IT'S become something of a received wisdom among music critics and cultural commentators that political pop is dead.

It's hey-day of the sixties, seventies and eighties is long gone. No one writes protests songs anymore, we're told. Mainstream music - we are led to believe - is about money, glamour, sex and the self.

And yet two events in Scotland this week seem to make the point that revolution rock continues: on November 6, The Specials - doyens of protest music for fans of a certain age - will take to the stage at The Barrowland to bang out anti-establishment anthems such as Ghost Town and Gangsters to an enthusiastic crowd of supporters.

Three days later, at the SSE Hydro, the MTV European Music Awards bandwagon will roll into town. There will be a new gong among the those presented by Nicki Minaj - for the artist with the strongest, most socially focused song. The award, MTV says, is to honour pop stars who "have an empowering impact on young people".

Shortlisted for The Best Song With A Message are: Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass, Beyoncé's Pretty Hurts, Arcade Fire's We Exist, We Are Here by Alicia Keys, and Take Me To Church by Hozier. The issues the tracks are taking on range from body image and gay rights to world peace.

Critics say that while these songs are "socially focused" to some degree they lack the gravitas of Bob Dylan's Blowin' In The Wind, or The Style Council's Walls Come Tumbling Down, or indeed most of Billy Bragg's output over the years. They are not edgy or dangerous or exhortations to anarchy. They are merely songs with a safely ­packaged conscience, protected and commodified by the multi-billion pound music industry.

But such songs do exist beyond the mainstream in the new wave of folk music and hip-hop. But these are not well-known, and not ­represented in MTV's new category.

Veteran music journalist and BBC Radio Scotland presenter Vic Galloway says of the new award: "I hope it's not a pose in order to look 'edgy' and 'important'. I fully support the issues raised and the plight of those concerned, but I find many of the lyrics and the videos one-dimensional and clichéd.

"They are, however, very specific and do raise some kind of ­awareness, even if there is little art, nuance or subtlety to the majority of the nominated songs.

"In a few cases they seem to represent a new kind of protest song - that of a self-obsessed victim-culture in a quick-fix, commercial, pop world. If Bob Dylan, The Clash of Billy Bragg had piped up in song about how being slightly overweight was okay, people might have laughed them out of town. But hey, the times they are a changin'."

John Powles of Glasgow University's Political Song Archive seems equally pessimistic.

"In my opinion," Powles says, "there aren't any popular songs today that compare to the big political tracks of the sixties and seventies. The Archive [is home to] the most poignant Scottish campaigning songs, such as Ding Dong Dollar from the 1960s anti-Polaris protests.

"The lyrics, 'Oh ye cannae spend a dollar when yer deid' [are sung to] the tune of She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain. It was a good choice within the context of the American missiles, which the Scottish people vehemently opposed."

One unlikely group he credits with being political is the Spice Girls. He says: "A song women always reference as empowering is the Spice Girls' Wannabe. It symbolises girl power while politicising the Spice Girl's subculture in a ­similar way that punk did in the 1970s. Punk was an expression of how anarchy affected the UK."

At the height of Thatcherism, musicians made clear their hatred for the Tories in commercially successful tracks such as Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall, Crass's How Does It Feel and Billy Bragg's Thatcherites. These songs, today's critics feel, make MTV's new "social" category appear weak.

But the Scottish winners of last week's Mercury Music Award, Young Fathers, believe music with a real conscience can be found.

The band's Alloysious Massaquoi blames "major labels just putting out a load of s***", saying: "Of course, there's going to be a lack of [music with a conscience]. But if you look hard enough online and in different sources then you're going to find music that has content."

But why is more airtime not given to such politically pertinent music at a time when global economic instability, war and poverty nightly staples on the news? Folk performer and winner of the Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice Award, Ewan McLennan has a theory. He says: "The industry has a narrow interest and is profit-driven. That means it isn't inclined to challenge the status quo.

"I welcome the category yet recognise the severe limitations ... None of these songs push boundaries."

McLennan cites the death of Margaret Thatcher last year as a rare tipping point with The Wizard Of Oz song, Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, charting at number two, but with the BBC refusing to play more than a snippet of the song. He feels this little footnote demonstrates the fear of an overtly political message.

It has also been argued that the most political act in music in a generation was the online campaign to dethrone the annual X Factor winner from the regular Christmas number one slot by campaigning for Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name in 2009. The rap metal band knocked Joe McElderry down to number two.

But support for the new MTV award comes from an unlikely source - the singer of the punk band Crass, Penny Rimbaud, whose 1981 album Penis Envy was banned and then fell victim to lawsuit under the Obscene Publications Act.

"It's easy to attack MTV," Rimbaud says, "for doing something like this. The problem for this new category is that the Lefties aren't going to give it a chance." Rimbaud lists Beyoncé as his preferred recipient, saying: "I'm a big fan and I've been really impressed by these statements she's making. It's better than nothing."

Another supporter is Jenny Maxwell from the band Strangefruit who feels songs don't have to "be heavy to have a social impact". The band were named after perhaps the most powerful political song of all time - Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday which commemorates the horror of racist lynchings in America's south. Maxwell says of the song that inspired her: "I can't imagine MTV playing Strange Fruit if it had been around. I don't blame them. There's a huge amount of red tape around these days. I think radio stations are petrified of offending and artists are probably worried about being misrepresented. No-one wants to be sued."

Music with real depth is ­generally banished to the realm of digital music stations. But one act apparently challenging this is Glasgow's Hector Bizerk. The duo, comprising rapper Louie and drummer Audrey Tait, are starting to make it big, but won't compromise on their lyrics. And they also see the new MTV award as a signal of more radical times to come.

Louie says: "It depends on what your aspirations as a songwriter are - ours have never been about breaking into the mainstream ... Even though the tracks in MTV's category don't have the same bite as the [ones in the] 1960s and 1970s, I think it's commendable. Arcade Fire ... talk about LGBT rights. That just wouldn't have happened 10 or 12 years ago. At the least, it shows a change in the public's attitude."

TEN OF THE BEST PROTEST SONGS

Lead Belly 'The Gallows Pole' 1939

The father of Delta blues reinvented an old folk song about a young woman pleading with the executioner not to hang her. Led Zeppelin also covered it, bringing the story to a new generation.

Billie Holiday 'Strange Fruit' 1939

Holiday's chilling rendition of the ultimate protest song about the lynching of African-Americans in the deep south is a bleak reminder of the political gap in modern pop.

Bob Dylan 'Blowin' in the Wind' 1963

Dylan's songs were seen as the pinnacle of protest music. This classic looks injustice in the eye, and warns the old guard their time is up.

Bob Marley 'Get Up, Stand Up' 1973

Marley remains an icon of the protest song. "Get Up, Stand Up" is an awe-inspiring anthem for change, based on the time he spent in destitute regions of Haiti.

Sex Pistols 'Anarchy In the UK' 1976

English punk rock at its most accessible, the opening composition "I'm an anti-Christ, I'm an anarchist" revives the notion of revolution.

Crass 'Systematic Death' 1981

The English punk band pulled no punches when it came to its view of "the system".

The Specials 'Ghost Town' 1981

Coventry's finest spearheaded the two-tone label's assault on what many saw as Thatcher's assault not just on the poor, but on Britain itself.

Bronski Beat 'No More War' 1984

Fronted by Glaswegian Jimmy Somerville, the synth pop trio's politically challenging tracks tackled the age of consent for same-sex couples and gay prejudice.

The Style Council 'Walls Come Tumbling Down' 1985

Paul Weller's follow-up band to The Jam knocked out this rip-roaring class war anthem at a time of riots, dole queues and the miners' strike.

Beyoncé 'Flawless' 2013

Rate her or hate her, here Beyoncé samples Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "We Should All Be Feminists" speech while talking about the pressure of looking good.