celebrity working class heroes

Jean Seberg - screen icon and Black Panther supporter

Ed — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:30:05 +0000

Though she had starred in respected films beforehand (for instance playing Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan), it was not until her role as Patricia, aspiring journalist and American girlfriend of a Parisian thug, in Jean-Luc Godard's new wave cinema classic, Breathless, that Seberg earned her place as a cinematic icon.

Sócrates - midfielder and anti-dictatorship resister

Ed — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:33:45 +0000

Born Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, Sócrates captained Brazil at both the 1982 and 1986 World Cups.

Danny Glover - lifelong activist

Ed — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:37:25 +0000

Born in San Francisco to two postal workers and NAACP activists, Danny Glover went on to study at San Francisco State University where he participated in the longest student strike in US history.

Javier Zanetti - Zapatista supporter

Ed — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:18:59 +0000

With Zanetti leading the drive, Inter Milan funded sports, water and health projects in the Chiapas region of Mexico, where the Zapatistas operate.

Ricky Tomlinson - imprisoned building union organiser

Ed — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:45:02 +0000

The son of a baker born one month after the start of WW2, life was hard, his family sleeping six people in two rooms.

Audrey Hepburn - Dutch Resistance courier

Steven. — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:21:01 +0000

Her father was Joseph Anthony Hepburn-Ruston, a wealthy British banker and Mosleyite. Her mother was Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch baroness who descended from French and English kings.

Her father abandoned her, and her mother abandoned her fascist views following the Nazi occupation.

Billy Connolly - shipyard striker

Steven. — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:57:01 +0000

He walked out with thousands of others, including future Man Utd manager Alex Ferguson, also an apprentice in Glasgow.

According to one poster on BBC Scotland, he was also involved in supporting the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders' yard occupation of 1971.

Alex Ferguson - manager and striker

Steven. — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:45:08 +0000

Stephen Kelly wrote in the New Statesmen that Ferguson was born in Govan two years into the second world war.

Robbie Fowler - fined for supporting Liverpool dockers

Steven. — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:42:55 +0000

Fowler was fined 2,000 Swiss Francs ($1,400) by European governing body UEFA on Thursday for his show of support for sacked dock workers during a European Cup Winners' Cup match.

UEFA's Control and Disciplinary Committee made note of Fowler's sporting behaviour in assessing the punishment beginning its press release saying, "It may seem strange and even unfair...".