Willie Black – The NEN – North Edinburgh News

A message from North Edinburgh: Never Give Up!

Thanks to everyone who came along the National Gallery yesterday to take part in the Resistance – North Edinburgh panel discussion.

It was great to see so many old friends and colleagues and a pleasure to meet new ones too. Participants were not only from North Edinburgh, ‘outsiders’ were also welcomed: we had Leithers, we had folk from Gorgie, Stockbridge and a wee crowd from Wester Hailes too.

But there’s got to be a special mention for one particular online viewer – he was watching from Sydney, Australia (or maybe it was just a bloke called Sidney?)!

Wherever and however you were watching, though, I hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as we did. As you know we went slightly over our allotted time (at one point I thought we might have to apply for a late license!) and we appreciate the organisers at the National Gallery allowing us some leeway.

Even so, I know there was a lot more to share so apologies if you didn’t get the opportunity to ask your question – if it’s any consolation I know I didn’t get to ask half of mine!

Our hope before the event was that it would be informative, interesting and enjoyable and a celebration of vibrant communities, and I think we got there.

I’d like to think we could do it all again one day before too much longer, before we all get just too old and our memories and recollections of events, experiences and the characters who have helped to shape North Edinburgh’s proud history dim and fade.

And if there’s just one message to remember, it’s this: NEVER GIVE UP!

DAVE P

See below for a recording of the event

https://youtu.be/Zc5kFwp-XaY

The celebration continued at the National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street, where the Solidarity Wins: Creative Resistance in North Edinburgh exhibition was launched after an excellent lunch provided by North Edinburgh’s very own Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts.

The exhibition was created by a local collaboration of North Edinburgh Arts’ Art for Grown Up in partnership with Royston Wardieburn Community Centre’s Arts & Culture Group and features art works, music, archive films and research material.

The exhibition will be on display in the Portrait Gallery’s Contemporary Space until – do visit if you can.

And to end the day on a high note, there was music from the Resistance Choir – a new song, no less!

SOLIDARITY WINS: A SONG FOR GREATER PILTON may not become the Christmas Number 1, but it definitely struck the right note with Portrait Gallery punters yesterday!

All together now:

We all come from somewhere and now we’re all here …

PICTURES: CRAIG MCLEAN

RESISTANCE: North Edinburgh Fights Back

NORTH EDINBURGH ACTIVISTS GO TO TOWN

NORTH Edinburgh community activists are taking their message to town this afternoon with two events taking place at art galleries in the city centre.

The events have been built around artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen’s RESISTANCE photo exhibition, which runs at the Modern 2 gallery on Belford Road until 4th January.

First up, community stalwarts Anna Hutchison and Willie Black will reflect on campaigns past and present in a panel discussion in the National Gallery at 12.45.

With so many years of campaigning experience Anna and Willie have a host of stories to share and, having known the pair for the best part of thirty years, I’ll be there to try to keep the event running to time!

The free event is sold out, but you can still register to watch online.

Later in the afternoon, two North Edinburgh groups have been working together on an ambitious project that encapsulates North Edinburgh’s spirit of resistance.

The result of the collaboration is the Solidarity Wins: Creative Resistance in North Edinburgh exhibition, which opens at The Portrait Gallery on Queen Street from 2pm today (details below).

It promises to be very good and it’s free – don’t miss it!

The details of today’s events:

RESISTANCE|NORTH EDINBURGH PANEL DISCUSSION

Free – Booking essential SOLD OUT

Book tickets

PICTURE: Craig McLean, Outside Drylaw Police station, community campaign GRASP protesting against Police harassment and violence, 2001

The Resistance exhibition chronicles 100 years of protest across Britain from 1903–2003. Using the exhibition as a starting point, activists Willie Black and Anna Hutchison alongside chair Dave Pickering, editor of the North Edinburgh News and Information Worker at Granton Information Centre, discuss North Edinburgh community activism, campaigns and actions, and their relationship and solidarity with local, national and international protests and change.

All tickets for the live event have been snapped up, but you can watch the discussion online in a streamed version of the live event.

Ticketholders will be sent a joining link before the event to either watch live or view the recording later.

SOLIDARITY WINS: CREATIVE RESISTANCE in NORTH EDINBURGH

Solidarity Wins: Creative Resistance in North Edinburgh Exhibition Launch

2pm – 4pm

National Galleries of Scotland, The Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, EH2 1J

Celebration with food, song and creative activities in the Contemporary Space of the Portrait Gallery. Art works, archive films and research material gathered by Art for Grown Ups and Royston Wardieburn Arts & Culture Group.

Join us for an afternoon of creativity, community and conversation celebrating North Edinburgh’s spirit of resistance.

As part of the Resistance exhibition, the National Galleries of Scotland’s Community Development programme has been working with North Edinburgh groups to create responsive work inspired by the area’s long history of community resistance.

Workshops have included song writing, poetry, photo-montage and exploring photographer Craig MacLean’s back catalogue of North Edinburgh activism, all of which will result in an riso-graph exhibition at the Portrait gallery in November.

As well as this North Edinburgh Arts worked with Local Cinema to programme films as part of their ‘Local Resistance’ programme.

Each screening event included a creative element, one of which included the Resistance choir performing their collaboratively penned song ‘Solidarity Wins: A Song for Greater Pilton‘, along with some well known songs on power of solidarity and friendship.

Thanks to song writing facilitator and choir leader Penny Stone and Tinderbox Jed Milroy and artists Sam Rutherford, Jj Fadaka and Megan Rudden, and all those involved so far!

The programme is a partnership with North Edinburgh Arts Art 4 Grown Ups and Royston Wardieburn Community Centre’s Arts and Culture Group.

IMAGE (above): Collaborative piece by Art 4 Grown Ups members, framed by Muirhouse anti-racism campaign image, 1991.

If anyone is free 2 – 4pm today, it’s the launch of ‘Solidarity Wins: Creative Resistance in North Edinburgh‘ exhibition at the Portrait Gallery, which has been a collaboration between North Edinburgh Arts’ Art 4 Grown Ups project and Royston Wardieburn Community Centre’s Arts and Culture Group (writes HOLLY YEOMAN).

Together they have reflected and responded to North Edinburgh activism and campaigns over the years. There is a community lunch catered by Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts and we will be singing our anthem ‘Solidarity Wins: A Song for Greater Pilton‘ at around 3pm-ish(!)

The exhibition will run till April, and we welcome community groups who might want to visit. If interested please email hyeoman@nationalgalleries.org

Holly Yeoman

Victory for campaigners fighting to defend the right to protest

WILLIE BLACK CLEARED

ANTI-WAR campaigners won their own battle yesterday when the Procurator Fiscal dropped charges against North Edinburgh activist Willie Black.

Protesters celebrated outside Edinburgh Sheriff Court on the news that three charges of organising illegal protests had been dropped.

A victory for those campaigning to defend the Right to Protest.

For Activists Past, Present and Future

PLAQUE UNVEILED AT ROYSTON WARDIEBURN COMMUNITY CENTRE

ROYSTON Wardieburn Community Centre’s management committee organised the unveiling of a plaque to mark North Edinburgh’s proud record of community activism on the eve of International Women’s Day.

RWCC Chair Billy Fitzpatrick, Willie Black and Cathie Ahmed were among the local people who spoke movingly and contributed poems on a special day.

The new plaque is situated alongside the cherry blossom tree planted to commemorate local activist Roberta Blaikie, and it was fitting that members of Roberta’s family attended to perform the unveiling just as the tree begins to bud once again.

Never Give Up! Talk at City Art Centre

TUESDAY 14th FEBRUARY 1pm at CITY ART CENTRE

Never Give Up: Gallery Talk in Association with the Exhibition ‘Paul Duke: No Ruined Stone’

Join us for a talk with Lynn McCabe from Royston and Wardieburn Community Centre and Willie Black a passionate local activist from North Edinburgh.

North Edinburgh has been a hotbed of community activism for decades. ‘Never Give Up’, was a book produced by North Edinburgh Social History Group in 2011 – a panoramic account of community activism in North Edinburgh, highlighting the previously largely ignored and barely mentioned community areas of Pilton, Drylaw, Royston, Wardieburn, Granton and Muirhouse.

Lynn McCabe reflects on how this publication is still deeply relevant today and Willie Black talks about North Edinburgh today, and shares positive stories from this vibrant and resilient Edinburgh community.

EVENT IS FREE but booking is essential.

https://online1.venpos.net/ConsumerSite/VisitDateTime?LID=548&PID=2c0db03f-057f-4cb3-b76f-138dfa22e01f&LNG=en&VD=2023-02-14T00%3A00%3A00

While we hope to run this event in the City Art Centre, we may have to adapt to the situation at the time and the event may need to move to digital. Book via the link or by phoning the City Art Centre on 0131 529 3993.

NEVER GIVE UP: Free talk about community activism in Greater Pilton

The story of North Edinburgh’s fight for social justice goes up the toon!

Join Edinburgh Museums for a talk with Lynn McCabe from Royston and Wardieburn Community Centre and Willie Black a passionate local activist from North Edinburgh.

Lynn McCabe reflects on how this publication is still deeply relevant and Willie Black talks about North Edinburgh today, and shares positive stories from this vibrant and resilient Edinburgh community.

Lynn and Willie’s NEVER GIVE UP talk takes place on 14 February – Valentine’s Day – at the City Art Centre at 2pm but you can book your free tickets NOW

https://online1.venpos.net/ConsumerSite/VisitDateTime?LID=548&PID=2c0db03f-057f-4cb3-b76f-138dfa22e01f&LNG=en&VD=2023-02-14T00%3A00%3A00

Edinburgh Museums tweeted:

‘We are delighted to be involving North #Edinburgh Communities at the heart of our public events programmes for our Paul Duke Photography exhibition. This talk is by Lynn from

@RoystonWardieCC and Willie a well-known local activist. FREE

https://edinburghmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/never-give

Sorry We Missed You: screening and panel discussion

THURSDAY 21st NOVEMBER at CAMEO CINEMA

5:45 – 8.45pm

Join us for a special screening of Ken Loach’s new film Sorry We Missed You followed by a panel discussion. Continue reading Sorry We Missed You: screening and panel discussion

And a song for May Day

North Edinburgh activist Willie Black has been immortalised in song!

Lifelong socialist Willie (pictured below), who’s from Granton, hit the national headlines back in March when he famously harangued DWP minister Iain Duncan Smith at an Edinburgh hotel. The story made the national news broadcasts and proved to be a big internet hit, and the incident has now been captured in ‘The Ratbag Song’, which you can hear here:

It’s thought unlikely that Citizen Smart, the song’s composer and performer, will be appearing on ‘The Voice’ any time soon!

Left wing firebrand and IDS are ‘old chums’

Left wing campaigner Willie Black (pictured above) hit the headlines last week when he branded Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith a ‘scumbag’ at a conference in Edinburgh’s posh George Hotel. The Granton man’s attack on the Tory minister was seen by millions on news broadcasts and across social media sites – but what viewers didn’t know is that Black is actually related to some of the noblest families in the land, and that he and Duncan Smith are in fact old friends!

“It’s true”, said retired merchant banker Farquhar Finlay-Cameron. “William does indeed have blue blood in his veins and he can trace his family history back many generations. The Blackstone-Cuthbertson family seat was in the western highlands, as I recall. William and I roomed together at boarding school and he often stayed with our family over the school hols. We got up to some really jolly japes, I can tell you! We lost touch when William went down to Oxford and I went to Cambridge, but we still meet up at the start of the grouse shooting season every year. It was rather a shock to see him attacking IDS on television as I know the pair were inseparable at Oxford – they were known as ‘Laurel and Hardy’! Mother was very upset when she saw William’s outburst on television – he used to have such a cultured voice and she felt he sounded rather uncouth! I shall certainly rib him about this if I see him at Royal Ascot this summer!”

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH 'inseperable' — IAIN DUNCAN SMITH ‘inseperable’

Theatre impresario Sir Cyril Westmacott-Smythe was an Oxford contemporary, studying Classics with ‘Laurel and Hardy’. He recalls: “I was one of the less privileged students but IDS and Wills always treated me as an equal – I remember Wills was kind enough to give me one of his old smoking jackets and the occasional morning suit. He was like that – so generous to us poorer types. I shall always be grateful for his support – and I still treasure the opera glasses Wills and IDS bought me as a graduation gift.

“Oh, we had such fun – there were some memorable characters but Wills and IDS were the life and soul of every soiree. Wills was a particularly good pianist and he and Iain would regularly entertain us with songs from the Gilbert and Sullivan songbook. They were supremely talented and much admired, and I had rather hoped to take the pair up to Edinburgh for the Fringe, as a Hinge and Bracket type duo. Sadly politics prevailed and it wasn’t to be – theatre’s loss was the class struggle’s gain, as it were – although they do say that politics is pantomime, so you could say the chaps are still performing and putting on a show! I do hope to meet up with them at Klosters next winter when we can relive those halcyon days.”

Willie Black claims to be a lifelong socialist and is currently a leading light in the North Edinburgh Fights Back campaign group. One comrade, who asked not to be named, said: “A few of us have had our suspicions about Willie for some time. Aye, he talked a good talk about the working class struggle and that, but when we went for a drink after our meetings he only ever sipped Pimm’s and lemonade. And after one demo when we stopped for chips Willie brought a silver knife and fork out of the pocket of his donkey jacket – and a clean napkin! Aye, some of us had our doubts and we’ve been proved right – another champagne socialist!”

Willie Black – or rather William Blackstone-Cuthbertson – was unavailable for comment, but his friend Rupert suggested he may be salmon fishing on the Balmoral estate with Toby and Crispin.

Iain Duncan Smith was also unavailable for comment but a spokesperson said the minister ‘hopes to do some recreational angling over the Easter holidays’.