![[Go up a level]](../../common/elements/badge.gif "Go up a level"){kind=icon}
![[Send E-mail]](../../common/icons/email.gif){kind=icon}
The Kirsty MacColl web site
Strange Facts
This section is about politics.
Over the years she did much to support the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, including an annual Valentines Day benefit concert in London. Despite not being "a commie like my dad", Kirsty first flew to the Island in 1992 because of a desire to "visit somewhere which was still Communist" in the wake of the Berlin Wall being torn down three years earlier.
Also in 1992, Kirsty flew to the Gaza Strip with other artists including Julie Christie, Charlotte Cornwell and Richard Wilson in support of educational and social programmes for Palestinians, largely confined to reguee camps in the Occupied Territories. The group highlighted human rights abuses in the region.
She sang her father's song Schooldays O'er with Billy Bragg at benefit for Tower Colliery in 1993, at Bragg's suggestion, as the colliery struggled to stay alive in the aftermath of the Miners Strike. Note that Bragg's biography is subtitled Still Suitable for Miners.
Kirsty regularly performed in assorted benefit gigs ranging from hospitals to victims of injustice including Robert Hillman, an Irish Catholic "kicked to death" in 1997. In 1998 she (along with actor Ross Kemp) rebelled to call for assurances from the government that the minimum wage would also apply to workers who were younger than 26.
See the Radio and Television sections for other work raising the general awareness of the populace. Songs like Still life and Free world cast a withering eye over eighties Britain. She was a big fan of Margaret Thatcher you know.
© freeworld 1995 - 2008 [ www.kirstymaccoll.com ]
Style [ Standard ] [ Cool Blue ] [ Tropical ] [ Hangover ] [ Text ] [ BIG Text ]