![\"Ewan](\"images\/culture\/ewan_maccoll\/Ewan_MacColl__Peggy_Seeger_Newport_Folk_Festival_1960.jpg\")
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\u2018The world that I knew, it has vanished and gone,\u2019 sang Eliza Carthy during Blood and Roses: The Songs of Ewan MacColl, a special concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic this week that marked the centennial of the songwriter and Communist activist\u2019s birth. It was a marvellous evening of passionate songs of politics and love which caused me to reflect on the significance of MacColl\u2019s songs in our changed times.<\/span><\/p>\n The concert at Liverpool\u2019s Philharmonic Hall marked the start of a nationwide tour, curated by Maccoll\u2019s sons, Calum and Neill. On stage was a remarkable line-up of members of Britain\u2019s two great folk dynasties: present for the MacColls were his third wife Peggy Seeger, MacColl\u2019s sons Neill and Calum, daughter Kitty and grandson Harry Mead on drums, while Martin Carthy and daughter Eliza represented the Waterson-Carthy clan (Eliza\u2019s mother, Norma Waterson, was unable to attend due to illness).<\/p>\n For members of the audience, it felt like being privileged guests at a family celebration of the great song-writer to which close friends had been invited \u2013 for on stage as well were Kate St John (playing piano and accordion), Ben Nichols (bass), Chaim Tannenbaum (banjo and vocals), Irish songwriter Damien Dempsey, and Seth Lakeman (vocals and fiddle). The sense of a family gathering was reinforced by back projections of photos from the family archive, reflections on the genesis of certain songs and warm memories of Ewan from Peggy Seeger and her sons.<\/p>\n Before the music began we heard a reading of Robbie Burns\u2019 \u2018For a\u2019 That and a\u2019 That\u2019 \u2013 an appropriate beginning for a celebration of a man who, though born in Salford in January 1915, was the son of two Scots. His father was an iron foundry worker, militant trade-unionist and Communist who came south fleeing black-listing and unemployment. His mother, too, was an active socialist, and from his earliest days he heard songs and poetry of working class resistance from north of the border, not least this poem of Burns that presages the sentiments expressed in much of MacColl\u2019s writing: that wealth, or lack of it, and social class should not be the measure of a man\u2019s true worth, that a man\u2019s character is the true gold, for though he may wear ordinary clothes, and eat simple food, appearance is just a show, like tinsel. Honesty is worth more than fancy clothes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For a ‘That and a That’<\/p>\n Is there for honesty poverty What though on hamely fare we dine, Self respect doesn\u2019t come from inherited wealth or titles, but from possessing an independent mind. We can imagine the young MacColl being inspired in the Depression years the last verse in which Burns imagines a future world in which all people will live as brothers, in mutual trust and respect.<\/p>\n Ye see yon birkie ca\u2019d a lord, A prince can mak a belted knight, Then let us pray that come it may, The evening was hosted by Calum and Neill, and it was Calum who gave a brief introduction to his father\u2019s career as song-writer, dramatist and compiler of radio ballads for the BBC. Wryly, he also referred to MacColl\u2019s reputation as a \u2018folk fascist\u2019 \u2013 for his life-long adherence to Communism (he wrote an ode to Stalin in the fifties) and his notoriously abrasive and intransigent personality.<\/p>\n But, let\u2019s judge the tale, not the artist (as Lawrence once wisely remarked). Listening to MacColl\u2019s songs now, do they have any relevance at all as the second decade of the 21st century hurries towards its close? Or are they as outdated and irrelevant as some suggest Jeremy Corbyn and his policies are for the Labour Party and the country? (I only mention Corbyn because of a singular moment in the concert when Damien Dempsey spoke of how happy he felt \u2013 at being on stage with such excellent musicians, and because \u2018the Labour Party now has a Labour leader.\u2019<\/p>\n The Philharmonic Hall audience erupted in a roar of approval at that. Now I know it was a self-selecting audience, probably largely composed of old lefties like me who used to hear MacColl\u2019s songs \u2013 even see him sing \u2013 in folk clubs. But, nevertheless, it felt like a remarkable moment.)<\/p>\n So how relevant are MacColl\u2019s songs today? At first they might sound very \u2018old Labour\u2019 with their concern for tribes of working people \u2013 miners, foundry men, herring trawlermen, mill workers and travelling people \u2013 that have largely disappeared from Britain\u2019s social structure. These people were MacColl\u2019s heroes and heroines, and his inspiration, reflecting the political beliefs that were inseparable from his art.<\/p>\n But Ewan MacColl did not write of a heroic past: his songs are notable for their documentary-like immediacy and concern with the present times in which he wrote. His songs also document changing times:<\/p>\n The world that I knew it has vanished and gone That\u2019s from On the Edge, one of his celebrated radio ballads, produced in 1963 and concerned with the relationship between the new breed of teenagers in England and Scotland and older generations. MacColl grew up in soot-choked Salford and wrote about railwaymen and miners, but in his songs, his theatre productions and the radio ballads he had his finger on the pulse of change in Britain from the fifties to the 1980s.<\/p>\n At the Phil, the concert began with Damien Dempsey taking lead vocal on \u2018Schooldays Over\u2019, a song from The Big Hewer, a 1960 collection rooted in the lives of coal miners:<\/p>\n Schooldays over, come on then John Come on then Jim, it\u2019s time to go Come on then Dai, it\u2019s nearly light It\u2019s difficult now to recall how radical and challenging material like this was in folk music circles back in the fifties and sixties. At the time, the revival of interest in folk music tended to be rooted in a nostalgic reverie of rural England, but MacColl brought a new urban and industrial focus to folk music, lending it a new vitality.<\/p>\n In his inimitable style he enforced his view of what folk music should be at his London Singers\u2019 Club, where the rules dictated that a singer could perform songs only from his or her own culture \u2013 and the only culture that lived and breathed was a working class one. He regarded pop music as a capitalist plot, and dismissed the young, acoustic Bob Dylan as \u201910th-rate drivel\u2019 \u2013 primarily because he failed to see any connection between Dylan and working class Americans, but also because of his deep cynicism of celebrity and loathing of self-indulgence.<\/p>\n This, though, was pure posturing: if you take a song like \u2018Ballad of Accounting\u2019 written in 1964 as theme music for the BBC Radio 3 series Landmarks, the unadorned style is not a million miles removed from material on the contemporaneous The Times They Are A-Changin\u2019 album. \u2018Ballad of Accounting\u2019 was sung at the Phil by Peggy Seeger and Chaim Tannenbaum, and is a very fine song. Nothing in it sounds at all outdated:<\/p>\n![\"Jimmie](\"images\/culture\/ewan_maccoll\/Jimmie_Miller_Ewan_MacColl_age_22.jpg\")
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That hings his head, an\u2019 a\u2019 that;
The coward slave \u2013 we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a\u2019 that!
For a\u2019 that, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
Our toils obscure an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
The rank is but the guinea\u2019s stamp,
The man\u2019s the gowd for a\u2019 that.<\/p>\n
Wear hoddin grey, an\u2019 a\u2019 that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man\u2019s a man for a\u2019 that.
For a\u2019 that, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
Their tinsel show, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
The honest man, tho\u2019 e\u2019er sae poor,
Is king o\u2019 men for a\u2019 that.<\/p>\n
Wha struts, an\u2019 stares, an\u2019 a\u2019 that;
Tho\u2019 hundreds worship at his word,
He\u2019s but a coof for a\u2019 that.
For a\u2019 that, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
His ribband, star, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
The man o\u2019 independent mind
He looks an\u2019 laughs at a\u2019 that.<\/p>\n
A marquise, duke, an\u2019 a\u2019 that;
But an honest man\u2019s aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa\u2019 that!
For a\u2019 that, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
Their dignities an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
The pith o\u2019 sense, an\u2019 pride o\u2019 worth,
Are higher rank than a\u2019 that.<\/p>\n
(As come it will for a\u2019 that,)
That Sense and Worth, o\u2019er a\u2019 the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an\u2019 a\u2019 that.
For a\u2019 that, an\u2019 a\u2019 that,
It\u2019s comin yet for a\u2019 that
That man to man, the world o\u2019er,
Shall brithers be for a\u2019 that.<\/p>\n
Leaving this forest of stone,
And the faces are strange and altered, everything is changed
Here where I walk alone.<\/p>\n
Time to be getting your pit boots on
On with your sack and your moleskin trousers
Time you were on your way
Time you were learning the pitman\u2019s job
And earning a pitman\u2019s pay.<\/p>\n
Time you were working down below
Time to be handling a pick and shovel
You start at the pits today
Time to be learning the collier\u2019s job
And earning a collier\u2019s pay.<\/p>\n
Time you were off to the anthracite
The morning mist is on the valley
It\u2019s time you were on your way
Time you were learning the miner\u2019s job
And earning a miner\u2019s pay<\/p>\n