We have seen some historic events in elections in the last year or two, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness sharing power, a smile and a handshake, The SNP coming to Government in Scotland, A black president in the USA.  But we are hoping to add to that tally with what people may think is unlikely, a Solidarity councillor in East Ayrshire.  And, if there is a place to create history then the Ballochmyle ward of East Ayrshire council is the place to do it, there is history in every village, around every corner.  So please indulge me in my pride of my local area and my family with a tour of the ward and it's social history.  It is easy to forget that before we were 'deprived ex-mining communities' we were so much more.
 

Mauchline
When you reach Ballochmyle coming from Glasgow or the West, the first thing you will see is the Burns memorial tower in Mauchline.  Mauchline was where Robert Burns lived when he wrote the bulk of his most famous poems, at Mossgiel farm.  Mauchline was also known as the home of curling stones where the finest stones were made from stone quarried on the Ailsa Craig.  Along the deep Ballochmyle gorge at 'the Howford' some the earliest local history can be seen in the form of iron age 'cup and ring' marks.
 
Catrine
Following along the River Ayr from the gorge will bring you to Nether Catrine House where Burns famously "dinner'd wi' the lord".  The house was also, for a while, the home of Dugald Stewart, the 18th century philosopher who brought his revolutionary ideas back from two years in France, the revolutionary spirit of the times can still be seen in the street names 'Radical Brae' and "Radical Road".  Catrine was designed as a model village, one of the first cotton mills in Scotland, in 1787 by Claude Alexander of Ballochmyle (I think I bought a suit off him 200 years later).  Whats left of the mill town, the voes (reservoirs), weir and water tunnels have been designated a 'scheduled ancient monument'.  They sit alongside the nature reserve at Chapel Brae and Radical Brae.  The former mill's bleachworks have been replaced by a massive whisky and vodka bond and the old house and grounds above the dam are now the famous Daldorch School for Autistic Children.
 
Sorn
Taking the River Ayr Walk eastward from Daldorch School takes us to the small village of Sorn.  Sorn doesnt have much but does have a great wee pub and is a nice place for a stop in summer, a regular winner of 'Britain in Bloom', but it has a less serene and peaceful past being the birthplace of covenanter Alexander Peden.  Peden was a leading covenanter travelling far and wide to spread his gospel and was always on the run so took to wearing a cloth mask and wig, now on display at Edinburgh's Museum of Scotland (right).  Captured by Claverhouse in 1673 he spent 4 years in jail on Bass Rock, a year in Edinburgh Tollbooth and finally, with 60 other Presbyterians, was transported to America.  However the American captain of the ship, when he heard of the reason for the banishment, released them.  Peden returned to Ballochmyle where he spent the rest of his life in hiding between Ayrshire and Ulster, finally dying in 1686 while living in a cave on his brother's farm.
 
Auchinleck
Peden's cave, although in the parish of Sorn, is nearer to what we now call Auchinleck and close to the estate of one James Boswell, famous biographer of Samuel Johnson and decadent, rich fatty.  Auchinleck was one of the last to lose coal as a local industry, Highouse Colliery closed in 1983 and the Barony pit 6 years later, the Barony Power station had closed a few years before.  An monumental A Frame still stands at the site of the Barony as a tribute to the many men who lost their lives in the pits, especially four men whose bodies were never recovered and are still 'doon the pit'.  Perhaps Auchinleck's two most famous icons are Scotland's most succesful Junior Football team, Auchinleck Talbot (you have no idea how painful it was to type that sentence), and the Curries lemonade plant, that made millions for Scottish dentists.
 
Lugar and Logan
Logan has little history as it was built just over 50 years ago to house the families of mineworkers from the former miners rows but it's neighbour, Lugar, more than makes up for it.  A settlement since at least 1,000BC Lugar's 'rocking stone' from the bronze age still stands, a 3 ton stone standing on top of two others, for what reason no-one knows.  William Murdoch, who first converted gas from coal into street lighting was born in Lugar.
 
And it is from Lugar that our area's unique Spanish community came, as well as many Irish and Cornish immigrants.  William Baird who owned the iron works at Lugar and Coatbridge was a notorious employer and didnt tolerate strikes. The influx of Irish miners and then Cornish miners were brought in specifically to break strikes, but then settled in the area.  The Spanish, however, came after the iron mines closed in the 1880's.  The Bairds still mined iron ore in North and South Spain.  Spanish workers were brought in to fill skills gaps lost when the pits closed, and again in a second wave to fill jobs in the first world war.  Their names are still seen in every school in the Cumnock area, Lopez, Donis, Barrera, Carballo, Esquierdo and many more and there probably isnt a family in the area without a spanish connection somewhere in the family tree.  
 
Moss, Moors, Murder & Monaghans
The largest part of the ward is mainly uninhabited but that wasnt always the case, lying between Auchinleck and Lugar, between Sorn and Muirkirk, is where the miners lived and worked before council housing, where covenanters fought and died and where my father's family came from.  At Birnieknowe a large Irish and Scots community existed, known localy as 'the Burnie", a monument stands at the fomer railway to a nun from the local convent school, who was killed on the tracks.  Local historian Dane Love, the foremost voice on local buildings and covenanting memorials, built a house on the site of the convent and little else remains of the various rows like 'commondyke', 'darnconner' and 'poverty row'.  Relatives of mine, the McHargs and Dochertys, left the Burnie in the early 20th century to start a new life in America.  Thankfully, we still keep in touch through my mother's obsession with family history and she visited them in Ohio and Florida last year, shortly after my father's death.  While on that trip, along with our aunt, Agnes Bogle from Lochgelly, my mother met with an uncle Tom Stewart, then a very old man living in a care home in Dayton.  He passed away soon after and was honoured by his local union, the union hall of the UAW Local 696 being dedicated and re-named in his memory.  The dedication led by a certain former president Clinton.  Tom founded the local 696 in 1939 and in 1961 became national organiser for the AFL, walking the fields of California organising farm workers with Cesar Chavez (pictured above).  The plaque on the entrance to the union hall says, as if in reminder to what we are doing now, "Dedicated to Tommy Stewart, a man who exemplified the word solidarity".  This will not be a huge part of local history but to our family it was a proud moment and a testament to working class solidarity that built the strong family links that remain to this day.
 
Travelling across the moors from the Burnie we come to Cronberry, now just 6 former council houses, once a thriving mining community of 3,000 people, where my father was born, and where my Grandfather Jimmy Monaghan, died in Cronberry Moor pit in 1954.
 
From Cronberry the road heads east towards Muirkirk past the scene of 'the Battle of Airds Moss' in 1680, where the rebel leader of the Covenanters, Rev. William Cameron was killed.  As a battle it didnt amount to much or last long.  A 100 strong party of Government troops, marching from Muirkirk to Cumnock, spotted a group of covenanters resting on the moss, and attacked.  Most of the covenanters escaped, nine were killed, including Cameron and his brother, 5 were arrested, 2 of those died from their wounds and 3 were hanged in Edinburgh.  28 Government troops were killed trying to capture or kill Cameron.  It did mark a significant change in the movement though as Cameron had been the most radical and clearest anti-crown voice in the Covenant.
 
Muirkirk
Murikirk is the home of our candidate, Danny Masterton, whose name I remembered from old family stories long before I met him.  On the 19th of November 1957, an explosion at the Kames Colliery in Muirkirk killed 17 men.  I cannot give justice in a blog to the effect of this on the community and would encourage anyone who wants to know the history to visit Johnny Templeton's website at www.muirkirk.org where you can download recorded stories of local people's memory of the disaster.  My mother remembers the panic, she was a young woman working in the planning Department at the National Coal Board, the panic was a desperate 'all hands on deck' 'please dont let it be my fault' shift with planning bosses shaking in their shoes.  My father remembers the funerals.  At the funeral of the Catholic men that died my father heard a man called Danny Masterton (not our one - Danny senior) mutter something les than flattering about the priest as he passed.  After the mass my father asked his brother if the guy was an Orangeman, due to his comments about the priest.  His brother replied "Danny Masterton?  Naw, he's a communist, he said the same about the Minister".
 
Another Danny Masterton, our candidate's son, brought the news cameras back to Muirkirk last year when he was one of the British marines taken prisoner by Iran.
 
Glenbuck
Our Danny was also no stranger to the news in his younger days as a footballer with Clyde and Ayr United, and it is with football that I end our tour, just a few miles on from Muirkirk, at the eastern edge of the ward, on the border of South Lanarkshire, in the former mining village of Glenbuck.  Glenbuck is the birthplace of the legendary Bill Shankly.  Again my family history comes into play as my Grandfather, in 1931, was the coach of Cronberry Eglinton and signed the young Shankly before he left after one season to begin his career in England with Carlisle United, family legend says that, every week, Shankly cycled 8 miles to Cronberry after working a saturday morning shift in the pit, played the best football ever witnessed in the village, and then cycled home again.
 
So, perhaps we won't make history in this by-election, but we are part of history and will always be.  Statues in Liverpool and Edinburgh, Union Halls in Ohio, the philosophy of Stewart, the poetry of Burns and the travels of Boswell still read across the world, all paying tribute to Ballochmyle ward.  But I will leave the final word and summary to Johnny Templeton, poet and creator of the 'Miner's Voices' archive with his classic poem "Thatcher":
 
"When she first came to power in 1979,
we had High-Hoose, Killoch, The Barony and Sorn Mine.
Noo it's twinty years later,
they've shut aw the pits,
and there's nae place in Ayrshire,
fur free towels and buits."
 
Jim Monaghan is the local organiser for Coalfields Solidarity, a branch of Solidarity, Scotland's Socialist Movement founded by workers in local opencast coal mines.