM

George Moore (great novelist who happened to be Irish) once described Jesus a "the pale socialist of Galilee".

Some people (George amongst them)weren't keen on Jesus either.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 05:47 AM

Marx only ever used the word "Socialist." pejoratively.
20 Years ago Anthony Wright wrote a book suggesting we ought to speak of "Socialisms."I think that's valid.
I actively disliked MacColl's hard line Authoritarian dogma.
This does not invalidate his music.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Piers
Date: 07 Mar 06 - 05:27 AM

In writings of the pioneers of socialist and communist thought in the late 19th century, the terms socialism and communism were used interchangebly, both to mean a society of social/common ownership which involves the abolition of private property, money (the means of exchanging privately owned things) and actual democracy (one person's say being as good as anothers in the workplace and in social matters). These pioneers believed that the only possible way of building such a society was from the bottom up, as it were. Marx wrote that workers of all lands should unite to overthrow existing social conditions. Most Russians didn't want socialism/communism in the early 20th century and they didn't get. They got a society with even less democracy than countries with mixed state-private capital-based economies and an economy of mostly state-owned industries where the political elite lived off surplus created by the workers rather than private individuals, workers in "Communist" Russia were as exploited as we are in the west, and Lenin's worker's state never turned into socialism.

The Bolshevik policy of a revolutionary vanguard seizing power by any means necessary (force, deception, populist tactics) to control the state and emancipate the workers on their behalf (whether they wanted it or not) is anti-democratic and anti-socialist. Many people call themselves socialists and still advocate this kind of means to achieve socialist/communist society (like Trotsky did, remember Kronstadt!). Whilst one can empathise with those like MacColl who support and have supported Bolshevik tactics you can't have socialism without socialists. If we want to be rid of war, poverty, miserable work, leaders and bosses and have a society where the priority of production is simply to fulfil human needs we have to make socialists. That is what it means to be a socialist.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 08:00 PM

Thanks MM

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Goose Gander
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 07:55 PM

I don't mean to hijack this thread either, so I'll just say that my comments were in reference to the USSR during the rule of Stalin. I don't consider Hugo Chavez to be anything close to Stalin, and I even admire him for standing up to George W. Bush (whether recent events in Latin America lead to a "great socialist alliance" or just another series of incompetent regimes remains to be seen).

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 07:45 PM

What I think is not pertinent to this thread, but you generalise. The folk music of Communist Cuba and many Eastern European states are subsidised and encouraged.

The indigenous people of Latin America, who are about to form a great socialist alliance also have a strong folk culture which I believe will be assured by the new regimes.

So if I must choose it would be the system which values music and art for its own sake, not the one which bends and distorts anything of real worth into the shape of the £ or the $.....Ake

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Goose Gander
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 07:22 PM

"MacColl knew that Capitalism destroyed any culture which didn't fit the pattern"

The Soviet Union spent decades attempting to strangle the folk cultures of Eastern Europe and Central Asia in order to create a 'new Soviet Man' or something like that. Capitalism in the twentieth century didn't so much destroy folk culture as absorb it and commodify it. Much was destroyed in the process, I agree, but in the case of the American recording industry in the 1920s commercial interests inadvertently documented traditional music that otherwise might have been 'lost' (not that it would have disappeared, of course, but the record would have tremendous gaps). Which would you prefer, a system that at least allows for some space in which folk culture can be preserved, or one that deliberately obliterates it in order to advance a 'scientific' theory of social organization?

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Folkiedave
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 07:16 PM

A song about the leader of a small impoverished peasant country that stood up to and eventually kicked the arse of the most powerful and avariciously aggressive nation in the world (having already seen off Japan and France) has my vote as a candidate for a song, and as far as I'm concerned Ho Chi Mhin certainly wasn't 'the other side'.

Very sincerely, I wished I had written that.

Please if we wish to argue the value of Ewan's work - and my limited knowledge of the man leads me to believe he would have loved such an argument - lets keep that to one thread.

There is a separate and possible equally valid argument about the value of the various types of socialism and the personalities involved.
.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,Obie
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 06:54 PM

ifor,
   I argue not with your statement but with the concept that communism started with the Russian revolution. Karl Marx was not a Russian but a German who died 35 years earlier and Thomas More an Englishman who died centuries earlier. At least in theory it existed long before. What you state seems to agree rather than disagree.
Likewise capitalism in one form or another has been with us for many years.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: ifor
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 06:21 PM

"Communism started as a form of socialism.However it was derailed by human greed for power and wealth".
Actually I disagree with the above statement!
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in the months and years after 1917 was viciously attacked and just about strangled by a right wing counter revolution with over a dozen foreign armies including British and American invading.They in turn supported right wing "white "armies led by the most reactionary anti semitic generals who were determined to conduct a bloodbath against the Russian working class led by the Bolshevik Party.

Russia had already seen some 20 million peole killed in the war between 1914 and 1917.The foreign invasions and the white russian onslaught meant millions more dead and the collapse of the economy and indeed the working class itself.The flower of revolutionary Russia died at the front defending the revolution and with the death of Lenin and the defeat of Trotsky Stalin was able to basically lead a counter revolution based on state capitalism and a form of Russian nationalism. The revolution had been choked to death.

Stalin through the control of the state apparatus murdered and imprisoned the bolsheviks and it is interesting to note that almost all the original leaders of the revolution were killed by him including his most implacable foe ,Trotsky.While Stalin stood for a vile kind of russian nationalism Trotsky was a revolutionary internationalist and a long time opponent of capitalism and its barbaric wars.Incidentally ,Trotsky was firmly opposed to any "party line" on culture and art.In this he differed completely from the Stalinists who followed a cultural line that celebrated the motherland and Stalin himself.
If the revolution was defeated by power and greed it was conducted on behalf of a imperial capitalism wading through the blood of the first world war to ensure that their rule was not challenged by revolutionary communism or the bolshevik revolution of 1917.
ifor

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 06:16 PM

I agree with you Obie, because we despise Capitalism , it dosn't follow that we think Communism the answer.

Due to environmental degradation and dwindling energy suppies, work in the indusrial sense will no longer be seen as a virtue.
People will demand more contact with the natural world and some meaning and fulfillment in their lives.
The days when life consisted of slavery for the many in pursuit of power for the few are thankfully almost over...Ake

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,J C
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 06:09 PM

Nice one Akenton - that sums MacColl up nicely.
Just one more word on something raised earlier. The Ballad of Ho Chi Mhin isn't my favorite song - MacColl wrote many better ones.
However, our tradition is full of hero figures, (not all deserving) from Bonnie Prince Charlie to Willie Brennan, Captain Kidd and Ben Hall - even bodysnatcher William Burke has his say in verse.
A song about the leader of a small impoverished peasant country that stood up to and eventually kicked the arse of the most powerful and avariciously aggressive nation in the world (having already seen off Japan and France) has my vote as a candidate for a song, and as far as I'm concerned Ho Chi Mhin certainly wasn't 'the other side'.
Cheers to all

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,Obie
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 05:47 PM

Communism started out as a form of socialism. However it was derailed by human greed for power and wealth. If people demand too much shoot them on the protest line!
Capitalism was more up front. Give the lions share to the greedy and wealthy and use others as servants to the system. If people demand too much shoot them on the picket line!
The bottom line is that neither gives a shit about the little guy, although lying bastards on either side would argue otherwise!
However, capitalism today is the greatest threat because it wields the most power. Capitalism has money and governments of the western world in it's arse pocket. Today it is growing into the more dispicable of the two.
       Obie

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 05:27 PM

Wolfgang...."He's worst where his politics enter into his songwriting (like in the incredibly bad Stalin song)."

First time I,ve seen you affect naivety as a debating device Wolfgang!!
MacColl was a revolutionary socialist. I don't know if you've ever been of that persuasion, but I can tell you it gets into your blood and consumes every waking moment.

From what I have read, MacColl believed the Capitalist system to be the biggest impediment to the happiness and fulfillment of humanity and made that point over and over again in his songs.

As I'm sure you know for a song to be "political" it doesn't require to contain the names of political figures

MacColl knew that Capitalism destroyed any culture which didn't fit the pattern (The Travelling People.) Destroyed working folk (They killed him...my old man) and will destroy the music we love if we don't heed MacColl's advice.

His work songs are full of political comment and his celebration of the working man and woman in dozens of songs is socialist to the core.

Can you seriously argue that songs like Dirty Old Town, where he contrasts the joy and expectancy of young love with the squalor and hopelessness of youth in a Northern industrial environment has no political content?

To a socialist of MacColl's mould, politics are everywhere. In the books you read, the songs you sing and the air you breathe.

You cant have MacColl without his politics and he needs to apologise to no one for his beliefs, as most of his fears for the future of society and of folk music have been proven correct...Ake

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Folkiedave
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 04:00 PM

Dirty Old Town, Manchester Rambler, Ballad of the M1, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Ballad of Accounting, Browned Off, Champion at Keeping 'em Rolling, Big Hewer, Moving-on Song, Joy of Living, My Old Man.............,

Dave

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 03:42 PM

Well said J.C.in similar vein would he have written "China Rag" in the sixties had he forseen the events of Tiananman Square at the end of the eighties "China me old China, your kids have gone astray"?

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,J C
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 03:08 PM

Sorry, I was interrupted and didn't finish. This is taking far too long, but I'm getting very verbose in my old age and I think there are some points that are worth making.
Back in the late eighties my wife and I recorded a long interview with MacColl stretching over six months. One of the questions we asked him was did he regret having written The Ballad of Stalin. He said he didn't - not that he still held those sentiments – he certainly wouldn't have written it again - but "If you go through life worrying if you will still think the same in ten – twenty – thirty – forty years time, you would never put pen to paper.
My own family was made up of a mixture of Socialists, Communists, Irish Republicans, and those who didn't give a toss one way or the other.   I can remember when Stalin died in 1953 some of them wept; as far as they were concerned the world had lost the leader of the world's first worker's state. On the basis of the information they had available to them then, they were right. The fact that later information led them to change their minds is really beside the point. I was lucky enough to have that information available to me so I didn't make the same mistakes they did, but I hope I'm not smug enough to castigate them for not knowing what I know.
On MacColl's nationality – again from personal experience.
I was born and brought up in the North of England to an Anglo-Irish family. I never really thought about whether I was a Brit or a Paddy, but I got numerous kickings when I was at school for being the latter. I now live in the west of Ireland where I am regarded (I think) as a returned Brit. In the summer we are visited by hundreds of people with London, Birmingham, Bronx, Sydney (you name it) - accents, all pleased to have made it 'home' – sometimes for the first time in their lives: (any Yanks out there named Murphy or Kennedy who know what I'm talking about?).
Finally, there was a wonderful Monty Python (remember them) sketch about a composer named Arthur 'Two-Sheds' Jackson.   He was invited onto an arts programme to discuss his work, but the interviewer insisted on asking him why he was called 'Two Shed', did he compose his music in one of his sheds, what colour were they, why did he need two and on, and on, and on, and on – a bit like this thread really!   
Let's talk about the man's work, not his youthful indiscretions, his politics, where he was born or why he changed his name (or whether he picked his nose). Freeborn Man, Shoals of Herring, The Tenant Farmer, and the 137 Child ballads he put back into circulation tells me everything I want to know about him

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Folkiedave
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 02:55 PM

It seems that MacColl's life was in a number of phases almost separate and yet interlinked. We sometimes forget how good a playwright he was:

Most of MacColl's plays are extraordinary. George Bernard once quipped that other than himself, MacColl was the best living playwright in Britain.

I am grateful to JC for the close-up of the man.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Wolfgang
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 02:38 PM

Another sideline:

J C: His family moved to Salford when he was a few months old

from Peggy Seeger's online biography of MacColl: In 1910 the Millers moved to Salford in search of work.
MacColl was born five years later, in 1915.

Well, I see no one who would not admire what MacColl has done for the music we love. He's a brilliant songwriter, a fine collector of songs, and his contribution to the Radio Ballads will considered outstanding for all times to come.

Now this is a thread about politics and not music, for I doubt the MI5 would have monitored him only for the music part of his life. The interesting point is what his political ideas have to do with his music?

I read J C Much of the discussion around MacColl's politics is totally irrellevent and I read
Akenaton Ewan's love for the music was driven first and foremost by his political philosophy and I read
Greg Stevens MacColl was a fanatastic singer, ideas man and song-writer. ...his politics were indescribably loathsome.

That is (for me) the interesting part of the discussion. Do we have to buy his ideas about politics if we love his music? I think his politics have influenced which he chose to write about (to collect) or not but the brilliance of his songs comes not from his politics but from closely watching and describing everyday life. He's best as a songwriter where he describes (and gives the listener free rein). He's worst where his politics enter into his songwriting (like in the incredibly bad Stalin song).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,J C
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 01:42 PM

Much of the discussion around MacColl's politics is totally irrellevent - MacColl devoted the last half century of his life to the passing on of traditional music an I, for one am grateful that I was one of the recipients of his knowledge and his experience.
I would hate anybody to hold me accountable for what I was saying and doing fifty years ago (I was on an anti-aparthied march one time next to Peter Hain - I bet he feels the same way now).
MacColl was a dedicated anti-facist but I once heard him remark that he couldn't understand how killing German workers was going to rid the world of Facisism - I'll drink to that.
As for 'deserting his country in its hour of need' for gods sake
Wrap the union jack round me mother,
For I'm to be queen of the May.
You'll be handing out white feathers next.
MacColl's earliest influences were Scots. I met his mother on many occasions and quite often had difficulty penetrating her accent.
His family moved to Salford when he was a few months old - the community he lived in was Scots, the ealiest singers, including a lodger in their home, was Scots and the earliest songs he heard were Scots.
Was it the Duke of Wellington who said "Being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse".
Perhaps if we spent more time talking about his work and ideas, and less abound inconsequention sidelines we might understand a little of what he was about - take my word for it - it's worth the effort.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 12:15 PM

Folkdavie...Thanks for posting that piece by Peggy. Hadn't read it before and found it really inspiring, just like the man himself.

Peggy encapsulates in her writing what's going wrong with the music.

Relate what Peggy says to the thread on "BBC4 Folk "and its easy to see that were going in the wrong direction.

I'll say it for the last time, Ewan's love for the music was driven first and foremost by his political philosophy and I wish there were more of his kind around today. The critics on this forum should read and understand what Guest JC has to say, instead of whining about ideas political and musical which they can barely grasp...Ake

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,dax
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 11:46 AM

No urban legend here, or even suburban. Deep woods sticks legend! :-)


http://www.pottersfieldpress.com/books/hermitgully.html

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Wolfgang
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 11:41 AM

The ballad of Stalin (Ewan McColl)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 10:58 AM

I have read the BBC report linked to the first post, and a couple of things interest me. How can you Maccoll fans revere a man who deserted his country in the blackest time in its history? And how can you revere a man who pretended to be scottish?

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: shepherdlass
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 10:03 AM

There's another article on this in yesterday's Observer (you can get it from the Guardian online site). Not much more enlightening, but it all adds to the picture.

So many people were seduced by Stalinism before WWII it seems unfair to single out MacColl just because he became a leading voice in the revival. The Communist ideal must have seemed so wonderful in those years that it was probably convenient to overlook the fact that the USSR didn't live up to it in practice. In a fantastic BBC4 show, "My Dad Was A Communist", Alexei Sayle talked with horror about his own parents' state of denial after 1956: (something like "they kept saying you can't make an omelette without breaking a few hundreds of thousands in the gulags"). It looks so clear-cut in hindsight to those of us born after 1950, but a betrayal of such huge dimensions must have been much harder to accept at the time.

This isn't really to defend MacColl, who seems to have been in part an inspirational genius and in another part a divisive and destructive force. He was at least very vocally linked with (even if not sole originator of) "the policy" and can be held personally responsible for that. But being just one more dupe of Stalin after living through the Depression? How many people could we castigate for that?

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: pavane
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 09:33 AM

I appreciate the many fine songs that were written by Ewan MacColl but on the one occasion when I saw him with Peggy live (1971), they were full of songs like Ho Ho Ho Chin Min. Opposing the Vietnam war is one thing, but glorifying the other side is a different matter. Not an enjoyable evening for me, and it doesn't look as if his views had altered much.

It appeared to me as if Peggy Seeger was even more left-wing, but that was only an impression I got.

That gig in Stratford (London) was recorded and extracts televised by the BBC in a series on expatriates living in the UK.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 09:04 AM

We shouldn't forget that Ewan MacColl was brought up in Salford between the Wars. Salford, at that time, was the archetypal "Classic Slum" with high levels of poverty, unemployment, environmemtal pollution and sub-standard housing. Those of us born after the 2nd World War can only guess at what it might have been like (although I did catch a glimpse of the last of this world, in the early 70s, and could only give thanks that I wasn't brought up in it).
In the face of such adversity intelligent people were often drawn towards radical politics - and who can blame them? Unfortunately, the most radical of these political groups, the Communist party, demanded absolute discipline and obedience to the party line. It also pushed the concept of 'Socialism in One Country' ie. The Soviet Union. Many people seem to have been fooled by this and turned a blind eye to what was actually happening in the Soviet Union.
Remember, though, it wasn't just politicised working men and women who were fooled by Joe Stalin. I've just read a book about the experiences of the Polish Nation ('Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw' by Norman Davies). The Poles put up an heroic resistance to Hitler but were ultimately smashed. Stalin just sat by and let it happen so that his armies would meet no resistance when he took over after the War. When he did take over, Polish men and women, who had fought bravely against Hitler, were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and executed. Western governments knew very well what was going on but they, in their turn, just sat by and let it happen. They only had themselves to blame when Stalin got himself a Bomb.
I still occasionally meet old Communists who believe that Stalin was a hero and that the Allies couldn't have won the War without him. I, personally, think that it was ordinary Russian people who turned the tide and that they did it in spite of Stalin who considerably worsened their sufferings.
I don't honestly know what Ewan thought of all this towards the end of his life; I hope he had a more balanced view - but I'm sure someone will tell me different.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Folkiedave
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 07:48 AM

There is absolutely no doubt about the poicy of the Singer's Club.

First of all it was Peggy whose idea it was not Ewan.

The story is here

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,J C
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 04:31 AM

Sorry - forgot to sign the last one - J C

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 04:28 AM

" If you wanted to sing at his club you had to convince him that your song was relevant to YOUR background and origins , while HE sang songs from Scotland , Lancashire , Yorkshire or whereever"

Where the hell did this come from???
I was a regular at the Singers Club for over 20 years and more than often cringed at some of the singers who turned up casually.
The Club policy - IE - the type of singer who was booked as GUEST - was decided on by an audience committee and by ALL the residents of the club.
MacColl's view, along with that of Alan Lomax Bert Lloyd and all the people that brought the club (and the revival) into being, was that it was important to explore your own national repertoire rather than all try to sound like Guthrie, Leadbelly, Broonzie and the other American artists who were influencing the scene in the early days. The end result was a blossoming of the British and Irish reperoires. I saw The Stewarts, Joe Heaney, Walter Pardon, Doc Watson, Seamus Ennis, Paddy Tunney, Bobby Casey, and scores more traditional performers at the Singers Club - they were always given a great welcome and they were all perfectly comfortable performing there (except on the night Harry Cox had to take his new false teeth out because they were affecting his singing!)
The club policy was that the songs performed there by the residents or by the booked guests should be traditional or traditionally influenced and that it should be performed to a reasonable standard - they (and I) had no time for the 'near enough for folk' school of thought that once (and still, to some extent) permeates the folk scene. It wasn't, and didn't pretend to be a singaround club and you invariably came a way with a night of good songs well sung under your belt. Ewan and Peggy always played to a packed house.
Would that there were more clubs with policy and standards today.

PS
I agree totally that Stalin's policied were loathsome (though, as Ifor has well pointed out, he managed to fool a lot of the people a lot of the time). But I have problems in deciding whether those policies are any more loathsome than those of a country that has persistently armed and financed some of the worst tyrants in history (including Saddam Hussain), has dropped bombs on more than 50 countries since the end of WW2, has invaded numerous (usually poor, 3rd world) countries, has used chemical weapons such as napalm, agent orange and phospherous on civilians, has interfered with the internal politics of scores of countries throughout the world and has helped overthrow democratically elected leaders (and helped rig their own presidential election). This (unnamed) country is at present illegally holding prisoners without charge and subjecting them to abuse and torture - I suppose one man's monster is another man's cuddly toy.
PPS Where was MacColl after he deserted - do I sense another urban legend in the making?

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: greg stephens
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 02:53 AM

I agree with Malcolm.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Mar 06 - 12:17 AM

Every idol has feet of clay, but one thing is for sure: whatever his faults -and it's true that he had his share, though the policy of the Singers' Club is often misrepresented- MacColl did more for folk music (or whatever you prefer to call it) than any of us have, or are ever likely to.

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Leadfingers
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 09:48 PM

Another thread that has got lost in the way people want to remember !!

OK - Ewan MacColl was a humanitarian - He was also a hypocrite ! If you wanted to sing at his club you had to convince him that your song was relevant to YOUR background and origins , while HE sang songs from Scotland , Lancashire , Yorkshire or whereever !

Yes , he wrote a lot of superb songs , and , through the Radio Ballads
gave inspiration to God knows how many other writers ( By the way - catch the NEW series of Radio ballads on Aunty Beeb) , BUT he still antagonised a fair proportion of the UK Folk Scene .

I am still undecided as to wether Ewan macColl did more harm than good to the UK Folk Scene , but we are at least to the good with some superb songs from him .

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,dax
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 07:50 PM

Rumour has it that he spent the remaining war years with his buddy Willard Kitchener MacDonald ( who had also deserted ) in the deep forests of Nova Scotia.
   For more information type "hermit of gully lake" into google.
             LOL,
                   Dax

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: The Badger
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 07:41 PM

Apparently he deserted from the army and managed to hide out until the war was over - and then resumed normal life. Interesting!

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: GUEST,dax
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 07:35 PM

I wonder what songs they choose to sing around that fireside? Maybee Ring of Fire! Does any of the three play guitar. It is well documented that the Devil plays fiddle. :-)

Subject: RE: MI5 monitored Ewan MacColl
From: Folkiedave
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 07:26 PM

I doubt Ewan needed to renounce Stalin. By his other political stances he was clearly not interested.

I am far more fascinated by the time between joining up - (1940) and coming back - (1945)

Joan tells us he was writing a song a day.

Where are the songs and where was he?