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Showing posts from September, 2025

A Greenock Spark That Lit the Hammers’ Flame

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  For we long-suffering Scots Hammers — and especially those of us who are Greenock-born devotees of West Ham United — today is a day of quiet reverence, almost sacred in its significance. For on this date, the 17th of September 2025, we mark the bicentenary of the birth of Donald Currie — Greenock born on the same day in 1825, and departed this life in 1909.   Currie was an industrialist of formidable energy, a shipowner whose vessels stitched together the trade routes of empire, a parliamentarian, and later a generous philanthropist. But for us, who trace our loyalties not through stock markets or shipping ledgers but through claret and blue veins, his most luminous legacy lies elsewhere: as the first chairman, founder and financier of Old Castle Swifts F.C.   The Swifts were a works team, forged in 1892 from the sweat and sinew of Scottish shipyard workers toiling in West Ham, East London. When the club dissolved in 1895, its embers did not die. Instead, they wer...

Drei Pfeile - Yesterday, Today and Forever

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  "Gentlemen, the time will come when men must stand or fall by their actions – when all human pageantry shall cease – when the hearts of all will be laid open" Thomas Muir of Huntershill Ever since the days of the Iron Front ( Eiserne Front) in 1930's Germany, Christian Socialists, Democratic Socialists, Social Democrats, Anti-Fascists and Trade Unionists have rallied to the Three Arrows symbol ( Drei Pfeile). The three arrows represents our left-wing opposition to the extremism of Monarchism, Nazism and Communism,  in defence of democracy.   I was recently reminded of the Three Arrows and the Iron Front while reading former Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard's semimetal tribute to Scottish Communist Willie Gallacher. You can watch the entire nauseating video here   https://fb.watch/ATdEgPfiIz/ The FB post alongside the video is entitled ' Communism is the philosophy of hope and faith in humanity'. O f course, Communism is not the hope and faith in hum...