AN OVERFLOWING Bank Bar in Dundee enjoyed music, poetry and politics at the Morning Star’s Scottish TUC social on Tuesday night.

Delegates unwound as Morning Star supporters serenaded the pub from the open mic, singing labour movement classics and songs of their own. A star turn was an impromptu rap delivered by the Morning Star’s arts editor Angus Reid.

International greetings came from the Cuban embassy’s first secretary for political affairs, Pablo Arturo Ginarte Sampedro, who spoke of the long tradition of solidarity with Cuba in the Scottish labour movement and the threat posed to the socialist island by Donald Trump. 

Morning Star editor Ben Chacko also spoke, stressing the importance of building the paper’s readers’ and supporters’ network and embedding the paper in trade union activity at local level.

A raffle with prizes including bottles of Havana Club rum and Edinburgh gin raised £510 for the Fighting Fund, bringing the total raised at conference to £1,039.