Political song at the heart of debate
by Andrew Murray Scott (Scots Independent, November 2025)
During SNP Conference in Aberdeen I attended the ‘open floor’ music session, organised and kept alive by Rob Gibson, Cllr Greg McCarra, Clare Adamson MSP, Richard Thompson and many others. An entertaining evening that raised £500 for local good causes: well done all! Traditional songs of love, death and work have been around for centuries, but the folk upsurge in the early days of the SNP was associated with iconic ‘rebels’ such as Rabbie Burns, John Maclean, the anti-Polaris campaign and the songs of Irish republicanism. Samizdat song pamphlets, poorly zeroxed, cheap but heart-felt, were available if you knew where to look, and reprints of the famous Rebels’ Ceilidh Songbook. The rebel tag seemed to fit us then, but are we rebels still? Can you be a rebel if you’re in government, albeit only devolved? We still are underdogs, battling the might of the British establishment and anyway, the rebel tag has always been culturally cool
Hamish Henderson’s ‘The Men of Knoydart’ about the 1948 land raiders was often performed by the first ‘folkie’ I ever met, Hamish Imlach who also used to sing the republican song, ‘Scottish Breakaway’, lyrics by ‘Thurso Berwick’ (Morris Blythman). In late 1972, Hamish turned up at the SNP rooms in Dundee’s Cowgate during the Dundee East By Election. As teenage veterans, Scott Mands and I were given a few quid and instructed to take him to a pub to keep him out of harm’s way. The campaign committee did not want a gregarious, cowboy hat-wearing, leather-jacketted badge-bedecked folkie upsetting voters! So much for rebels!
Jim McLean songs were performed by the Corries, the Dubliners and of course Alistair McDonald and he was rightly famed for writing with empathy and insight about the Clearances as well as humorous political songs. There is a story of McLean at a folk club in London in 1962 being ‘pestered’ by a young Bob Dylan with endless questions about Scottish folk music. Jim took him down to the toilets to share a few nips from a half-bottle of whisky but was wanting to get back to more important business: chatting up the girl (his future wife, Alison) who was taking the tickets at the door, so he fobbed Dylan off by telling him it was all about rebellion. The rebellion Jim had in mind of course was of a good-humoured, often satirical, empathetic nature, never racist or discriminatory. Cherished by activists, Jim’s songs remained almost unknown to the wider public until 2023 when he was finally honoured by the re-release of sixty of his best songs in a CD box-set, The Songs of Jim McLean performed on stage at the Celtic Connections festival. The organiser, Fraser Bruce, a key figure himself since the early 1960s is the author of Folk River, a book bringing alive the stories and tales of our folk ‘rebels’, and I heartily recommend seeking out both the Jim McLean box-set and Fraser’s book, both of which can be purchased at www.fraserbruce.co.uk As for that pesky young Dylan… he’s still out there, still ‘rebelling’ but then aren’t we all?