Ewan MacColl

At 74 years old, Ewan MacColl has this physical status:

Early life and early career

Henry Miller was born on 4 Andrew Street in Broughton, England, to Scottish parents William Miller and Betsy (née Henry), both socialists. After being blacklisted in virtually every foundry in Scotland, William Miller, an iron moulder and trade unionist who had migrated to Salford with his wife, a charwoman, to look for jobs. Betsy Miller owned several traditional folk songs, including "Love Me More" and "My Bonnie Laddie's Lang A-Growing," two of which her son later produced written and audio recordings; he later released an album of traditional songs with her.

James Miller was the youngest and only living child in the family of three sons and one daughter (one of each sex was stillborn, and one son died at the age of four). They were brought up in an atmosphere of tense political debate interspersed with the extensive collection of songs and stories his parents acquired from Scotland. He was educated at North Grecian Street Junior School in Broughton. He quit school in 1930 after an elementary education during the Great Depression and, after being unemployed in the ranks, began a lifelong journey of self-education, although keeping warm in Manchester Central Library. He found intermittent work in a variety of trades during this time and also earned money as a street musician.

The Clarion Players, a youth Communist theatre troupe, and the Young Communist League formed him. He began his writing career as a writer, writing and contributing to some of the Communist Party's factory papers, including hilarious verse and skits. He was an agitator in the early 1930s and in the mass trespass of unemployed workers. "The Manchester Rambler," one of his best-known songs, was written just before Kinder Scout's pivotal mass trespass. He was in charge of the trespass's promotion.

Since local police said that he was "a communist with vehement views" who needed "special attention," the British intelligence service, MI5, opened a file on MacColl in 1932. For a time, the Special Branch kept an eye on the Manchester home that he shared with his first wife, Joan Littlewood. The BBC refused some of MacColl's songs, as well as stopped Maggie Wood from appearing as a BBC children's program host (see: "Christmas tree" files).

Acting career

The "Red Megaphones," an agit-prop theatre group formed in 1931 with other unemployed Clarion Players members, formed an agit-prop theatre group. They changed the name to "Theatre of Action" in 1934, only after being introduced to a young actress who has recently migrated from London. Joan Littlewood, who became MacColl's wife and work companion, was pictured here. The couple returned to Manchester in 1936, after a failed attempt to move to London, and formed the Theatre Union. The Last Edition, a 'living newspaper', was suspended in 1940, and MacColl and Littlewood were jailed for two years for breach of the peace. The Theatre Union's needs of wartime brought an end to the production of the theater. MacColl enlisted in the British Army in July 1940, but it was disbanded in December. The reason why he did so and why he wasn't convicted after the war remains a mystery. He was suspended for "anti-fascist inactivity" in an interview in June 1987. MacColl had been exposed to Special Observation whilst in the King's Regiment, owing to his political convictions, and that the facts show that rather than being discharged, he was declared a deserter on December 18, 1940.

Members of Theatre Union and others formed the Theatre Workshop in 1946 and spent the next few years touring, mainly in the north of England. Miller changed his name to Ewan MacColl in 1945 (inspired by Scotland's Lallans).

They had been shared in the Theatre Union, but now, in Theatre Workshop, they were more formalized. Littlewood was the sole producer and MacColl's dramaturge, art director, and resident dramatist. The techniques that had been developed in the Theatre Union were honed, resulting in the production of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop's distinct style of theatre, which was later known. They were an impoverished traveling troupe, but they were still making a name for themselves.

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