This weekend, we found ourselves in the unexpected position of having to demonstrate in the streets to try and preserve parliamentary democracy in our own country.
As a system, it’s far from perfect, but I’m sure most of us agree it’s a lot better than a potential Brexit dictatorship with Johnson at the helm.
Thousands of people gathered in the streets all over the UK to witness their opposition to the closing down of the Westminster parliament.
In Edinburgh, I met a…
This year has seen some of the most widespread actions against the demonisation and mistreatment of migrants in the USA. As institutional treatment of human beings gets worse, more and more people are singing out their opposition.
At the end of June, 36 people were arrested in New Jersey for blocking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre, crying out at the unacceptable conditions children are being held in.
The beginning of July saw another mass…
Over the May Day weekend in Edinburgh, I sang 200 Pete Seeger songs with friends old and new. I hosted a singathon to celebrate what would have been Pete’s 100th birthday. It was brilliant.
People came and went, sang along, played along, laughed and listened. We sang songs sharing over 100 years’ worth of stories of people’s everyday lives and political engagement in the United States and around the world.
In many ways, the most enjoyable element of the weekend was the sense of…
If I asked you to think of a radical European song, there are any number of songs that might spring to mind. One of the top three would almost certainly be ‘The Internationale’. It is perhaps the most obvious place to start – translated into most European languages (with varying degrees of poetic success!) the song is an anthem for change and socialist possibility.
‘Arise ye workers from your slumbers, Arise ye prisoners of want… So comrades, come rally, And the last fight let us…
On 24 October 1975, 90 percent of Iceland’s female population participated in a full day strike. Paid and unpaid work was not done.
At the time, women who worked outside of the home earned less than 60 percent of what men earned.
Many industries shut down for the day as a result. There was no telephone service and newspapers were not printed since the typesetters were all women. Theatres shut down for the day as actresses refused to work.
The majority of teachers were…
The first time I sang as part of a flashmob in Barclays bank was a couple of years ago in Edinburgh with Protest in Harmony choir.
Barclays had just opened a new branch on Princes Street with a great big high ceiling and hard walls, a church-like acoustic. Churches are great to sing in so, of course, we couldn’t resist!
There is currently a targeted campaign trying to get Barclays to divest from Israeli companies as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to end…
Hamish Henderson (Scotland), and Victor Jara (Chile), were both singers, songwriters and traditional-song-collectors in the mid-20th Century. They were both social activists working towards a more just society for all people, recognising the marginalisation of the working people of their respective countries.
The collecting and sharing of traditional songs was a political act for both singers, taking the time to listen to songs that might otherwise have been lost in time, and…
On International Women’s Day this year, I was singing: ‘Sister, my sister, she’s walking with me, walking for equality, she’s walking with me…’, a song that was sung in the 1970s women’s liberation movement in the USA.
This song is a zipper song – just a word or phrase is changed to create a new verse, making it really useful for singing on marches and enabling people to join in. We added our own verses, singing to…
A couple of years ago, I went to an international peace gathering in Sarajevo. Because of the place, there was a much greater proportion of people able to attend from Eastern Europe and from further east than is often the case in gatherings held further west in Europe. This was a great learning opportunity for me because I am used to being in ‘international’ spaces that are still dominated by Western culture.
When I am choosing songs to help bring many voices together in concert or…
In February and March, there was a strike for pension rights organised by the University and College Union (UCU). Put very simply, extortionately high wages are being paid to small numbers of people at the very top of the university tree, while it’s being proposed that pensions (delayed salary pay) for the majority of workers be significantly cut. The UCU voted for strike action to prevent this from happening.
The pickets have been extraordinarily strong in Edinburgh, and my…
What songs were women singing 100 years ago when they were campaigning for full access to our democratic system?
At the beginning of the 20th century, the folk songs that have always been sung were being sung all over the country. Women were still singing while labouring – milking, spinning, waulking (beating) the cloth and such like. They were singing lullabies to help soothe the babies and themselves, and singing ballads telling of love and loss.
Songs of war were everywhere…
As I write, it is Remembrance weekend; a difficult one for many of us. For anyone who has lost family and friends to war, whether soldiers or civilians, it is important to have space to remember those people as well as the circumstances of their loss. Unfortunately, the pomp and circumstance surrounding our annual remembrance ceremonies based around the ‘victory’ of the First World War can be troubling for peace activists such as myself.
Most years I am involved with alternative…
’Biktub Ismak Ya Biladi, ‘al shams ilma bit(a)gheeb
La mali wala wlaadi, ‘Ala Hubik mafe Habib.
I will write your name oh my country, above the sun that never sets.
Not my children nor my wealth, above your love there is no love.
I first heard this song at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, Palestine, in 2012. I was in the village to participate in a demonstration with my choir and, as is their tradition of…
When my choir San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) and I were in Palestine two months ago, we took part in a demonstration to call for the return of Palestinian bodies from the Israeli government.
The campaign is led by family members, often mothers, of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces, or who have been involved in militarised resistance to the occupation resulting in their own deaths. This includes desperate actions such as suicide bombing.
For family…
I have just returned from a trip to Palestine with my solidarity choir, San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) where we visited a farming community in the South Hebron hills called At Tuwani where we learned about their everyday lives and accompanied them in planting olive trees.
We planted olive trees on land owned by the community and immediately next to a fence marking off more land that used to be owned by the villagers, but has been stolen by the illegal Israeli settlement next…
