But there you were at the chapp of seven, a little bit room with maybe twenty in’t, chaps and some queans all much of your age, chairs and a table and a chair for the chairman and a picture of a chap above the table that had cheated the barber from birth by his look, that awful coarse old billy Marx. Then Ewan came along and made you sit down, and went back to the table to sit by a lassie, a stuck-up bitch with black hair, fine legs, she’d a pen and a lot of papers afore her. And there was a piano up in the corner with a lad sitting at it, and he started to play and you all got up and sang about England arising, the long, long night was over, though the damn thing had barely yet set in, Christ, what a perfect fool you felt not knowing the words, a quean next you pushed a book in your hands, smirked at you, trying to get off, would you say? So you made on to sing, glowering about, there was Alick Watson, bawling like a bellows, if England didn’t awake she must be stone deaf, and another chap you’d seen down in Gowans, an older apprentice out of Machines. Syne the singing stopped and down you all sat, and Ewan looked at the stuck-up get and said Miss Johns will now read the minutes.

It was only as the quean was doing that that you knew she was English, Haw-Haw-Really-Quite, and found out what the blasted meeting was about, Ewan and some others were getting up a party for the young in Duncairn, neither Labour nor Communist nor yet in opposition, but to try and keep the two of them working in harness for the general good of the working class, get rid of the cowardice and sloth of Labour and cut out the nonsensical lying of the Communists, the older generation in the workers ‘parties had made an idiot mess of things, it was up to the young to straighten things out, join this new workers’ league in Duncairn. You said to yourself you’d be damned if you would, Christ, they’d have you out with a banner next. But then Ewan stood up and started to speak, quiet, not bawling blue hell like the Reds or cracking soft jokes like a Labour man, but just in an ordinary voice and way, telling what he thought this young league could do to waken up all the young workers in Duncairn, get strong enough till the time might come when it would take over Duncairn itself. First, the membership: they’d twenty or less, what they’d now to discuss was a big drive for members: Six minute speeches, not a minute more, and practical suggestions, not oratory, please.

A red-headed kid of a quean got up, near gave you a fit with what she wanted done—the whole lot go out and march down the Mile with flags and collecting boxes, just, and hold a meeting in the Castlegate. That was the way to win new members and serve the workers…. And you thought she was daft, had she never seen a worker? The Bulgars would laugh and tell her what she wanted was some chap to serve her in another way. Then the lad from Gowans and Gloag’s got up and said what they should do was smuggle a lot of leaflets inside the Shops, and pass them round quiet, you’d get interest that way. And the quean who had given you the glad eye like a Garbo got up and said in a he-haw voice, Christ, another of the bloody toffs, What’s wanted is to advertise the meetings and then hold readings from the great revolutionary poets, beginning with the greatest of all, William Morris. And after that every body was over stunned to say more, except young Ewan, who’d been staring at the roof.