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His life & work:

W D Cocker gained some reputation after the war as a journalist and writer of humorous verses in Scots, but the poems written out of his experiences with the Highland Light Infantry and the Royal Scots and as a prisoner of war (from 1917), written in English, are worth inclusion in any anthology of war poetry.

While we do not yet have any biographical details about him, we can indicate his work by mentioning some of his books, and quoting a few lines of his poetry. Poetry included "Dandie and Other Poems" (1925), "Poems Scots and English" (1932), "New Poems" (1949). Other books included the 64-page "Loch Lomond, The Trossachs and Loch Katrine". His plays included the four-act "Folk Frae Condie" (1949) and several one-act plays such as "Gretna Green". He contributed to the 'Daily Record'.

His poem "The Deluge" is an account in Scots of Noah and the Flood - here are two verses (of 20):

"Then doon cam a lashin o rain,
Like the wattest wat day in Lochaber;
The hailstanes like plunkers cam stot,
An the fields turned tae glaur, and syne glabber.

An the burns aa cam doon in a spate,
An the rivers ran clean ower the haughs,
An the brigs were aa soopit awa,
An whit hid been dubs becam lochs."

and a verse from 'The Ploughman's Lament':

I'm fee'd tae a fermer in Fife,
A Renfrewshire lad kens the differ;
It's oh, for a sicht o' the Gryffe,
Or a blink o' the Braes o' Gleniffer!

Dear Sir,
     I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter informing me of the great honour done me by the Members of Irvine Burns Club in electing me an Honorary Member of your old and distinguished Society.
    When I read the names of the august ones who have already been admitted to that fellowship I feel proud indeed.
    I am interested to know of the Original Manuscripts & other relics of the poet which you possess. These are great treasures.
    I am over eighty years of age now, & as one's life draws near the gloaming it is good to receive recognition & to be deemed worthy to follow in the footsteps of Burns.
     Thanking you & all your members for this honour.
     Yours very sincerely
     W D Cocker

The letter replied to that of William Phillips, Hon. Secretary at the time.

His life & work:

Of all the outsiders who accepted Honorary Membership of our Club I recall no other who, from the time of receiving the Honour, accepted the Irvine Burns Club as a deep interest in his life.
Hugh MacDiarmid and his second wife Valda found pleasure in just sitting in the Board Room with the Director on duty (mostly Andrew Hood) studying the Club's Historical Documents.

1963 was a time when Communists were frowned on in Scotland and MacDiarmid was drawn intellectually to the ideas behind the Communist faith. The Directors of the Club at that time had to be persuaded that MacDiarmid's Communism was idealistic and not based on the late leadership and politics of Stalin. They took some time to eventually accept MacDiarmid as an Idealist and agree to his Honorary Membership. In his home town of Langholm it took a long period of assessment before they eventually agreed to erect a memorial in his Memory. MacDiarmid's wife Valda, a sensitive poetess in her own right, sums up the problems of holding intellectual views in a wee Scots town. Her poem about this period in her husband's life has the following verses:

     On his 80th birthday
"Scars there will be in plenty,
Let's hope they'll be in their natural creases,
For your home-town is silent and moonstruck.
Reaching out you find no welcoming hand;
Hell! What need have you to care
You are meeting your 80th year,
Head held high. Haud forrit MacDiarmid;
Like Muhammed Ali - You're the Greatest!"

Hugh MacDiarmid had so much to recommend him as an honorary member of our Club. He was a founder of the Scottish National Party and in this connection he addressed huge audiences in Trafalgar Square in London. On the occasion of the Burns Bicentenary (1959) he toured Eastern Europe giving talks on Robert Burns in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. In 1950 together with the Scottish USSR Friendship Society he visited Russia and made a contribution to the good cause of the Society - U12 International Friendship.

The library of Irvine Burns Club contains books of MacDiarmid's poetry - so many of his poems are in 'Scots' and they are difficult, in today's use of a Universal English, to fully absorb - BUT THEY ARE WORTH THE EFFORT.

In conclusion, as much of MacDiarmid's poetry requires a deep sensitivity and concentration, I offer as an example the following two verses:

     The Fool
He said that he was God
"We are well met", I cried,
"I've always hoped I should
Meet God before I died."
I slew him then and cast
His corpse into a pool
- But how I wish he had
Indeed been God, the fool!

Harry A Gaw (President 1962-1963) - contributed in 2004

Dear Sir,
     Many thanks for your letter of 26th November informing me of the intention of the Irvine Burns Club to elect me as an Honorary Member. I regard this as a very great honour, especially in view 1) of the Club's proud place as having the longest continuous record of any Burns Club in the world, and 2) the very distinguished list of those who have been honoured previously in this way. I look forward to having an opportunity to visit Irvine some time and see the important Burns manuscripts and other treasures belonging to the Club. Please thank your members on my behalf, and accept my high regards and best wishes,
     Yours for Scotland,
     Christopher Murray Grieve
     ("Hugh MacDiarmid")

The letter replied to that of William Phillips, Hon. Secretary at the time.

His life & work:

Maurice Lindsay, after serving in World War II, became a radio broadcaster, and became well known as a poet and as a music critic. His career led to appointment as Programme Controller at Border Television.

He has published very many of his poems and a large number of other books, mainly drawing on his love of poetry and his deep knowledge of Scottish literature and of music. His Collected Poems of 1974 drew on 12 published collections. In 1968, he produced "Robert Burns: the man, his work, the legend". In 1989 he edited Alexander Scott's "The Comic Poems of William Tennant" (Tennant accepted honorary membership of Irvine Burns Club in 1829, and our article about his life and works is available on this site). In 2001, Lindsay published the "Theatre and Opera Lovers Quotation Book". His work on "Castles in Scotland" is also popular.

For students of Burns, the publication of Maurice Lindsay which is probably the most consulted and the one which probably led to his being invited to accept honorary membership is "The Burns Encyclopedia", first published in time for the bicentenary celebrations of 1959. As he wrote in the Introduction to the 3rd edition of 1980, "The purpose of this book remains the furtherance of the enjoyment of Burns' poems and letters by readers who share my own pleasure and delight in them."

The poems in this collection are . . all . . in English. . . . In view of my close association throughout the 'Forties and early 'Fifties with the group of writers known as the Lallans Makars, I think I ought to explain why I have recanted.

Lallans was a brave last-ditch effort to restore to Lowland Scotland its ancient language. It failed to arouse any measure of popular support. During the 'Fifties, the Scots tongue receded more rapidly than ever before under the impact of television, and has now been reduced to a mere matter of local accent. It is utterly unthinkable that this poor wasted and abandoned speech, however rich in theory its poetic potential, can possibly express what there is to be expressed of the Scottish ethos in the age of the beatnik and the hydrogen bomb. The fact is that Lallans has not been used with contemporary significance by any writer during the greater part of the last decade.

We are all Anglo-Scots now, whether we like it or not. The future of Scottish literature must therefore lie with English, albeit English tempered by something of the old Scots roughness of texture. In any case, the only thing that matters is what is being said in relation to the human dilemma.

Dear Mr Phillips,
     Thank you for your letter of 9th January, in which you announce my election as an Honorary Member of Irvine Burns Club. I am deeply touched by the Club's gesture to me, and I shall make a point of accepting your invitation to inspect the Club's possessions when next I am in Irvine.
     As a token of thanks, I should like to add in a small way to these possessions. I am therefore arranging to have sent to you for the Club's library, autographed copies of my two last books of poems, "Snow Warning" and "One Later Day".
     With every good wish for the continuing ancient prosperity of the Irvine Burns Club,
     Yours sincerely,
     Maurice Lindsay

The books mentioned are "Snow Warning and other poems" (Linden Press, Arundel, 1962) and "One Later Day and other poems" (Brookside Press, 1964); the signed books are catalogued respectively as LPL4 and LPL5 in our library.

His life & work:

Tom Dalgleish, the son of a shepherd in Peeblesshire, became head forester at Coldstream, then on the Kilmarnock Estates, before (in 1946) setting up as a free-lance forestry consultant, building up a business which did work all over Britain. His interest in Burns began when he was, as a young man, a member of a church choir.

During ten years as secretary and Treasurer of the Burns Federation, he gave new life to the international aspect of the Federation, bringing to the office his expertise and capacity for management. Highlights of his work were his speeches in America in 1965 and his world tour, including Australia, of Burns Clubs in 1966. The invitation by Irvine Burns Club was prompted by President Sam Gaw, who has since also played a large part in Federation affairs, and can be seen in the light of Tom Dalgleish's worldwide efforts of 1965-66.

In May 1970, by then an OBE, he was honoured by a function to celebrate not only his work for the Federation but also his many kindnesses, hospitality and friendship. The presentation was made by Mrs Jane Burgoyne, senior Vice-President of the Federation.

Dear Mr Phillips,
     Very many thanks for your letter of 10th January 1967 intimating that the Irvine Burns Club have unanimously elected me as an Honorary Member
     Please convey to your President and Members my most grateful thanks for this very high honour which I shall cherish so long as I live.
     This adds to my list one of the oldest Clubs with continued functions since its inception. I have been greatly honoured by Burns Clubs in many parts of the world including Canada, U.S.A., New Zealand and Australia and of course being a past president of Kilmarnock No. 0.
     During my fifty years with close associations with Burnsiana I have reaped rich rewards but none greater than to be made an honorary member of your Burns Club.
     Yours sincerely
     Thos. W Dalgleish

The letter is addressed to Wm Phillips, Esq., MA, FEIS, Hon. Secretary.

His life & work:

< biography to be added >

Dear Hon. Secretary,
     I cannot tell you how delighted and honoured I am to be elected an Honorary Member of Irvine Burns Club - especially as I really cannot claim distinction under any of the categories you name in your letter notifiying me of the honour. But it is delightful all the same, particularly being a great-great-grandson of the famous Davie.
     Curiously enough, when doing some research in the National Library in Edinburgh last week for my next book, the catalogue volume in which I was looking up something fell open and my eye instantly caught sight of the name Davie Sillar. It was in reference to Davie's book pf poems - and next it was the name of my grandfather William Cameron Sillar, Davie's grandson, who wrote a book on Usury. In a later volume of the Catalogue my father's name - also William Cameron Sillar - appears as the author of a technical book on his own subjecrt, Materia Medica - and on the cards not yet included in the printed catalogue, my mother's name, Eleanor Fanny Sillar appears as the author of 'Edinburgh's Child'. My own follows, with my books 'The Symbolic Pig' and 'Cats Ancient and Modern'. So Davie, his grandson, his great-grandson and his great-great-grandson have all been authors of a kind, but I cannot find whether Davie's son Zachariah wrote anything. Perhaps the Club knows.
     Please report to the Club my great satisfaction at the honour they have done me.
     Yours sincerely,
     F C Sillar

His life & work:

The Wilson family were Hugeunots who settled as farmers at Loch Goin (formerly Goine, then Goyne) near Fenwick. Before moving into food mass production, on watching the exploits of Armand and Michaela Dennis on TV (1957-65), Clement Wilson noted that their animal specimens, on killing, ate the offal first - a substance held in surplus by the company. This prompted him to hire consultants to utilise this offal. His subsequent usage though his factory then realised the sum of 7 million pounds for the right to produce their Kennomeat and Cattomeat brands - some offal!

Robert Clement Wilson, President of Irvine Burns Club in 1970-71, claimed his family were Covenantors. Loch Goin was famous for this and he proved a connection by showing swords.

An ancestor, Ayrshire farmer James Wilson, rearing pigs and producing ham in c.1820, introduced the Ayrshire Cure. He was the first to introduce the present Ayrshire method in the factory at the Burns in Dunlop. Pig raising in that area was probably fairly extensive, as in the first half of the 20th century there were about thirteen ham curers operating in the village, one of whom was Robert Wilson, founder of Robert Wilson & Sons (1859) Limited.

Robert Wilson's ham factory continued until the 1930s. At the start of the 2nd World War, the factory changed from ham production to H.M. factory for the process and store of gun cotton. A disastrous fire saw this burned out at the war's end and in the early 1950s Robert Wilson gifted a rest garden on the site of the original factory at Dunlop, in Lugton Road, to remember those predecessors who had left the family fortune.

Robert's son Clement converted the Eglinton Castle stable block into a factory in 1953, choosing Eglinton as a headquarters for "Wilson's of Scotland" because he believed that work should always be done in a satisfying environment. The manufacture of processed and canned foods then expanded greatly, using the name 'Newforge', the company becoming nationally recognised, Kennomeat and Cattomeat gaining 20% of the market. It was sold to rival manufacturers, Spillers, in 1964.

Because he also believed that industry should play a significant role in improving that environment, 'this man of vision' (as he was described by John Strawhorn in 'The History of Irvine') not only lavishly enhanced Eglinton Park but created in 1965 a Clement Wilson Foundation to support a variety of worthy causes locally and beyond. When he died in 1975, his son James W Wilson continued to employ 350 at Eglinton in line with his father's philosophy. The factory was closed in 1997.

Some of the above recollections were recounted by Clement Wilson at the Directors' table during his year as President (1970-71), and we are indebted to Sam Gaw (Past President 1966-67) for passing them on for inclusion in this brief biography.

Clement Wilson gifted the grounds of Eglinton Park to the local authority, then Cunninghame District Council, in 1978. In the early 1980s, the Clement Wilson Foundation was a major contributor to the restoration of the Heckling Shop in Irvine's Glasgow Vennel - the building where Burns had worked in 1781. The Foundation's successor, the Barcapel Foundation, continues to sponsor projects in Irvine and elsewhere, supporting projects for health, for heritage, and for youth. A recent grant is a substantial contribution to the creation of the Burns National Heritage Park in 2009.

In South Belfast in 1929, the family firm Wilson Management Ltd bought a former clog factory and 25 acres of land to produce soft fruit for canning. Staff, unable to travel back into the city for lunch, enjoyed lunch break walks around the surrounding fields. Clement Wilson noticed this and decided to landscape the grounds into gardens, creating the first 'factory garden' in Northern Ireland. The factory closed during World War II, the council bought the land for a public park in the 1970s, and Clement Wilson Park was officially opened in 1975. Some of its grassland, beside Newforge Lane, was occupied by orchards in pre-war years.

Dear Mr Phillips,
     Please convey to the President and all members of the Irvine Burns Club my sincere thanks and appreciation of the great honour they have conferred upon me by electing me an Honorary Member.
     Knowing something of the history of the Club and its long list of distinguished Honorary Members I, as an Ayrshire man, feel particularly grateful to the members for electing me to an Office, which has been filled for so long by so many men of National and International eminence.
     Robert Burns, his qualities, philosophy and genius, have been an inspiration to me since my early youth.
     He had the unique gift of explaining human feelings, human failings and human motivations with the minimum of words in Poems, Songs, and Letters.
     For the foregoing reasons and for many others which I find it difficult to put into words, I accept with gratitude Honorary Membership of The Irvine Burns Club.
     Yours sincerely
     R Clement Wilson

Mr Phillips was Hon. Secretary of Irvine Burns Club at that time.

His life & work:

His life & work:

< biography to be added >

Dear Sir,
     I am most honoured to learn from your kind letter that I have been by now, in accordance with your most optimistic and flattering prognostication, that I am by now a unanimously elected Honorary Member of the Irvine Burns Club.
     I do sincerely trust the voting members were not unduly brainwashed and that there was a modicum of spontaneity in the proceedings of Jan 10th last!
     Hoping I may some day visit the Club at Irvine, with all my thanks and good wishes,
     Yours faithfully,
     Yehudi Menuhin

His life & work:

< biography to follow >

Dear Mr Phillips,
     Thank you for your letter of the 18th December and I must apologise for the long delay in replying.
     I greatly appreciate the honour you have done me by making me an Honorary Member of the Irvine Burns Club. I hope you will not mind my adding that I have many commitments and will unfortunately not be able to play any active part in the activities of the Club.
     With kind regards,
     Yours sincerely,
     Francis Chichester

His life & work:

< biography to follow >

Lieut.-Col. Sir Thomas Moore, Bart., C.B.E. (the heading on his notepaper) was elected M.P. for Ayr Burghs, which included the Burgh of Irvine, in 1925. When constituency reorganisation took place in 1950, he was elected M.P. for Ayr. This he held until 1964. He was President of Irvine Burns Club in 1945.

Dear Mr Phillips,
     I hear from both my secretary and my wife that you have been worried about not having had a reply to your letter inviting me to become an honorary member of the Irvine Burns Club. Well, the reason is that your letter never arrived and, therefore, I could not answer it. But, of course, as my secretary told your wife on the telephone I will be very happy indeed to be an honorary member of your Club and will look forward to maintaining my association and interest in all your activities.
     Yours sincerely
     Thomas Moore

His life & work:

John Charles Walsham Reith

< biography to be added >

Dear Sir,
     In reply to your letter of January 6, I am not 'Lord John Reith', but the Rt Hon Lord Reith of Stonehaven KT, PC, and some other things which Who's Who lists.
     Moreover I left the BBC over 30 years ago.
     Please note KT is not kt. It means Knight of the Thistle, next to the Garter in seniority.
     It seems a little odd that this courtesy should have been withheld until very nearly I wasn't here to acknowledge it.
     But of course I appreciate your gift and gladly accept it.
     Yours truly
     Reith of Stonehaven.

His life & work:

< biography to be added >

FROM VERY REV. THE LORD MACLEOD OF FUINARY
Dear Mr Hood,
     I have today your communication of 30 December.
     It was a real surprise to read it and I count it a considerable honour to accept my place among so many illustrious names in your Roll of Honorary Members.
     I have read with great interest the excellent Brochure with its splendid illustrations. I shall certainly not visit Irvine without calling in on the Burns Club & Museum.
     Were it not that I am off in ten days for a ten week visit, as the Guest of the Church in New Zealand, I would have made a Special Visit this month.
     Speaking of industrial conditions, in the late 18th & early 19th centuries, you may be interested in the enclosed authentic "Notice" found in the back of an office cupboard in a Lancashire Factory!
     Things do get better after all!
     Thank you all again,
     Sincerely
     MacLeod of Fuinary

His headed paper bears the heading opposite, his address, and phone number.

Mr Hood was Andrew Hood, the Hon. Secy. of Irvine Burns Club at the time.

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