Editing Ewan MacColl (section)

==Early life and early career==
MacColl was born as James Henry Miller at 4 Andrew Street, in [[Broughton, Salford|Broughton]], [[County Borough of Salford|Salford]], England, on 25 January 1915<ref name="Oxford">{{cite ODNB |last=Denselow |first=Robin |date=13 November 2018 |title=MacColl, Ewan [formerly James Henry Miller]: (1915–1989) |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=40664&back |access-date=4 January 2025 |publisher= |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/40664}}</ref> to [[Scottish people|Scottish]] parents, William Miller and Betsy (née Henry), both [[socialist]]s. William Miller was an [[iron moulder]] and trade unionist who had moved to Salford with his wife, a [[charwoman]], to look for work after being blacklisted in almost every foundry in [[Scotland]].<ref name="Seeger">{{cite web|url=http://www.peggyseeger.com/ewan-maccoll/ewans-biography|title=Ewan's Biography|website=Peggyseeger.com|access-date=23 September 2009}}</ref> Betsy Miller knew many traditional folk songs such as "[[Lord Randall]]"<ref>{{Cite web|title=Lord Randall (Roud Folksong Index S182615)|url=https://www.vwml.org/record/RoudFS/S182615|access-date=2020-11-14|website=The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library|language=en-gb}}</ref> and "[[The Trees They Grow So High|My Bonnie Laddie's Lang A-growing]]",<ref>{{Cite web|title=My Bonnie Laddie's Lang A-growing (Roud Folksong Index S184565)|url=https://www.vwml.org/record/RoudFS/S184565|access-date=2020-11-14|website=The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library|language=en-gb}}</ref> of which her son later created written and audio recordings; he later recorded an album of traditional songs with her.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Betsy Miller discography|url=https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/betsy_miller|access-date=2020-11-14|website=RateYourMusic}}</ref>{{deprecated source|certain=y|date=November 2024}}

James Miller was the youngest and only surviving child in the family of three sons and one daughter (one of each sex was [[stillborn]] and one son died at the age of four).<ref name="Oxford" /> They lived amongst a group of Scots and Jimmy was brought up in an atmosphere of fierce political debate interspersed with the large repertoire of songs and stories his parents had brought from Scotland. He was educated at Grecian Street School, [[Salford]], England.<ref name="Oxford" /> He left school in 1930 after an elementary education, during the [[Great Depression]] and, joining the ranks of the unemployed, began a lifelong programme of self-education whilst keeping warm in [[Manchester Central Library]]. During this period he found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer.<ref name="Seeger" />

He joined the [[Young Communist League (Britain)|Young Communist League]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://wcml.org.uk/maccoll/maccoll/maccoll/biography/getting-active/|title=Getting active|website=Wcml.org.uk|access-date=7 October 2019}}</ref> and a socialist amateur theatre troupe, the [[The Clarion (British newspaper)|Clarion]] Players. He began his career as a writer helping produce and contributing humorous verse and skits to some of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain|Communist Party's]] factory papers. He was an activist in the unemployed workers' campaigns and the mass trespasses of the early 1930s. One of his best-known songs, "[[The Manchester Rambler]]", was written just before the pivotal [[mass trespass of Kinder Scout]].<ref name="Oxford" /> He was responsible for publicity in the planning of the trespass.<ref>{{cite journal | jstor=25472794 | title='The Manchester Rambler': Ewan MacColl and the 1932 Mass Trespass | author=Harker, Ben | journal=History Workshop Journal | year=2005 | volume=Spring | issue=59 | pages=219–228| doi=10.1093/hwj/dbi016 | s2cid=154501683 }}</ref>

In 1932 the British intelligence service, [[MI5]], opened a file on MacColl, after local police asserted that he was "a communist with very extreme views" who needed "special attention".<ref name="BBC">{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4772328.stm|title=Why MI5 monitored singer Ewan MacColl|last=Casciani|first=Dominic|work=BBC News|access-date=22 September 2009|date=5 March 2006}}</ref> For a time the [[Special Branch (Metropolitan Police)|Special Branch]] kept a watch on the Manchester home that he shared with his first wife, [[Joan Littlewood]]. MI5 caused some of MacColl's songs to be rejected by the [[BBC]], and prevented the employment of Littlewood as a BBC children's programme presenter (see: [["Christmas tree" files]]).<ref>{{Cite web|last=Goodchild|first=Sophie|date=5 March 2006|title='Radical' Ewan MacColl was tracked by MI5 for decades|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/radical-ewan-maccoll-was-tracked-by-mi5-for-decades-6107566.html|access-date=2021-11-13|website=The Independent|language=en}}</ref>