Manchester's Radical History How Hyde
7/1/2021 Manchester's Radical History – Exploring Greater Manchester's Grassroots History Manchester's Radical History Exploring Greater Manchester's Grassroots History NOVEMBER 30, 2013 BY SARAH IRVING How Hyde ‘Spymasters’ looked for Commies on BBC Children’s Hour By Derek Paison Salford born folk singer and song- writer Ewan MacColl is remembered today more for his music than his agit-prop plays. But it was his political activities before the last war and his membership of the Communist Party that led to MI5 opening a file on him in the 1930s and why they kept him, and his friends, under close surveillance. Secret service papers released by the national archives, now in Ashton-under-Lyne central library, offer a clue into how British intelligence (MI5) spied on working-class folk singer Ewan MacColl and his wife playwright, Joan Lilewood, who lived at Oak Coage on Higham Lane, Hyde, Cheshire, during World War II. MI5 opened a file on James Henry Miller (MacColl’s real name) in the early 1930s when he was living in Salford. As an active Communist Party member, he had been involved in the unemployed workers’ campaigns and in the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in Derbyshire. Before enlisting in the army in July 1940, he had wrien for the radio programme Children’s Hour. In Joan Lilewood’s autobiography, she writes: “Jimmie was registered at the Labour Exchange as a motor mechanic, but he did beer busking, singing Hebridean songs to cinema queues. Someone drew Archie Harding’s aention to him and from that time on he appeared in the North Region’s features (BBC) whenever a ‘proletarian’ voice was needed.” As a BBC presenter for Children’s Hour and Communist Party member, Lilewood also came under the watch of MI5.
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