Calls to revive Jimmy Reid's iconic Glasgow University speech

The National

a day ago

Following the 15th anniversary of Jimmy's death, his daughter Elieen has said it would be 'wonderful' if her father's influential address to the University of Glasgow in 1972 was recreated in video using artificial intelligence.
Jimmy gave his alienation speech, also known as the 'rat race', after he was elected as the rector at the university, where he addressed students about the alienation of the working class under capitalism.
Using Karl Marx's theory of alienation, Jimmy used the example of the modernisation of the Clyde shipyards, and in one famous passage, he lamented the 'scrambling for position' in modern society and stated that the 'rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings'.
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Jimmy's address has since been referred to as one of the most outstanding speeches of the 20th century, and his daughter is now calling on the help of experts to recreate it in full on video for the first time.
Elieen explained that only a few minutes of her father's address exist in video, but hopes that AI can piece together the rest of the speech using text and pictures which have survived.
'The one good thing about modern technology and all this AI business is they've got about three or four minutes between the BBC and the STV snippets of that speech, and I thought with the text and with the pictures that we've got, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could actually reproduce it,' she said.
She added that, along with piecing what survived of the speech together, people who knew Jimmy could also help with the recreation of how he delivered the address, along with his mannerisms.
'He was such a brilliant orator, his timing was everything, and he was a complete natural, and I just thought wouldn't it be brilliant if we could put that speech together?' Elieen said.
The 66-year-old said it was 'top of her bucket list' to see her father give the speech and would 'absolutely love to see it happen'.
She said the closest she had ever gotten to experiencing it was when she gave the speech in Dundee alongside actor David Heyman.
Elieen said she salvaged every single clip she could get a hold of from her father's address, and she, along with Hayman, would fill in the gaps of any of the missing audio.
Jimmy's speech was considered so potent at the time that it was shared by publications across the Western world and was even reprinted in full by the New York Times, where it was described as the greatest speech since President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Catherine Happer, professor of media sociology and director of the Glasgow University Media Group Sociological and Cultural Studies, said it is a project the society would 'like to support'.
Happer said that in a week when it was revealed that Scottish men are now up to three times more likely to die early than their counterparts in England due to drugs, illness, and suicide, it feels like it could not be a better time to return to Jimmy's iconic address.
She added that Jimmy's speech articulated 'so powerfully the feelings of alienation, frustration, and hopelessness' felt by those excluded from society, and the economic forces lying behind them.
'He could be talking in the present day in respect of our most recent research here at the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG), which focuses on the cost of living crisis and has produced findings which show the overwhelming disconnect from mainstream politics many people now feel,' Happer said.
'Very little, however, is left of the original recording, and there is no question that text alone has nowhere near the power of Reid's own voice.
'AI is now being used for everything from finding a date to essay writing, and is increasingly used to generate fakes to deceive and manipulate those who access them – it does feel if the technology was used to recreate the speech in full form, as close to the original performance as is possible and deliver it for a new generation, then this seems one of the best and most ethical uses of AI I can think of.
She added: 'Certainly, this is something the GUMG would very much like to support if it could.'