Emancipation & Liberation

When the RCN used the image of the bare-breasted Liberty from the iconic Delacroix painting as a front cover for our pamphlet, Republicanism, Socialism and Democracy, this provoked a debate in the SSP. Catriona Grant, leading socialist feminist, and member of SSP Edinburgh no 2 branch contributes to the debate.

Why are Liberty’s breasts bared in Delacroix’s painting – Liberty Leading the People? A recent discussion in the SSP raged for a week or two whether Delacroix’s work of Liberty Leading the People was sexist. Is it revolutionary or sexist? Can it be both?

Eugene Delacroix’s Romantic painting of 1830 is probably Delacroix’s most famous work – the bare breasted and footed goddess warrior, triumphantly leading the Parisians with the tricolour in her hand to their ultimate goal for liberty, fraternity and equality! (Sisterhood was never mentioned).

Liberty Leading the People commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 in France, which toppled the Emperor Charles X, a generation or so after the French Revolution. In the painting, Liberty leads the people over the bodies of the fallen. Stridently and encouragingly she holds up the tricolour of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishes a bayonet in the other, the dead being her pedestal, her plinth to declare the revolution – they are victorious.

Why does Liberty in the painting have her breasts on show? Does it matter? Did her dress fall off her shoulders by accident or was she just tardy in her dress? Traditionally, in Romantic paintings, this meant that she was not like other bourgeois, proletariat or peasant women, but having her breasts on show indicated power and even supernatural strength. The bare breasted lady is indeed not a lady at all but a symbol personified by Marianne – a French goddess-like figure and “robust woman of the people”. She symbolises the French Republic. Liberty in Delacroix’s painting is no ordinary woman – she is a revolutionary goddess! She is a goddess-like warrior, who symbolises the Revolution and the Republic, and not a depiction of women’s status in society of the time. This painting pre-dates Impressionists, who recorded what they saw, rather than depicting symbols in a romantic way. Would it have been possible to paint a French mortal woman in this stance? At this time probably not. Only a symbolic woman could have such a role in a piece of historic propaganda rather than a real woman.

So is Delacroix sexist in his subject matter? Well, of course he is! In 1830, it would almost be impossible not to be sexist or patriarchal as the dominant society, even in revolutionary France, was sexist at this time, as was the rest of the Western World. However is the painting sexual and misogynistic? No, I don’t think it is. It’s subject matter is not about sex or sexuality but about the power of the revolution, the breasts are symbolic, not a pair of pneumatic boobs of a ‘page three stunna’.

But what does this painting stand for – is it a revolutionary painting, or an excuse just to see another pair of breasts in a gallery alongside hundreds, even thousands, of other pairs of breasts? As the Guerrilla Girls tell us, only 3% of the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, are by women, and of the paintings of women, 83% of them are naked – this is replicated all over the world in art galleries. Women have been objectified over the centuries and so have their body parts, Delacroix is not a feminist but a bourgeois 19th century painter capturing the mood and propagandising the only way he knows how – through Romantic imagery.

Who was Delacroix and why did he paint this picture?

Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix was born on April 26, 1798. He was the son of the ambassador of the French Republic to Holland. His father had been very active during the revolution. Despite his parents dying when he was a little boy, he would be very aware of the revolution and the terror that reigned afterwards.

He began to paint at age of 17. He was hugely influenced by the Romanticist period of painting and later went on to influence the Impressionist movement, particularly Cezanne and Picasso, who copied his paintings. Romantic paintings are paintings, depictions of fantasy, and an expression of feeling – of love, of fear, of desire and even, of revolution. They are emotional paintings not paintings of reason, or of fact.

In 1830, Delacroix watched the fighting in central Paris alongside his friend and fellow painter Eugene Lami. This fighting had erupted not far from their studio. Delacroix was not a participant but a spectator. He wrote to his brother, Since I have not fought and conquered for the fatherland I can at least paint on its behalf. That’s why he painted
Liberty Leading the People.

Liberty Leading the People is sort of a political poster, it’s the ‘No Poll Tax’ poster of its time. It marks the day when the people rose and dethroned the Bourbon King.

Delacroix made a number of sketches. They contained street fighters, individually and in groups. He decided to construct his artwork around the allegorical female representing Liberty. This was a daring concept – having the bloodstained victims of an actual battle, setting a high-flown symbolic figure in the middle of the dirt and triumphant on the bodies, not of our victims, but of her comrades.

Liberty Leading the People is a two-dimensional painting. Delacroix uses linear perspective to give the effect of 3-dimensional space. He uses aerial perspective with the city in the back being smaller and the sky is blue and grey. The battle of July Revolution of 1830 is the subject matter. The meaning of the image, the content, is the people wanting liberty, and the battle the people went through to gain liberty. Liberty leads the people on. Delacroix uses these images to tell the story – looking at the painting you know that there is a victory, a triumph – even if you are not aware of the situation.

The focal point of this work is Liberty. The emphasis is on Liberty because she is the most important figure in the work. Liberty stands out more than the other figures because she is carrying the flag with bright colours of red, blue and white. According to people who know things about fine art, Liberty Leading the People is very much in scale and proportion. The art is in proportion because of the relationship between the parts to each other. No figure is larger than any other figure. An example is the young man to the right of Liberty. He is not larger than the older men to the left of Liberty. The figures are in scale because the figures are the normal or expected size. The shape (hands, arms, feet, torso, head) is all in the right scale to the actual bodily parts of a person.

Delacroix’s spirit is fully involved in its implementation of Liberty Leading the People. He executes the work with the heroic poses of the people fighting for liberty, the outstretched figure of Liberty, the dead figures, and the attitudes of the people following Liberty. Delacroix has given this painting a sense of full participation, no one is passive in the painting. This work has been called the first overtly political work of modern painting.

Shown at the Salon of 1831, the painting was understood in various ways and caused quite an uproar. Working class, a fishwife, and a whore is what the figure of Liberty was called by Outraged of Paris. Critics said that the painting was a slander of the five glorious days, that Liberty was ignoble, and that the insurgents represented a rude class of people, urchins and workmen. The newly blossoming bourgeoisie was shocked by the painting – it was seen as crude and unnecessary.

Liberty’s breasts were seen as shocking, despite the fact the majority of Romantic paintings depicted naked women or semi-naked women, because she was active and not passive. Her breasts, on show with her bare feet, indicate her power and strength as opposed to her sexuality – naked or semi naked women are usually reclining or surrounded by other women – rather, she is in an active stance of defiance surrounded by mortal men.

Women in the first French Revolution

But was it so impossible to depict a real woman involved in the revolution other than a fantasy warrior goddess? Did women not play a role in the French Revolutions? Women – working class and peasant women – have always played a political role. They were responsible for putting food on the table, and during times of hardship, such as famine, when bread was unavailable or expensive, women had traditionally marched to the civic centre to beseech the local government to ameliorate their misery. During the first French Revolution, this tradition would be followed, but with one new development. Parisian women no longer marched to the civic centre to petition the local magistrates, but rather they marched first to the royal palace itself. They sent their petitions directly to the king then, later, they marched to the national legislature. It was the women who rattled the gates demanding bread!

Women in France formed clubs and organised. They met together to learn how to become citizens of a great nation, rather than subjects of a king, and to press for specific legislation. These women wanted equality of rights within marriage, the right to divorce, extended rights of widows over property and of widowed mothers over their children, publicly guaranteed educational opportunities for girls (including vocational training for poor girls), public training, licensing, and support for midwives in all provinces, guaranteed right to employment, and the exclusion of men from specific traditionally-female professions, like dress-making.

In August 1791 the Declaration to the Rights of Man was made known by the National Assembly. In September 1791, National Assembly was replaced by a newly elected body, the Legislative Assembly, a constitutional monarchy. This prompted Olympe de Gouge, female revolutionary, to write the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizeness (1791), possibly the best known tract on the rights of women from the period, as a response to the Declaration to the Rights of Man and its silence regarding women.

But the revolution did not deliver male suffrage never mind female suffrage – only men who paid a certain amount of taxes had a say and unemployment was rife. War against foreign forces who wanted to restore King Louis XVI’s power, the return of political instability and the resulting economic hardship, and their desires for sexual equality, all mobilised women once again to act collectively on their own behalf. This resulted in even more marches, more clubs, more petitions, and the increased use of the taxation populaire.

In 1793, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, created by sans-culotte women, lasted only six months, before it was shut down by authorities. These women were revolutionary, militant feminists! Advocating issues of interest to the radical middle class and the Parisian poor, such as penal reform, occupational training for girls, public morality, and economic reforms. At this time the Jacobins demanded, among other things, that all women wear the Revolutionary dress and cockade (a hat that indicated different factions). A law was duly passed to require all women to put on the proscribed articles and when the Républicaines-révolutionnaires tried to have the law enforced, market women rebelled and petitioned the Convention. The Convention seized their opportunity, dissolved the Society, and outlawed all women’s clubs and associations. The women were seen as anti-revolutionary and as traitors. A period of terror and barbarism reigned in France, but women still rebelled and organised. But by 1794, Olympe de Gouges had been guillotined. The people would not rise up again until 1830 (depicted by Delacroix – could Liberty be Olympe?).

Society of Revolutionary Republican Women Manifesto

The National Assembly, wishing to reform the greatest and most universal of abuses, and to repair the wrongs of a six-thousand-year-long injustice, has decreed and decrees as follows:

1. All the privileges of the male sex are entirely and irrevocably abolished throughout France;
2. The feminine sex will always enjoy the same liberty, advantages, rights, and honours as does the masculine sex;
3. The masculine gender [gendre masculine] will no longer be regarded, even grammatically, as the more noble gender, given that all genders, all sexes, and all beings should be and are equally noble;
4. That no one will henceforth insert in acts, contracts, obligations, etc., this clause, so common but so insulting for women: That the wife is authorized by her husband before those present, because in the household both parties should enjoy the same power and authority;
5. That wearing pants [la culotte] will no longer be the exclusive prerogative of the male sex, but each sex will have the right to wear them in turn;
6. When a soldier has, out of cowardice, compromised French honour, he will no longer be degraded as is the present custom, by making him wear women’s clothing; but as the two sexes are and must be equally honourable in the eyes of humanity, he will henceforth be punished by declaring his gender to be neuter;
7. All persons of the feminine sex must be admitted without exception to the district and departmental assemblies, elevated to municipal responsibilities and even as deputies to the National Assembly, when they fulfil the requirements set forth in the electoral laws. They will have both consultative and deliberative voices. . . .;
8. They can also be appointed as magistrates: there is no better way to reconcile the public with the courts of justice than to seat beauty and to see the graces presiding there;
9. The same applies to all positions, compensations, and military dignities. . .

We are told that Liberty is a symbol, however the women who in the 18th Century penned the above could easily have been Liberty. However they may have worn trousers and had their blousons tightly buttoned up (I would imagine).

For those worried about her breasts being on show forever or her catching cold, Liberty is properly attired by the time she appears as a giant statue guarding over Ellis Island in the US, this time her breasts are covered and instead of a tricolore she holds a torch of justice aloft her head.

Liberty has been printed on stamps and the 100 franc note, she remains a poster girl of the 20th and 21st century – featured on the front cover of the RCN’s Republican Communist magazine, Issue 1 and their pamphlet on republicanism, and on Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Revolution. It is on the front cover of the band, Coldplay’s Viva la Vida album. Liberty Leading the People has inspired many over the decades and centuries.

Long live Liberty!

From Dornoch we moved further north
not as north as where she was born
but north enough to understand;
to understand her returning

She sat there beneath the sculpture
Of ‘The Emigrants’ at Helmsdale,
Moved by the woman looking back
To the strath that was once her home.

For she too had to leave here
To work in service or in shops;
She too, with some eighty years now,
Lived in the south and not the north

And these years have moved her to tears
And this woman brought them all back,
Yet she sits with son and daughter
Who marvel at her dignity.

Two highland ladies, one in bronze,
And the other in flesh that pains,
Bestow upon a changing world
Unchanging values that redeem.

This is taken from Jim’s latest book of poetry, Being Beneath the Moon. Available for £2.50 including. postage & packaging from Magdalene Press, 2, Carlton Street, Edinburgh, EH4 1NJ.

I wanted to write you a letter
my love,
a letter that would tell
of this desire
to see you
of this fear
of losing you
of this more than benevolence that I feel
of this indefinable ill that pursues me
of this yearning to which I live in total surrender…

I wanted to write you a letter
my love,
a letter of intimate secrets,
a letter of memories of you,
of you
of your lips red as henna
of your hair black as mud
of your eyes sweet as honey
of your breasts hard as wild orange
of your lynx gait
and of your caresses
such that I can find no better here…
I wanted to write you a letter
my love,
that would recall the days in our haunts
our nights lost in the long grass
that would recall the shade falling on us from the plum
trees
the moon filtering through the endless palm trees
that would recall the madness
of our passion
and the bitterness
of our separation…

I wanted to write you a letter
my love,
that you would not read without sighing
that you would hide from papa Bombo
that you would withhold from mama Kieza
that you would reread without the coldness
of forgetting
a letter to which in all Kilombo
no other would stand comparison…

I wanted to write you a letter
my love,
a letter that would be brought to you by the passing wind
a letter that the cashews and coffee trees
the hyenas and buffaloes
the alligators and grayling
could understand
so that if the wind should lose it on the way
the beasts and plants
with pity for our sharp suffering
from song to song
lament to lament
gabble to gabble
would bring you pure and hot
the burning words
the sorrowful words of the letter
I wanted to write to you my love…

I wanted to write you a letter…

But oh my love, I cannot understand
why it is, why it is, why it is, my dear
that you cannot read
and I – Oh the hopelessness! – cannot write!

Originally published in Emancipation & Liberation Issue 8, Autumn 2004.

This wall between us slowly grows
slinking along the dusty earth
like some snake in the desert sands

Once in Jericho it fell down
by those who now do the building
the heirs of the trumpet blowers

Once Belshazzar saw the writing
on the wall, Daniel read the words
Mene, mene, tekel, parsin.

The days of your kingdom will end
for your acts have been found wanting
and your kingdom is divided

Jim Aitken

This experience comes from leafleting during a council by-election in the Lochee ward in Dundee, but I imagine that what is described in this little ditty is transferable to anywhere that dogs lurk unseen, waiting to give their canine judgement on political activists of any persuasion.

For we, who politics inspire,
There is a time when we’re on fire.
Elections, they are always busy,
So much goes on we end up dizzy.
Hustings, meetings, stalls—all vital
But there’s a task which every night’ll
Turn each of us into a drudge,
Aye, leafleting’s a weary trudge!

There’s letter boxes, sharp it seems
As any shiny guillotine.
There’s stairs to climb that take your breath,
You puff, you pant, feel near to death.
Blasted by wind and soaked by rain,
You think to yourself, Never again!
But the biggest danger in the end
Comes always from a man’s best friend.

Some dogs keenly vent their wrath
The second that you’re on the path
That leads from garden gate to door,
They bark, they growl, they howl, they roar.
And from the noise they make you know
If up that path you should dare go.
Does it sound big? Does it sound small?
It’s up to you—your judgment call.

But there again, there is the hound
Which doesn’t make a single sound.
Behind the door he’ll silent sit,
Waiting for some dim half-wit
To put his hand through the front door.
What savage dog could ask for more?
He loves a fool who careless lingers,
And doesn’t, quick, withdraw his fingers.

The first you know’s when something slams
Against the door, it seems the jambs
Themselves, they must be near collapse
As Fido, furious, rabid, snaps
At your fingers, teeth bare, flashing,
To the bone incisors slashing.
And then, the bit that really narks,
The damage done it’s then he barks!

Your curses make the air turn blue,
It’s A & E next stop for you
As there you stand, your fingers bleeding,
An anti-tet and stitches needing.
Now here’s the thing that’s to be learned,
Like all good lessons it’s hard earned.
Leafleting that’s swift and brief
Keeps human flesh from canine teeth!

Mary McGregor interviews communist and actor, Tam Dean Burn.

Tam Dean Burn is the most respected political actor in Scotland today. He was born in Leith and grew up in Clermiston, a west Edinburgh housing estate. He went to Queen Margaret College to study acting at a time when working class men were encouraged to take up the profession. Tam cites James Dean and his teacher, Ken Morley (Reg in Coronation Street) as his early influences on his acting.

I first met Tam in 1993 when he was in Dundee appearing in court for Breach of the Peace on the Timex picket line. He had famously jumped onto the front of one of the scab buses and earned the nickname ‘spider-man’. Tam introduced me to communist politics. When I spoke to him recently I found him, as ever, full of ideas and challenges to orthodox Marxist thinking.

So apart from Reg from Coronation Street and James Dean, are there any other artistic or political influences that were pivotal because I am interested in the point where the art and politics started to merge?

I got into punk at the very beginning. I was ready for it, because of the type of bands I was already listening to, like Dr Feelgood. It was the difference between those who were into Yes, prog rock and heavy metal – they were more middle class – and those of us that were into pub rock bands such as Dr Feelgood and Sensational Alex Harvey Band. When punk came along I was totally up for it. It was like a personal, social revolution that really got me going politically as well.

At my first show after leaving Queen Margaret’s, I had a chance to combine all the elements of politics and art. We did a play at the Edinburgh Festival with my wee brother’s band, Fire Engines, with some songs that had been written especially for the show that I was singing. It was initially a 2-hander called Workers of the world confess, looking at the relationship between the boss and the worker in the form of a confession. We developed a cantata it was called Why does the pope not come to Glasgow? As we were in rehearsals we got the news he was coming and we just thought – the power of theatre! It was a good strong political piece. We had discussions as an essential part of the show. The guy who wrote it George Byatt was an old anarchist. Immediately me and George started to tussle as I started to go down the communist road even though I saw myself as an anarchist punk at the time.

The Dirty Reds, our band, had a gig for Edinburgh University Communist Society who were trying to latch onto this punk thing going on. They had banners with Marx and Engels. I said, Fuck all this old fashioned shite! We are anarchists! People started jumping up and pulling them all down. I have often chuckled to myself as to what my comrades in years to come would have had to say about that.

I went to the Soviet Union in 1983 for a holiday with a friend. We thought we would be with old trade unionists, but it was geared towards young folk and we found ourselves there with a big posse from Liverpool including this post punk band called Echo and the Bunnymen, so we had a great time. I was very romantic about the Soviet Union.

What about big political events back at home?

It was really the miners’ strike in 1984 that made me realise I had to be in an organisation to have any real impact. I got involved in the Miners’ Support Group in Edinburgh so I was looking around the different left wing organisations. I wanted to be in the Communist Party but I could not really work out where they were in Edinburgh. They did not really seem to exist. I had an aversion to Trots because of their view of the Soviet Union. Although the Militant did seem to be the most dynamic organisation around. I did collect with them outside football grounds for the miners. I went through their induction programme but then found I could not go with them. Their main man was more trade union based. They did not believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat and they certainly did not support the Soviet Union. I then picked up on the paper The Leninist. What they were saying about the miners’ strike really gob smacked me. I was not able to put it into practice but I started communicating with them.

By the time of the Poll Tax I had moved to London and had got much more involved with the Leninist and was politically organised by them. This was a totally positive experience because what I had always been trying do was find a way to combine the politics with the culture. I was being encouraged to do that. Although it was a small organisation, there was a lot of time and resources put into what I was trying to do culturally.

I had picked up on the type of agit-prop that Ewan McColl had been doing with the YCL in the late 20s and early 30s, like street theatre on the issues of the day. We started by doing the original sketches and then developed our own versions of them with issues like the Poll Tax and Ireland.

There was a great sketch about Indian workers that had been banged up for being members of a trade union. It was done behind these six huge banner poles that you would have on a demonstration and they made the bars of the cell. At the end of the piece the bars would get smashed down through class struggle and international solidarity. In 1988 we adapted the sketch to Ireland and called it 20 years. This was because it was around 20 years since the start of the most recent troubles in Ireland. This was all done as part of the Workers’ Theatre Movement.

We also developed a political cabaret which was hard hitting, honouring the dead hunger strikers in Ireland. This was part of a polemic with left Labourites and their ‘Time to Go’ campaign. I remember performing 20 years before a big demo that they were organising. We were playing it and getting a great response from the marchers because invariably they were the best audiences; the most partisan. The organisers wanted to stop us and I remember a big guy wi’ his hand on my shoulder saying, You have to stop! You have to stop! but there was no way they could stop us because of the response we were getting from the crowd.

It was the same wi’ the dockers in 1989. We performed in support of the Tilbury dockers and their struggle to stop the privatisation of the docks. I remember their leader saying that what we had said in a 5 minute sketch is what he would have liked to say in a 20 minute speech. You could sense the value of what we were about and what we were trying to achieve. With the Poll Tax sketches we realised that we could get our message across by using mega phones. By having everybody ‘megaphoned up’ you could really blast across a message.

We also combined street theatre with a political cabaret called the Internationale where we could start doing things that worked more effectively indoors. We would invite people to come along and do themes like Ireland or International Women’s day. It was being able to be a sort of memory for the class as well of celebrating events like that. There was a real attempt to tie together as much as I could of the culture and the politics.

You have continued to do that. The last overtly political thing I saw you do was Perdition

(A play by Jim Allan that dealt with the collaboration between Hungarian Nazis and Zionists that led to Jews being killed.)

Yes, there have been differences when I have been able to pull together performances myself, like that, and those roles that I would do as a job. I am always looking for possibilities. Perdition was a special one. It had been 20 years since the play was originally going to be performed at the Royal Court theatre in London. Then they pulled the plugs on it at the last minute which is unheard of now.

The Zionist lobby now isn’t nearly so strong that they could pull off something like that. Our performance of it was still controversial. It was suggested by the SWP that it was ‘bad taste’ to do it in Holocaust Memorial week. Perdition was directly about the Holocaust and about the way that Jews were basically being sacrificed for the Zionist cause. The Holocaust Memorial week was exactly the right time that we should have been doing it. I think that says much more about the SWP than it did about us.

Doing it in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee and seeing too that you didn’t need a full production – the actors were doing it as a reading with the scripts in their hands but that made very little difference. It was theatre about ideas with good actors doing it and able to put it across. It’s a form of entertainment that is my favourite because it’s stimulating and you are a lot more engaged as an audience. It has an archetypal dramatic form of the courtroom. That form has been used so often. It works because people know they, the audience, become a jury. You are engaged in it in that way and you are implicated. It was a good strong piece.

Has it become easier or harder to express your communism through your art as you have become an established actor and moved away from street theatre?

It has become harder because I am less organised now. Unless you are a practising communist, you cann’ae really call yourself one. That is still of course where my heart lies but I have been open to a lot of other influences as well. I don’t get the opportunity to express myself in quite the same way which is mair to do with the times than me, so I have to find different ways of doing it.

But you made it happen with Perdition it was very much your baby?

Well, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in Scotland is very dynamic and it was through discussions wi’ them that I was able to make it happen. When you are encouraged and supported these things can take place. A lot of the time people are pretty shabbily organised politically so it is not like a great deal goes on. I didn’t find the same opportunities to go at things within the SSP. There would be the odd, little event and I know some people did some things but I felt culturally it lacked something. It settled for a lower common denominator for culture and that can be a great problem within politics.

What should the stance of a revolutionary socialist be towards art especially under capitalism? Should there be a more serious approach amongst revolutionary socialists towards the whole concept of art?

Absolutely, especially when I think of the influence of William Blake on me over the past few years. He has been with me through the last two years because I’ve been reading all his poems and prose on a radio programme every week. I have been reading a lot about him as well. His view is that the way we look at politics is too narrow. It is too materialist. He believes that unless you have a spiritual element to what you are going for and a sense of moving beyond the three dimensions that we accept, it’s worthless. His idea is that imagination is the most important thing of all.

In the past as far as materialists go, we look on it as labour that would define us that is what fired the mind. But for him the imagination and poetic vision is what we should laud and pay attention to. It’s a duty for all of us to build Jerusalem by that artistic, poetic vision and imagination. That’s given me some sense that we are looking on things far too narrowly. I know he would be looked on by some Marxists as completely idealistic – a radical idealist and even revolutionary but I just think who is to say you’re right. Blake says, To see a world in a grain of sand.

Even science now is looking on the tiniest particles as microcosms of the whole. I’ve thrown myself mair open to things. A big part of me is opening up to questioning. The most important thing is we need to be questioning for truths. The left is not willing to discuss what has become clear that the official theories of what happened on 9/11 and 7/7 just do not add up. People are scared. I see the left like that, they are scared to look at these type of questions. If these actions were state terrorism, if they were false flag operations, then that’s what we’ve got to take on board.

There was a point when the SSP was tied up with the anti capitalist/ anti globalisation movement. That was so important for the SSP – the way that the SSP opened itself up to a lot more people and that is what really gave it an impetus into becoming a force in Scotland. Then it narrowed itself back down into a typical left wing grouping. It is only now that we are seeing how important the anti capitalist movement was. Everybody was guilty of squandering that opportunity. That’s the type of thing we need again.

There’s only a few individuals on the left saying its a set up job and we’re not buying into this. If people recognised what our enemy was really up to, a lot more people could be galvanised. I think there is a sort of fear and cravenness and conservatism. Then you start to think who is actually being fingered here. Who has been stopping this getting out? Who is calling the shots and moving the organisations away from questioning this. We can’t let the official view dominate as it does. I ever so slightly raised my baldy heid above the parapet to put it into the letters column on the Weekly Worker. It was just so pathetic the response I got back. The same nonsense arguments – utterly unscientific – pathetic.

I’ve interviewed David Icke and he would be considered a lunatic and they have been able to put that across. I treat everything he says with a degree of caution but there is more of his stuff that I have heard him say that is coming true. What we are moving towards is a micro chipped population. If this happens, we are back to being slaves again when they have us under that control. They started with animals they are now talking about prisoners. That is the very foreseeable future when we are all micro chipped then we are really fucked.

Do you think that artists have a responsibility to highlight these dangers in society?

Yes in a sense but the responsibility even mair so is to try and find out what the positives are and to be able to encourage people. I think that culture generally is somewhere that the battle can be fought wi some degree of success. Where as other areas at the moment it just seems much harder. Obviously a lot goes on online with young people and the way they are able to communicate with each other and I think the dam will burst. I am always trying to find alliances and means to be able to put forward ideas.

You mentioned young people and how they get involved. How do you view YouTube and things like that?

Its how its used. It can be turned on itself. Things can be turned into their opposites. So they can be used in a positive or a reactionary way. It can be used to dazzle and occupy and control. With something like Facebook; the political motivations behind that were really pretty apparent. It is a further degree of surveillance. Even with the internet itself. It was the American military that introduced it initially. What are you telling me that they had the benefit of humanity in mind? It has been a means of control from the start but at the same time, they have to allow it to develop. They have to hope it doesnae turn against them. But you know it can be used in all sorts of ways. It was the anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death (US peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Palestine) and through the net we saw they were encouraging people to speak her words at events. We recorded on a mobile phone outside parliament where it is illegal and outside the American embassy and banged it up on Youtube and its there to be seen. That becomes world wide. As with everybody, we are just waiting for things to rupture and explode in a positive fashion.

With Emancipation and Liberation, it is criminal that you do not have your website more up to date which could be a real benefit to people [Website Ed - rectifying that now, we fell behind]. You can see the way the Weekly Worker has given people an opportunity to express themselves. You have got to offer encouragement to people, via the internet and show that there are people attempting to provide answers. It is our duty to try to encourage that.

Republicanism? You participated in the Calton Hill Declaration. What does being a republican mean to you?

It was there from the very roots of my political organisation. Both in terms of being a Hibs supporter because we supported Irish republicanism, from the terraces and from my understanding of Punk. We had complete disdain for the monarchy and the desire for a republic. These type of things are crucial. Once you get your eyes opened to these questions you can accept no compromise on them. Republicanism is an absolute bottom line of democracy, particularly in this country. I have always been wary about nationalism. I’ve never been drawn to that in any way apart from when it is revolutionary which I saw wi Ireland. But republicanism is a total line for me so I was happy to play the queen at the Carlton Hill event. Always happy to get a frock on.

Rod MacGregor looks at science, secularism and the role of religion

In his book about oil depletion, Half Gone, Jeremy Leggett, one-time oil company high flier and former chief scientist with Greenpeace, tells of a particularly bizarre conversation he had with a lobbyist from the Ford Motor Company at a conference on climate change.

The man from Ford tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Leggett that, far from being four and a half billion years old, the world was, in fact, only 10,000 years old. Not only did he sincerely believe this, he also accused Leggett of being a disciple of the anti-Christ, then further informing him that pouring ever increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere did not really matter, as Leggett and all his fellow followers of the anti-Christ would be vanquished in the battle of Armageddon by the forces of God, after which they would ascend to heaven.

One thing that this outlandish dialogue between Leggett and the man from Ford does demonstrate is the resilience of religious fundamentalism.

Although the power of religion over the masses in western advanced societies has been seriously diminished since its mediaeval high point it would be foolish to think that it is no longer a relevant and powerful force in today’s world. In the United States, any politician with desires for high office ignores the Religious Right at their peril.

As science advanced and factual observation and calculation challenged faith based religion, the churches themselves did not just meekly accept that the game was up with the dawning of the age of reason. In fact, they fought tooth and nail in the face of the advance of scientific discovery and theory.

One of the most famous battles took place between Galileo Galilei and the Catholic Church in the 17th century. This particular fight had its roots in the previous century, when the Polish astronomer Copernicus had theorised that the Earth and all the planets revolved around the sun, opposing the then orthodox view that the Earth was at the centre and everything revolved around it.

This view was taken up by Galileo, an Italian physicist, astronomer and mathematician, who, among other things, invented the astronomical telescope. His invention allowed him to see the appearance of the planet Venus going through phases, thus proving that it was orbiting the Sun and confirming Copernicus to be correct.

Scientifically this was what we would nowadays call a breakthrough. But personally for Galileo, in his own time, it was a discovery which would cost him dearly, as it brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church and the Inquisition in the 17th century.

An explanatory word about the inquisition. Originally established in 1233, it was a tribunal, the purpose of which was to suppress heresy, originally by excommunication. It operated in Italy, Spain, France and the Holy Roman Empire, and later extended its reach to the Americas. Following the Reformation, it was particularly active. Trials were held in secret, often under threat of torture, and punishments ranged from fines and flogging, through to imprisonment and death by burning.

In 1616 the Inquisition had heard from a committee of consultants that the Sun being the centre of the Universe and the Earth having an annual motion were absurd in philosophy, at least erroneous in theory, and formally a heresy. This was bad news for Galileo.

He was summoned before the Inquisition on several occasions, including one in 1633 when he was formally interrogated for eighteen days regarding his book Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems.

To cut a long story short Galileo’s clash with the Catholic Church and the Inquisition saw him endure house arrest, despite failing health, until his death in 1642. The Catholic Church did, however, eventually, and somewhat reluctantly and belatedly almost come round to his way of thinking when it finally conceded that he might, he might be right. This magnanimous partial acceptance took place in 1983!

Now, lest anyone thinks that this is an anti-Catholic rant, in the interests of balance it should be pointed out that the Protestants were actually on the ball regarding Copernican theory nearly eighty years before the Catholic Church let the Inquisition loose on Galileo.

Luther himself said of Copernicus that The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside down, and he considered the words how and why to be dangerous and infectious questions.

We can see from this that in the hundreds of years from Galileo and the Inquisition right up to today with neo-cons in America and, till recently, Blair in this country, religion is by no means an irrelevance.

What, then, should our attitude, as secular socialists, be towards religion?

Consenting adults

Personally, in my own ideal socialist world, I would treat religion like sex. That is, let those of a religious persuasion do what they like, but let them do it in the privacy of their own homes among consenting adults. If they want to have prayer meetings or whatever with fellow believers of whatever faith, fine. And if they behaved themselves and their priests/imams/rabbis, &c., were not too meddlesome, I would even let them out once a year at Christmas/Ramadan/whatever for a bit of public worship.

The link with church and state would have to go, though. I wouldn’t go for an outright ban on religion as it has proved itself a stubborn beast where its eradication has been attempted, and an outright ban would give it a power that benign tolerance and state indifference would not. So, the question arises, does religion have any radical role to play in today’s world?

One thing springs to mind. Quite often, where there is political repression, populations will gather round a religion to express dissent. There are numerous examples of this, most recently the Buddhist monks of Burma, who took to the streets in protest at their own government in the absence of a political opposition. Other examples could include the Catholic Church in El Salvador in the 1980’s, and even the Islamic fundamentalism which replaced the Shah in Iran in the 1970’s.

But as socialists we should be careful about siding with any religion just because it opposes things which we as socialists, too, may oppose. Many religions come with baggage that should be unacceptable to anyone on the left. Should we have supported the ayatollahs of Iran simply because they were opposed to the Shah, a despotic and particularly vile puppet of American imperialism? How could we square away giving unqualified support to Ayatollah Khomeni with Islam’s approach to women, gays or the death penalty?

Or in El Salvador, how could we have unquestioningly backed the Catholic Church, given its views on abortion, homosexuality or birth control. While we may detest the autocratic, undemocratic regimes that these religions opposed, we could at best offer only limited support to them, given the power structures that are at their core.

These are, indeed, classic examples of why we should be careful about siding with our enemies’ enemies. They are not necessarily our friends.

But I believe that there is at least one very good and important lesson that secular socialists can learn from religious fundamentalism, albeit what could, perhaps, be described as a negative one. It is this. We, too, as socialists, have our fundamental beliefs; we, too, have our tracts that our (hugely) godless faith holds sacred. But we must be prepared to add to those tracts, taking into account changing times and different circumstances.

Different people in different areas of the world may respond differently to situations that they find themselves in. What works in a relatively wealthy first world country may be quite different in character to what will energise and attract people to socialist values in a third world country or in a country which, once relatively wealthy, has fallen on hard times.

In this context I would like to point up two examples.

In his book Heroes John Pilger describes, in an article written in 1985, the struggles of the Eritrean people for independence from Ethiopia. Since 1961 the Eritreans had, while at war with Ethiopia and in isolation, despite appalling poverty, built a society which was, of stark necessity, self-reliant, but one which also placed essential value on literacy and humanity.

No young Eritrean was allowed to become a fighter in their armed struggle until they could read, write and understand what they might very well have to die for one day. And though in a permanent state of shortage, any prisoners taken were treated according to the Geneva Convention. The Eritreans’ belief was that the young Ethiopians they were fighting against were themselves victims of the same system which was trying to obliterate them.

In the years from 1961 to 1985 Eritrea’s enemies defied ideology. Both imperial and revolutionary Ethiopia had waged war on Eritrea, which had been a pawn in a superpower chess game, with America and the Soviet Union, with their client states, Israel and Cuba, weighing in for good measure.

Pilger points out that even their dogma, which he describes as a mish-mash of basic Marxism, had been reshaped by years of war and betrayal. A teacher who had studied in Britain explained it to him thus,

It may sound preposterous to you, but we have no left-wing and no right-wing. These are European concepts which have no application in Eritrea, or probably anywhere in Africa. How can we possibly use these stupid terms? We have been let down too often. We are ourselves: and we have no political debts.

For the record, Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia in May 1993.

The second example is that of Argentina. In December 2001, the Argentinian economy collapsed, throwing a quarter of the workforce out of work.

Movement of Recovered Companies

Out of this industrial holocaust something remarkable emerged, known as the Movement of Recovered Companies. It is still not huge, six years on it covers only 170 companies and 10,000 workers, but what these workers have achieved is quite astonishing.

There existed a legal framework whereby the workers could, through time, expropriate ownership of the companies. This they achieved by occupying the shut-down factories and bringing them back into production.

Put like that it sounds quite simple, but the Recovered Companies movement is a tale of occupation, eviction and re-occupation, most of the time with intimidation and violence from the former owners and police always lurking in the background.

By far the most common form of control is by setting up a co-operative, where decisions are made by assembly, with everyone having their say. In one factory, in the middle of the floor are forty school desks, so that workers who have to keep the machinery working, can have their say as they do so.

But the interesting thing is that the people who occupied these factories and brought them back to life did not start from a political viewpoint. Their sole aim in the beginning was to earn money to feed their families. Many, however, become politicised by their struggles.

The left, when they turned up to offer their support, were quite often viewed with something approaching suspicion and the workers themselves did not want to be co-opted on to anyone’s political agenda. Indeed, in one factory they were eventually asked if they would mind supporting them from outside the factory gates!

As one worker put it,

We formed the cooperative with the criteria of equal wages and making basic decisions by assembly; we are against the separation of manual and intellectual work; we want a rotation of positions and; above all, the ability to recall our elected leaders.

Some on the left feel that the co-operatives fit too comfortably into what is still a capitalist system, and call for nationalisation of the co-operatives. As one worker pointed out, however, while not theoretically opposed to nationalisation at some time in the future to do so currently would mean having a right-wing capitalist as their ultimate boss.

An interesting argument.

Though different in nature, what happened in Eritrea and Argentina (one a war, the other an economic catastrophe) had a common thread running through them and that thread’s name was necessity, as people rallied to a common cause and left the political theorists either stranded on the sidelines or chasing events as they happened.

We must keep our minds open to new ideas, to new variations on familiar themes. Not to do so will leave us with nothing but rigid dogma. If we do not embrace change which enhances our core beliefs, however unexpected its origin, then two millenia from now (though, hopefully the revolution will have occurred by then) we would find future socialists quoting from ancient texts and Marxist tracts from the 19th century.

They will preach to an audience which will regard them with every bit as much incredulity as Jeremy Leggett could ever muster in the twenty-first century when conversing with an executive of the Ford motor company, quoting from tracts which were themselves written 2000 years and more before.

Adapt, adopt, evolve—these are the things which socialism must do (with integrity) if it is to stay relevant to the citizens of the future.

SSP Policy

(Agreed at Oct. 2007 Conference)

Conference resolves that:

• 1. While religious schools continue to receive state funding, all suitably qualified teachers should be eligible to apply for all posts within them.
• 2. Religious or denominational schools should be phased out as they result in separating children on the grounds of faith, which can only serve to alienate them from one another.
• 3. That we wish to end the practice of collective worship in school assemblies.

Allan Armstrong interviews socialist activist and poet, Jim Aitken, about his life, politics and works.

Could you please give us some background information about your life?

I was born and raised in Edinburgh. My mother was from Wick, one of a family of six. She left Wick to work in service in London. She never saw the city because she was working all the time. She met my father in North Berwick. He was one of eight children raised in Edinburgh. His family originally came from Dublin. I consider myself a mongrel. I feel Celtic, it is part of my roots.

My mother was a member of the Labour Party, whilst my father was chair of the local branch of the old UPW, the posties’ union for 27 years. Uncles and aunts were members of the Communist Party. My aunt, Gertie McManus, was a stalwart of the Edinburgh Trades Council, as a delegate from USDAW, the shopworkers’ union. She was behind the moves to get the James Connolly plaque put up in the Cowgate.

I was brought up in a wider, literate, working class, socialist culture, which has largely disappeared today. It seemed natural to be a socialist and republican. When I rebelled as a teenager, it just pushed me further Left.

How did your interest in literature come about?

There were plenty of books in the house. There was also an atlas and I collected stamps. These all helped to arouse my interest in the wider world. This all contributed to my internationalism. I went to Portobello High School. I was fortunate that this was the period when comprehensive schools provided a real opportunity for working class kids. The teachers were committed to the comprehensive ideal, and some of my English teachers, in particular, provided me with good leads. I read Beckett in my sixth year. This led me to a whole lot of interesting existentialist writing, for example, Sartre, Camus and Kafka.

When I left school I worked for two years. I began to write poetry. I met Norman McCaig, along with Michael MacDairmid and Deidre Chapman in Milnes Bar. I became a friend of Norman’s and read my poetry to him at his flat. He did a lot to encourage me. When Norman got the readership at Stirling University I decided I would go there to study. I studied literature, fine art, philosophy and religious studies. I had some of my poetry published in the university magazine and did some readings there.

Somebody else who has had a great and continuing influence on me is Hugh MacDairmid. I recently read Revolutionary Art of the Future produced by John Manson, who was interviewed in your last issue.

How were your politics developing at this time?

I didn’t join any political party, although I went to some meetings organised by the Communist Party at the University. John Reid was the President of Stirling NUS at the time! I was more interested in particular campaigns and issues like Vietnam, Anti-Apartheid and CND.

Why did you decide to become an English teacher?

I decided that since I had personally benefited from the comprehensive system, I wanted to offer something to working class kids from a similar background. My love of English is tied up with the openings on the world which literature provides.

I taught briefly in Stirling, but since then, I have been teaching in Edinburgh. The English department I joined was a really good place, where, once again the teachers were committed to the comprehensive ideal. However, there was still the authoritarianism symbolised by the use of the belt.

Things really changed for the worse under Thatcher. She was a class warrior determined that her class should win out. She was vicious. Mass unemployment was used to discipline the working class. The schooling system was remoulded to better fit the economic system. There were fewer and fewer possibilities for real education, as everything was subordinated to continuous assessments. O grades became Standard Grades; Highers became Revised Highers (revised again and again) as more finely graded assessment procedures were imposed, to control both student and teacher.

English teachers were at the centre of the resistance to all this. I became a member of Scottish Association of Teachers of Language and Literature (SATOLL). The late Tony McManus was the inspiration behind this. Many of those involved, like Tony, were themselves writers and artists. We had a considerable impact. I had articles published in The Scotsman and The Herald.

I was also quite heavily involved in the Edinburgh Local Association of the EIS. I was on the Local Executive, alongside other left-wingers from Rank & File Teachers. I chaired the English subject section. The Edinburgh LA was to give its support to various initiatives, like SATOLL’s Sense and Worth and, more recently, the pamphlet of anti-war poetry, Magistri Pro Pace, written by Scottish Federation of Socialist Teacher members, Allan Crosbie, Annie McCrae, Andrew McGeever, Linda Richardson and myself.

How did your politics develop through this period?

When Thatcher came to power I joined the Communist Party. This is where I believed I would find the best criticism of capitalism. Somewhat mistakenly, this is where I also thought the fightback against Thatcher would begin, because of the CP’s strength in the big industrial unions. But the big debate, which was taking place inside the CP, was which way forward – the working class or the new social movements. I was with the industrial working class-based wing. However, just when the wider labour movement needed the CP, it was tearing itself apart.

Since internationalism was so important to me I continued to be active in a number of campaigns. These included Liberation (originally set up by Fenner Brockway), the Britain-Vietnam Association, Anti-Apartheid and Latin America Solidarity.

When the CP folded, I became a member of the Midlothian Peace Forum (I was living in Penicuik at the time), which combined CND, Peace groups and Anti-Apartheid. The leading figure was David Smith, a local Labour councillor, and also a committed socialist. We invited Canon Kenyon Wright of the Scottish Constitutional Convention to address one of our Burns Suppers. Scottish self-determination was becoming an important issue, under the hammer blows of Thatcher. Scottish devolution eventually came about as a response to Thatcher’s attacks.

This was also a great period of Scottish cultural renaissance. When political options run out, cultural renaissance can reach the parts that politics can not reach. World class writers such as Alistair Gray and James Kelman came to the fore. The artists, Ken Currie, Steven Conroy and Steven Campbell had a major impact.

When the EIS leadership accommodated to the Tories, and then to New Labour, they slowly strangled the teachers’ union as a vehicle of resistance, I dropped out of LA activity. I used the time to do a two year course at Edinburgh University, on Scottish Cultural Studies, led by Murdo Macdonald, followed by a two year course on European Studies. I also took a considerable interest in Latin American writers, particularly Jorge Luis Borges (despite his right wing politics) and Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes. When I finally published my book of poetry, Glory, in 2001, I included an essay on Borges.

So let’s go on to your books of poetry. Was Glory your first to be published?

No, back in 1993, I had published Twelve Poems for Mikolaj. Mikolaj Januszewicz was a close friend of mine, when I lived in Midlothian. He had just died. Mikolaj was a remarkable person and a Communist in several European parties. As a Belorussian Communist he had fought with the Partisans in the Second World War, before moving to France to fight with the Maquis. After the war he moved to London, then Midlothian, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was a member of the old CPGB.

Glory was published in 2001. It was dedicated to my children and to the Irish granny I had never met. It included poetry I had written over many years. It deals with major political events in the world, but also with my own internal life and cultural interests, My most recent book, Neptunes’s Staff & Other Formations, follows this format too. It has been the most successful in terms of sales. This book has gone to a second edition and raised money for CND.

The book launch was very successful too. Sixth year students produced a musical accompaniment to the poem, Leroy’s Rapping Lament, which links events in Baghdad and Falluja with New Orleans. Teachers and students also made a film with images from these places.

I have always tried to have my work sponsored through wider labour movement bodies and campaigns. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to my writing of From the Front Line of Terror in 2002, and Another Line of Terror in 2003, and my contributions to Magistri Pro Pace in 2006. This was also dedicated to Tony McManus. The Herald printed a double page selection. My other recent book of poetry, Celta Arabica, 2004, was written with the Palestinian writer Ghazi Hussein. These were all written under the auspices of the Anti-War Movement.

Palestine is obviously very important to you. How did you become involved?

Palestine is the Left’s ‘Vietnam’ for today. Palestinians are the conscience of the world today, as the Jews once were. When I met Ghazi, who originally lived in Syria, as part of the Palestinian diaspora, he said that the Palestinians were at the bottom of the barrel in the Arab countries too. This is why they are at the forefront of all the struggles against injustice.

The idea of organising poetry readings came in response to the fire-bombing of the Annandale Street mosque by racists in 2001. It was decided to hold a solidarity meeting in the damaged mosque. Tom Leonard, Liz Lochead, Aonghas MacNeacail, and others, all agreed to read their poetry. It was so successful over 40 people had to be turned away. When ever have you heard of people being turned away from poetry readings!

This led to further events being held annually as an alternative Remembrance Day. It was at one of these events that I first met Ghazi. He had written the play One Hour Before Sunrise, about imprisonment and torture in Syria. We agreed to write and publish Celt Arabica. We have become close friends.

How did your politics develop during this period?

If Thatcher’s 1979 election victory prompted me to join the CP, then the Iraq war prompted me to join the SSP. The Scottish dimension of politics is important. However, I also joined the SWP, for the same reason I had earlier joined the CP. It provided the best critique of capitalism, especially in its new virulent imperialist phase. The anti-war, anti imperialist movement is very important to me.

Now that there has been an SNP victory in the election to the Scottish Parliament, I believe it is the job of the Left in Scotland to take on the same job, pushing the SNP, that the old CP once did, pushing the Labour Party. I’m involved in Solidarity and the SWP. We believe such pressure can influence events.

People voted SNP to punish Labour over the war, privatisation and social neglect. So far, Salmond hasn’t really put a foot wrong. When, however, the SNP members, in the Edinburgh City Council coalition, initially backed the 22 school closures, Left pressure, organising the strike and other protests, was able to force them to back down. Salmond probably also pressured them, since his eyes are on the next election, so he wants to remain popular.

My main political activity, though, remains with the anti-war movement and the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. Back in the 1970’s I had supported Palestinian Medical Aid, when it was the only organisation of any sort providing support for the Palestinians. Edinburgh now has a very active Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, which has brought prominent speakers from all over the world. They have done a great deal to raise the level of debate in this city.

The Palestinian issue prompted your first foray into play writing. How did this come about?

This arose because of the opportunity provided by the Edinburgh Festival in 2006. There is a close link between Scotland and Palestine. Arthur Balfour, the UK Foreign Secretary who wrote the original Declaration in 1917, promising Palestine to the Jewish people, lived at Whittinghame, outside Haddington, in East Lothian. Scotland has to know of its participation in British imperialism.

Due to the considerable confusion surrounding present day events in Palestine, many people just see the conflict as a war between two tribes. I wanted to get back to the source. This was British imperial sponsorship of Zionism, which then represented a small minority in the worldwide Jewish community.

This is why I wrote From Haddington to Palestine. The play imagines the ghost of Balfour confronting a present day Palestinian at Whittinghame. The actors were all activists from the Edinburgh branch of the Palestinian Soldarity campaign. The Theatre Workshop helped with the direction. It was well received by the Palestinians living in Scotland.

Your most recent book of poetry draws from your trips to Ireland and the Highlands.

This reflects my love of these two places. I visit both regularly. Joyce and Beckett are my favourite authors. One contemporary author whose writings I enjoy is Niall Williams – a sort of Irish magic-realism. I also enjoy Seamus Heaney’s poetry. The Highlander, Neil Gunn, is one of my favourite Scottish authors, whilst Sorley Maclean’s poetry is up there with Macdairmid’s. I support anything to keep the Gaelic language going.

My poem, A Drink in Doolin, is set in Gus O’Connors Bar in County Clare. It is a cultural magnet for Celts from all over the world. The Leith-born singer, Dick Gaughan, another socialist, also with Irish and Highland parents, has produced a TV programme, set in the same pub, showcasing folk music with common Irish and Scottish roots.

Since my regular visits to Skye, I have also made friends with, of all people, an Edinburgh banker, who originally hails from Uig. The Uig Banker shows the redemptive capabilities of the awesome scenery of Skye, away from crazy, crowded Liverpool Street.

The cover of your book has a plug by the well-known Marxist literary critic, Terry Eagleton. How do you know him?

I don’t know Terry Eagleton well, but I wrote to him. I was taken with Eagleton’s idea of extending the language of the Left. This does not mean a return to religion, but a turn to ontology, or our reason to exist. He points out that the “Left is at home with imperial power and guerrilla warfare, but embarrassed on the whole by the thought of death, evil, sacrifice or the sublime.” Even if you have a socialist revolution tomorrow, people will still have to confront the ontological and existential situation. You can’t ignore religion. It has been part of all human cultures. I am interested in Buddhism and Islam because I am interested in the world. This interest comes from my socialism.

Jim Aitken’s poems are a delightful combination of lyrical delicacy and political toughness, Terry Eagleton

Grzegorz (Greg) Rybak is Polish worker currently living in Edinburgh. He stood as the SSP candidate for the Leith Ward in the City of Edinburgh Council elections this year.

To tame the city

Sitting on a bicycle
With the speed of the wind
I wend my way through the city
Trying to tame the new city space.
New closes, and new bends in roads
New monuments, bridges, houses of stone,
New bus stops and brand new human faces
I tame them like I would tame an animal.
May the city quickly remember me!
I only recognise its habits with difficulty.
I stretch out my hand and try
To stroke the barriers along the road
Shaking with trepidation.
Soon I will tame it – I know this without modesty
Or with modesty, it will tame me.
Grzgorz (Greg) Rybak, Edinburgh

They all have their stories.
This one, young and ageing,
says that his stepfather
was ‘a brutal bastard.’

And in those greying eyes
that have seen far too much
I can still sense the child
whose world went upside down.

But this lad has moved on,
now dreams of survival
on the harsh, concrete street
where he must never sleep
must never sleep
never sleep.