A PLAUSIBLE argument might be made – in the ever-fluid chronology of popular music – that Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the group that was a mid-80s explosion of hair and guitars, were the last late flowering of glam rock. Certainly, on the night they appeared at Glasgow University’s Queen Margaret Union, supported by local rock’n’roll heroes, The Primevals, the atmosphere in the dressing room was toxic. Not in a “bad vibes” sense, but because the amount of hairspray required was asphyxiating.

And that was, as they say, just the boys. Another unique selling point of the band formed by ex-Generation X bassist Tony James and fronted by the flamboyant Martin Degville was an all-female road crew. Mark Mackie, who had begun working with promoters Regular Music having been entertainment convenor at the QMU as a student, remembers that they had certainly not been recruited for their equipment-lugging physique – and the stiletto heels they wore were not ideal for that job either.

All of which was a far cry from the QMU of 10 years earlier, when a generation of 1970s feminists ran the place, and some of that diverse history will be recalled when the 50th anniversary of the building at the end of University Gardens is remembered during an evening of Glam Rock Dialogues at the end of this month.

These occasional evenings of debate, music, feather boas and extravagant eye make-up were initiated by Glasgow University academics David Archibald and Carl Lavery, and have in the past included musical input from the rhythm section of Franz Ferdinand and the songs of Bowie and Bolan to accompany discussion of the political legacy of revolutionary France. The spirit of 1968 will be present on November 30 again, because it was then that the Queen Margaret Union’s present home, a modernist design by Glasgow architects Walter Underwood and Partners, opened.

Archibald says he and Lavery will be taking a less prominent part in this event, however, as befits the celebration of a facility built for women, whose numbers at the university had outgrown the QMU’s previous home in the John McIntyre Building on University Avenue. The key contributors to the St Andrew’s Day event will be female, with narration by Theatre Studies lecturer Cristina Delgado-Garcia and testimonies from current QMU president Mata Durkin, and Christine Hamilton, whose tenure on the board was in the building’s earlier years.

Hamilton says that, as was said of the 1960s, if you can remember which bands you saw at the QM you weren’t really there. But she also claims that Freddie Mercury’s Queen played there so often in her day that one of the band suggested it would be easier if the QM audience travelled to them.

“But I mostly remember the politics at the time, because men were only allowed in as guests and could only be signed in after noon. These were the years of student protest and a wave of feminist consciousness-raising and we wanted the place to be mixed. It almost seems like we have come full-circle now, to be arguing for women-only spaces.”

Hamilton had come to Glasgow from a state school in Fife and found that the women’s union was traditionally run by young ladies from private schools who still lived at home, and were not minded to fight for sexual equality. “They would say things like they didn’t want men to be able to see them first thing in the morning without their make-up!” she says.

Hamilton, who heard shipyard union leader Jimmy Reid’s rousing speech when the students elected him Rector of Glasgow University, stool as part of a slate of women from state schools who lived in student flats. They wrested control of the QM, although it was a few years before their argument for equality led to a mixed union, and Glasgow University Union – the “men’s union” – persisted with male-only membership, barring women from certain parts of the building, for many years.

“It was equality that we were fighting for, although some women would point out that the level of power and control of budgets they had enjoyed in running the show at the QM was something they might never have again for the rest of their lives.”

Christine Hamilton studied drama and went on to a career in the arts and then in academia but the friendship she made through the QM board brought her long-term friends in the worlds of science and medicine as well.

“They were women who made their way in the world independently and continued to work, and were not content to merely become ‘good housewives’.”

At a time of draconian licensing laws, she says, the QM was unusual in arguing for and winning a regular late licence for music and dancing. “It was a huge amount of fun, but it was not just a social club – I remember some very edgy debates, including one I was chairing on Northern Ireland where we had to clear the gallery.”

Nonetheless, it was the bands that brought most students to the QM, and Hamilton said that her generation had rules about them. “I was told: never touch the boys in the band, and never pine after them – because there will be another one along next week!”

By the start of the following decade, the QM was a mixed facility and Mark Mackie was studying marine science, living in a bedsit on Byres Road and eating every day in the union. When the catering was out-sourced, he stood for election to the board on a ticket to have the food he liked restored. In that aim, Mackie concedes that he failed, but he now runs one of Scotland’s main music concert companies, Regular Music, all because he started helping out with the discos on Fridays and Saturdays.

Frequent visits by bands to the QM had stopped when Mackie became entertainments convener and he wanted to put that right, as someone who enjoyed going to live music. He started local and his first concert was Del Amitri supported by the Suede Crocodiles with a Malibu drinks promotion and a ticket price of £1.50. Other Scottish bands followed – The Bluebells and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – before a Runrig gig gave him his first sell-out.

With the bar takings more than justifying the concerts and the tickets price covering the band fees, Mackie argued for an upgrading of the venue, with the installation of proper power supply and the building of a new stage to replace the low platform that had been in use throughout the 1970s (and which was recycled to provide a performance area in the upstairs bar).

“Having cut my teeth with the Scottish groups, I started making calls to agents – and the QM was back on the circuit,” he remembers.

When The Smiths played at the very start of their fame, and their single This Charming Man newly in the charts, frontman Morrissey arrived by himself by train ahead of the band. With newspapers clamouring to speak to him, Mackie insured that the only interviews he gave were with the Glasgow University Guardian and the film and television students running the campus television channel – conducted on the roof of the QM.

Mackie reels off an impressive list of bands that he put on at the venue, either as Ents Convenor or in the years immediately after, when he began working with Pete Irvine and Barry Wright’s company (all thought of a science degree abandoned), liaising with the students who followed him in the post. The Pogues, Was Not Was, Billy Bragg, Spear of Destiny, Big Audio Dynamite, The Waterboys, Slade and the aforementioned Sigue Sigue Sputnik – the 1980s happened in full bloom at the QM.

“The ticket money covered the cost of putting on the gigs, and if we sold out there would be 1000 people drinking beer, so there was no way not to make money,” says Mackie. A further tweak to the constitution of the student union gave board members dispensation to “sign in” up to 100 non-students each, so effectively there was an open door policy that worked around local licensing laws.

David Archibald also remembers regulations being less than scrupulously enforced in his teens so that he regularly saw bands there, including Wet Wet Wet, who had gone to the same school. He also recalls music being very male-dominated at that time, which he intends will not be that case at the Glam Rock Dialogues, with women in the band and well as in speaking and singing roles.

Nonetheless there will be room for a male drummer who has a doctorate in the history of pop music, and another former QM ents convenor on keyboards, Ronan Breslin, now a lecturer at Glasgow School of Art.

Much of the musical history of the Queen Margaret Union will be covered by the DJ who takes over until 1pm after the live performance, and Archibald is keeping the set-list for the live band under wraps until the night. However, smart money suggests that the greatest hit of Nirvana, who famously performed there on the same date, November 30, back in 1991, is pretty certain to be included in some form. Smells Like Teen Spirit could be the anthem of many eras in the life of the QMU.

Glam Rock Dialogues: QMU50 is on Friday November 30.