RCN<\/acronym> members recently heard of the death of our comrade Charlie Rees.<\/p>\n Charlie, together with his partner Deidre McCartin, was one of the founding members of the Scottish Socialist Party. He had been an active socialist in the south of England, but also remembered his family\u2019s Welsh roots. After moving from Allihies in West Cork, where Charlie met Deirdre, they both became active members of the Ayr branch for several years and joined the RCN<\/acronym>. Charlie used his artistic skills to create eye-catching posters and installations on the SSP<\/acronym> stalls on a regular basis.<\/p>\n For personal reasons Charlie and Deirdre later moved to Scarborough. Here they were pivotal in setting up a lively, inclusive anti war group that broadened out to taking direct action in support of all sorts of progressive and socialist activities.<\/p>\n In response to our farewell meeting, in a Glasgow pub, Charlie wrote the accompanying poem which describes his first becoming aware of other RCN<\/acronym> comrades at an SSP<\/acronym> Conference and his feelings on our parting.<\/p>\n His enthusiasm, warmth and humanity are greatly missed.<\/p>\n Comrades, friends, mates, pals They are my left hand<\/p>\n Pure chance we met, just taking any seat I bled today Militant Trade Unionist, Republican, Communist, Artist and Poet RCN members recently heard of the death of our comrade Charlie Rees. Charlie, together with his partner Deidre McCartin, was one of the founding members of the Scottish Socialist Party. He had been an active socialist in the south of England, but also remembered his family\u2019s Welsh…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1863,1000],"tags":[359,264],"class_list":["post-16287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-celebration","category-issue-20","tag-author-charlie-rees","tag-author-rcn"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":2582,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16288,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16287\/revisions\/16288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}March 18th 2001<\/h3>\n
\nNone of these words describe the way I feel
\nA bond between us all<\/p>\n
\nA trick of fate
\nA show of hands and there we were<\/p>\n
\nI cut off my left hand
\nCharlie Rees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"