Portraying the Red Clydesiders - and young women of the East End!

A couple of events to draw your attention to today. Firstly an event slightly detached from its original slot in the Mayday celebrations - it was postponed from the original date of May 5 as that was only two days away from the General Election. and now takes place on Tuesday 26 May at 7.00pm in the STUC offices on Woodlands Road (above the Stand).

In one of the interesting and different talks put on by the Scottish Morning Star Campaign Committee as part of their Our Class, Our Culture series, John Quinn of the Glasgow School of Art will be talking about 'Portraying the Red Clydesiders' - with a slightly different angle on Maxton, Maclean, Shinwell, Gallacher et al. These events are always worth attending and manage to give us a interesting and political perspective on culture that we think we know about. Its a free event, so what's not to like?

In other political cultural events, the Southside Fringe Festival has just finished. One of its intriguing

shows was a newly written and composed musical on the 1888 Matchgirls Strike in London's East End. I say a new musical, because it seems that this strike has been the inspiration for two earlier musicals. In the 1960's both Joyce Adcock and Gordon Caleb (Strike a Light), and Bill Owen and Tony Russell (The Matchgirls) wrote musical treatments of the dispute, one of which (Strike a Light) played Glasgow's Alhambra Theatre in 1966.

Be that as it may, writer, Fatima Uygun says she deliberately didn't look at either until after she had written her own! The show - which played in The Steamie - part of Govanhill Baths was successful overall, but there are some elements that need attention, as I say in my review in the Morning Star - here. The cast and musicians are well worth some more exposure.