Ewan MacColl: radio and television work
1933 Jimmie Miller got his start in radio thanks to Archie Harding of BBC Manchester.
1933 May Day in England by D.G. Bridson: He had the part of an actor in this programme.
1934 He wrote and took part in a programme celebrating the songs of Robert Burns.
1936 The Lancashire Witches : first radio script written for the North Regional Service. Produced by Olive Shapley.
1937 - 38 Politics : third in a series of one-hour programmes entitled News of a Hundred Years Ago . Produced by John Pudney.
The Seafarers : second in a series entitled Lines on the Map , dealing with communications. Broadcast on the Empire Service of the BBC. Produced by John Pudney.
Westwards from Liverpool : a feature on emigration, produced by John Pudney.
1938 - 39 The Chartists' March : a feature in which actors in the BBC studios of Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham and London told the story of the march of the Chartists in 1838. Produced by John Pudney.
Northern Nationalities : six half-hour features dealing with the music and songs of Scots, Irish, Sephardic Jews, Ukrainians and Arabs living in the North of England. Compiled and produced by Jimmie Miller.
1947 Pleasant Journey : six documentary features written in collaboration with Joan Littlewood as vehicles for the comedian Wilfred Pickles. Produced by Olive Shapley.
1948 The Song Collector . the record of a folk song collecting trip in Teesdale, Yorkshire. Produced by Olive Shapley.
Scouse : a radio portrait of Liverpool, depicted in songs and music. Produced by Denis Mitchell.
1952 St. Cecilia and the Shovel . a feature dealing with industrial folk songs, written for the BBC Third Programme. Produced by Reggie Smith.
1953 Ballads and Blues , six feature programmes dealing with various themes: the sea, war and peace, the brutal city, love, railways, crime and criminals. The object of the series was to show how the British and the North Americans dealt with these subjects in their indigenous songs. Produced by Denis Mitchell for the Home Service and repeated on the Light Programme years later.
1957-1964 The Radio Ballads
1964 The : a programme of contemporary Scots poetry broadcast on the Third Programme. Produced by D.G. Bridson.
1968 Popular Poetry of the Elizabethan Era : two programs written for the Open
University. Produced by John Gilbert.
The Song Carriers : twelve half-hour programmes of Scots, Irish and English traditional song. Devised by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. produced by Charles Parker.
1980s Parsley, Sage and Politics : three hours of talk and song, edited in the Radio-Ballad style by Mary Orr and Michael O'Rourke. An unusually informative set of programmes about the lives of Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl.
Television
1962 Sing in the New : singing out the old year and welcoming in the new. Script written with Peggy Seeger for Granada Television.
1964 An Impression of Love : an impressionistic portrait of lovers and their songs. Script written with Peggy Seeger. Directed by Adrian Malone, Grampian Television, Aberdeen.
1966
The Irishmen :about the Irish workers who participated in the building of the Victoria Underground Line in London. Ewan wrote the songs, Peggy arranged them for singers and instrumentalists and the program was conceived and produced by Philip Donnellan for the BBC. Thought to be too brutal for public viewing, it was never broadcast. It is now available on video (see Charles Parker Archive ).
songs:
The New Rocks of Bairn
Farewell to Ireland
The Rambler From Clare
Rambling Irishman
Dublin Jack of All Trades
Indeed I Would
Nipper's Song
The Tunnel Tigers
Van Diemen's Land 1965
1983 The Stewarts of Blairgowrie : a portrait of a Scots travelling family.
Directed by Philip Donnellan.
1985 Daddy, What Did You Do in the Strike? : an hour-long program on Ewan. Granada Television, produced and directed by David Boulton.
1990 The Ballad of Ewan MacColl : a posthumous program on Ewan, produced by
Tim May, BBC.
NOTE Between 1954 and 1972, MacColl wrote music and songs for a number of TV programs. including Before the Mast, Singing the Fishing, The Fight Game, Coventry Kids . All of these were produced by the BBC.
The B.B.C. Written Archives at Chatham House contains papers and correspondence with Ewan from 1936 until the 1960's. For access to these write to B.B.C. Written Archive Centre, Caversham Park, Reading, Berkshire. RG4 8TZ : 0118 946 9282 (Internal; 061 282), Fax: 0118 9461145
Access to the Written Archives Centre is limited to academic researchers or writers engaged on work accepted for publication.
Appointments to look at the material should be made well in advance, as research places are limited to five per day and tend to be booked for several weeks in advance.