Stand up now!

Two interesting and complementary columns on music side by side in Peace News, 2614-2615, February - March 2018 (p.20). Jeff Cloves writes about 'the 10 best songs about peace', noting the absence of women's songs - either as composers or performers - in one online listing. Meanwhile, in her regular 'Rebel Music' Column, Penny Stone also uses the centenary of (some) women's suffrage in Britian to ask what songs they might have been singing back then, and which stand the test of time. Bread and Roses, which features prominently in S4OL, is also a song that penny notes retain its currency. 

In this article one of our S4OL interviewees, Eileen Karmy of Protest in Harmony street choir in Edinburgh, dons her academic hat to consider the 1977 football game between Chile and Scotland. For many observers, the so-called 'match of shame' served to legitimise the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet. It actually took place in a stadium where people had been murdered by the military just a few years before! Eileen focuses on the international solidarity with the people of Chile expressed by social movement activists in Scotland. The song 'Blood on the Grass', written by Adam McNaughton, was an important expression of this international solidarity.