This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
EWAN MACCOLL was remembered in song at celebrations at the weekend marking 105 years since the communist songwriter’s birth.
Friends and fans of the folk singer met in front of his commemorative oak tree in Russell Square, central London, on Saturday.
The singing was led by his widow, the pioneering singer and social activist Peggy Seeger.
Born Jimmy Miller in 1915 in Salford to a family of Scottish socialists, the young MacColl took quickly to his family’s singing and oral storytelling traditions.
As a young man, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and became active in some of the earliest political theatre groups such as the Red Megaphones and Unity Theatre.
His song Dirty Old Town was popularised by the Dubliners and the Pogues, while The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face — which he wrote for Ms Seeger — was a number-one hit in the United States for soul singer Roberta Flack.
