💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › stuart-christie-the-sash-hector-macmillan.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:53:48. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Sash, Hector MacMillan Author: Stuart Christie Date: 1974 Language: en Topics: Black Flag, review, Kate Sharpley Library Source: Retrieved on August 15, 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/7pvnw9 Notes: From: Black Flag, vol.3, no.15. (November 1974).
In Glasgow’s Pavilion Theatre you would not expect to see a play like
THE SASH MY FATHER WORE by Hector MacMillan. Folks go there to see
pantomime more than biting satires. And one has to admire the courage of
the actors who can get up in Glasgow and tear into their lines that
strip the Orange and Papist legends down to their pubic hair. It’s about
a stalwart Orangeman who finds to his dismay his long haired son is
falling away from the faith of his fathers and the bits of realisation
start coming out … only fourteen miles from Scotland to Ireland… “Christ
it’s three times that f’Glasgow t’Edinburgh” and did you know “King
William there ‘of blessed memory’ … that’s the man who wis responsible
for the massacre of Glencoe … your folk, the Macdonalds! that lousy
bastart signed the order they were aw t’be exterminated … it wis
supposed to be a great Prodisant victory at the Battle o the Boyne …
Right? Then how come the Pope gied King Billy a big pat on the back for
it? They lit up the Vatican like the fukn Blackpool illuminations!” You
need courage to get up and say that in Glasgow … though by Christ you’d
need more than that to get up and say it in Belfast. There were ooos in
the Glaswegian audience at the conclusion that “we should fling the hale
fucking religious thing oot the fucking windae” (possibly as much at the
adjectives as at the sentiment) but packed audiences laughing their
heads off at the Orange-Papist thing is an encouraging sign for Glasgow,
however long it takes to get round to Belfast that as much in their
prejudices and stupidity as in their obduracy and working class
loyalties there’s no difference between the workers whichever foot they
kick with.
The moral for Belfast is obvious. As far as Glasgow is concerned, it’s
no mean city for razor gangs and muggings and senseless violence. But it
isn’t the workers who follow the long socialist tradition who are
responsible – not the socialists, not the communists, not the
anarchists. Not the freethinkers and atheists who have for so long
preached the word was hooey on Glasgow Green… It’s your sun shines out
your arsehole Christians who go around with their orange or their green
scarfs who wield the broken bottles at the football match and in the
dreary back street. For them all concepts of morality are founded on a
god they know is a lie for all that matters about Jesus is was he a
Billy or a Dan.
The Sash My Father Wore: a Play, Hector MacMillan, Molendinar Press,
1974.