I'll be leading a tribute to ‘Robert Burns the radical’ at the SSPs annual ‘Alternative Burns Supper’ on Friday 26th in the Canons Gait on the High Street.
We recognize in Robert Burns someone who was passionate about independence, a true radical who spoke out in favour of the French revolution and the American revolution and was a member of the Scots reform movement. Here was a man advocating workers representatives in Parliament a hundred and fifty years before Keir Hardie, demanding universal suffrage way before the suffragists, and fighting for the abolition of slavery and celebrating Scots hero’s like Wallace and Thomas Muir the leader of the United Scotsmen.
Burns is for me a hugely inspiring figure. He championed our own Scots culture when the ruling classes here considered it couthy, backward and rude. He was a figure the establishment truly feared and he has through his work retained his potency today. He was a close friend and collaborator of Scotlands great blacklisted painter Alexander Naysmith.
Robert Burns is rightly celebrated the world over and his attraction is that he was truly a poet of the common man and a genius to boot.
The SSP has proudly marked the anniversary of his birth for a decade now by debunking the myths and explaining who Robert Burns really was, what he really stood for and what he left us. I believe we owe him that much.
In the Canons Gait tomorrow night we will sing and dance and eat and drink to one true working class hero. He’s one of us.
Burns is for me a hugely inspiring figure. He championed our own Scots culture when the ruling classes here considered it couthy, backward and rude. He was a figure the establishment truly feared and he has through his work retained his potency today. He was a close friend and collaborator of Scotlands great blacklisted painter Alexander Naysmith.
Robert Burns is rightly celebrated the world over and his attraction is that he was truly a poet of the common man and a genius to boot.
The SSP has proudly marked the anniversary of his birth for a decade now by debunking the myths and explaining who Robert Burns really was, what he really stood for and what he left us. I believe we owe him that much.
In the Canons Gait tomorrow night we will sing and dance and eat and drink to one true working class hero. He’s one of us.
Tickets £7 and £4unwaged – haggis neeps and tatties included.
1 comment:
Colin wrote...
"Robert Burns is rightly celebrated the world over and his attraction is that he was truly a poet of the common man and a genius to boot."
He was indeed Colin.
I wonder what he would have thought if he were here today and found out that we are still being ruled by a "Parcel o' Rogues"
Parcel o' Rogues
Fareweel tae all oor Scottish fame
Fareweel oor ancient glory
Fareweel even tae oor Scottish name
Sae famed in martial story
Now Sark runs tae the Solway sand
Tweed runs tae the ocean
To mark where England's province stand
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation
What force or guile could ne'er subdue
Through many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor's wages
The English steel we could disdain
Secure in valour's station
But English gold has been oor bane
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation
Oh would that ere I saw the day
That treason thus should sell us
My auld grey heid was laid in clay
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace
But pith an' power tae my last hour
I'll mak' this declaration
We're bought and sold for English gold
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
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