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During the Second World War thousands of women served with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) or the Timber Corps. In this book 19 Scotswomen who served in the war tell their stories. The women, born between 1918 and 1926, and interviewed between 1998 and 2005, came from towns and villages throughout Scotland. The 1939–45 War plucked many women from their normal lives and thrust them into very different and dangerous experiences. Leaving her job in a baker's shop in Glasgow, one woman found herself early in 1945 on a troopship heading for Naples; another, as an officer in the WRNS, crossed the Atlantic three times. One woman escaped death when 26 of her ATS colleagues were killed at Yarmouth by a German bomber. Despite the danger, many women formed close and lasting friendships, and for some the war years were the happiest of their lives. These fascinating stories of wartime women, told in their own words, vividly convey the important and varied roles that women played during the war.
Newspaper journalism is a romantic profession. The men and women who wrote for newspapers in the twentieth century started work in a 'Hold the front page!' atmosphere: hot metal, clicking typewriters and inky fingers. In this fascinating collection, the latest in the Scottish Working People's History Trust series, Ian MacDougall has captured the memories of 22 veteran journalists from a wide range of newspapers all over Scotland, some local, some national. The earliest entrant started work in 1929, just before the Great Depression, the latest in the mid 1950s. Their accounts, like so much of oral history, describe a physical world we have almost lost sight of since the computer revolution. B...
For almost 150 years until the late twentieth century, French Onion Johnnies (or 'Ingan Johnnies', as they were usually known in Scotland) were a familiar group of seasonal workers in towns and cities throughout Britain.In this book, nine Onion Johnnies (including one 'Jenny') who worked in Scotland at one time or another between the 1920s and the 1970s recount their lives. The recollections, recorded in interviews in Brittany and at Leith in 1999 by the Scottish Working People's History Trust, provide a fascinating insight into the lives and experience of those whose livelihood and way of life have vanished forever. It paints a poignant picture of the past and a way of life about nothing in any detail has ever been published before.
In this fascinating collection, Ian MacDougall has captured the memories of 22 veteran journalists from a wide range of newspapers all over Scotland, some local and some national. The earliest entrant started work in 1929, just before the Great Depression, the latest entrant began a career in the mid-1950s. Their accounts, like so much of oral history, describe a physical world we have almost lost sight of since the computer revolution. But it was a different social world too: it would be unusual for school leavers today to start work as copy-boys running out for cigarettes or filling gluepots for their scary older colleagues. Journalists had to turn their hands to anything from flower shows to air raids, from Hess's landing near Eaglesham to royal visits; and women often had to fight their corner to get started as young reporters. Virtually all these journalists made their way from humble backgrounds, drawn by the desire for an exciting rather than a safe job--and above all one full of human interest.
This book is an oral history of life and work in the Scottish Borders village of Lilliesleaf, based on interviews recorded in 1991-4 with 24 of its oldest inhabitants. They include farm, forestry and sawmill workers, shopworkers and domestic servants, the main local landowner, wartime Land Girls and a wartime evacuee. In their own words they describe daily life and work; social, political, religious and cultural activities; changes in farming practices; the huge impact of two World Wars; the closure of village shops as car ownership and supermarkets spread; and the rising cost of village housing, pushing younger villagers into the towns. Popular local practices, such as poaching and the annu...
Resistance is the first volume of a projected three volume history of the Democratic Socialist party and the youth organisation Resistance, which today constitute the main current of the Australian far left. This volume covers the tumultuous period from 1965 to 1972.
A biography and part autobiography of the life of Ian Dixon MacDougall, and of the lives of those extraordinary Australians who shaped his life or walked with him. This is a book that captures the spirit of the social, political and cultural life of 20th Century Australia, bringing the reader face to face with striking shearers, the Suffragettes, a volatile but brilliant threatre director, Communist dictators, a host of creative artists, writers and the large cohort of activists and ASIO agents during the Protest Years of the 1960s. It also takes takes the reader into the bohemian haunts of Sydney, through the 1970s counterculture and the folk music revival and finally out onto the Western P...
A People's History of Scotland looks beyond the kings and queens, the battles and bloody defeats of the past. It captures the history that matters today, stories of freedom fighters, suffragettes, the workers of Red Clydeside, and the hardship and protest of the treacherous Thatcher era. With riveting storytelling, Chris Bambery recounts the struggles for nationhood. He charts the lives of Scots who changed the world, as well as those who fought for the cause of ordinary people at home, from the poets Robbie Burns and Hugh MacDiarmid to campaigners such as John Maclean and Helen Crawfurd. This is a passionate cry for more than just independence but also for a nation based on social justice. Fully updated to include the rise of the SNP post 2014.