Brent Kennedy, Carlisle Socialist Party
Spare a thought for the poor members of Carlisle Socialist party. With the post-floods mood and ongoing rain dampening down outside activities, we were forced into the Milbourne Arms to celebrate our fourth annual alternative Burns’ Night.
Just imagine having to be entertained with live music, served haggis, neeps and tatties, sit through an array of songs, jokes and poems and be forced to drink Guinness all night just to raise money for the fighting fund. It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it. And we collected £175!
Fortunately our burden was shared by lots of new faces who had seen our posters across town and a recommendation in the local paper. Several of them sang and recited in the open mic session. Thanks to ‘Now and Again’, John Chambers and Jonny Foster for the music.
The Burns’ Night ‘immortal memory address’ corrected the utterly false image of Burns constructed by the British state and Tory media after his death and propagated for over two centuries. Burns was a revolutionary democrat who supported the American and French revolutions.
Burns became an underground poet, anonymously publishing stinging attacks on the corrupt regime, during the British ‘reign of terror.’ This was when the Tory government sent workers to their death in Australia for joining a trade union or uttering their opinions.
After his early death, Burns was vilified with lies and hypocrisy. Patrick Scott Hogg and Andrew Noble restored the truth in their books “The lost poems” and “The Cannongate Burns”, which they researched on an academic grant of just £15,000. But now a project by Glasgow and Oxford Universities, to rubbish this discovery, has been set up – with a state grant of £1.1 million!
I wonder how they will explain away the fact that even as his health was failing he defiantly declared “if I must write, then let it be sedition!”
