DURING a lockdown walk, Glasgow professor and band frontman David Archibald spotted an unusual gravestone. “I had walked up to the monument in Sighthill Cemetery which is dedicated to those who were executed or deported for their role in the Radical Wars,” he explains. “I was familiar with the leaders’ names - Andrew Hardie and John Baird, and James ‘Purly’ Wilson, who was hanged and beheaded in Glasgow Green.
“But when I read the names of those deported to Australia, I spotted ‘Thomas Pike or Pink’.” He added: “It seemed ironic that on a monument dedicated to an important episode in Scottish history there was a lack of clarity about even the names of those deported. “Instantly, I knew that this would be the subject of a new song.
” (Image: Julia Bauer) The Tenementals consists of academics, musicians and artists whose songs explore the radical side of Glasgow’s past. They will release their new song, Peter Pike or Pink, featuring Belle and Sebastian’s Sarah Martin as guest vocalist, on August 2. It is the second single from their forthcoming debut album, which is supported with funds from Glasgow City Heritage Trust and will be out on Strength in Numbers Records in the autumn.
The Tenementals (Image: Holger Mohaupt) The Radical Wars, or Scottish Insurrection, was a huge uprising which made Glasgow’s upper classes and factory bosses tremble in their well-heeled shoes, fearing a French-style revolution was on the cards, but it is rarely included .
