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JAN WOOLF finds out where she came from and where she’s going amid Pete Townsend’s tribute to 1970s youth culture
The Russian Revolution in Bathgate
by Alistair Findlay
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARJORIE MAYO, JOHN GREEN and MARIA DUARTE review Sudan, Remember Us, From Hilde, With Love, The Road to Patagonia, and F1
MARIA DUARTE recommends the very human portrayal of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist in Putin’s Russia
This is a remarkable set of hop hip, salsa, reggae, soul, cumbia and traditional Mexican music finds TONY BURKE
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys the perverse jocularity, depraved glamour and inner turbulence of the Tate gallery’s tribute to Leigh Bowery
On the 60th Anniversary of the October Revolution
the comrades met in the room above the chemist’s
(now Haddows) beside the Railway Tavern.
It was Sunday before noon
John Foster’s coming through —
fellow-travellers welcome.
The room was bare and wooden,
posters flaking. We all stood,
a minute’s silence ticked away,
a half-raised fist, tables, chairs,
St David’s church bell tolling
the Bathgate faithful out to pray.
No one laughed, no incongruity here,
twenty-five million war dead,
Foster said, could not be wished away:
we had to win the peace by struggle.
Eric Atkinson handed round some greetings
from some friends we’d found
in Nicaragua.
Alistair Findlay is a poet, biographer and poetry editor noted for bringing innovative themes into Scottish writing such as professional football, social work and labour history seen through the lens of working-class socialist literary culture. He has been a speaker for Our Class: Our Culture.
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