MARY BROOKSBANK.........AN INSPIRING LIFE

Mary Brooksbank is the Poet Laureate of Dundee's Working Class. She was actually born in Aberdeen but she moved to the City when she was eight years old and, before she was fourteen she was shifting bobbins at the Baltic Jute Mill. In those days, just before the First World War, life was hard and life was earnest for Dundee's lower paid citizens. Mary worked twelve hour shifts, starting at 6a.m for the princely sum of 7/6d. She was tiny and partially deaf, but

when it came to fighting for the rights of the working class, she was a veritable lioness. In 1919 she founded the Working Women's Guild to fight for better health and Social Services for Dundee's Women. In 1923 Cox's Jute Mill, the largest in the city, installed new machinery which required fewer workers and a campaign against the redundancies was led by the militant Dundee Jute and Flax Worker's Union. There was a 50,000 strong demonstration in the Albert Square followed by a jute worker's lock out which lasted eight weeks. In the face of this hardship Mary moved to Glasgow to find work as a domestic servant. There she met and married Ernest Brooksbank, a skilled tailor, and in 1924 the young couple moved back to Dundee. Mary was heavily involved in the campaign against unemployment in Dundee in the 1930's. In this capacity she worked closely with noted Dundee Communists, such as Frank McLusker who fought in the Spanish Civil War, Johnny Rourke, James Littlejohn and Tom Clarke who, like Mary, actually worked in the Jute Mills. From her earliest days in the mills Mary wrote songs and poems about that world and the plight of the ordinary workers - the most famous of which was the Jute Mill Song which begins with the line "Oh, dear me, the mill is running fast". After a meeting with the celebrated singer Ewan McColl who was deeply impressed with her work, she made many appearances on Radio and T.V. and later, a collection of her poems, "Sidlaw Breezes", was published "Oh dear me, the world's ill divided Them that work the hardest, are wi the least provided But I maun bide contented; dark days or fine But there's no much pleasure livin affen ten & nine. From the "Jute Mill Song" by Mary Brooksbank