3 Articles by:
Ewan Gibbs is the author of Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland (University of London Press, 2021).
Scottish miners’ leader Mick McGahey was born on this day in 1925. A fearless trade unionist, he brought Scottish miners down to Grunwick to stand with Asian women, championed internationalism, and, in his own words, was a product of his class and movement.
Poor Things is a scabrous satire of the stifling rationalism and oppressive hierarchies of class, imperialism and gender which propelled Glasgow’s rapid industrialisation in the nineteenth century. But it is also a universal story.
Douglas Stuart’s acclaimed novel Shuggie Bain paints a compelling picture of the dying days of industrial Clydeside, but its success owes much to a formal conservatism and political quietism.