These photos were taken at Christmas parties held at Clarendon Place and Irvine Place in Stirling. The two smiling girls with Rowland are from the left, Aletia and Variña Muñoz, daughters of Jose and Graciela, both members of the Chilean Committee. I think this was the one and only time in his life that Rowland ever held a guitar in his hands.

1980 BURNS SUPPER - IRVINE PLACE. Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine.

Rowland was against the war and fervently in favour of a British defeat. For some reason there was little political activity by the local left during the war so there are no appropriate photos.

In 1981 the IRA prisoner Bobby Sands died after a long hunger strike. It was, Rowland thought, another nail in the coffin of British Imperialism. It was a position that often led him to heated arguments with some of his less radical Labour Party colleagues.

The Community Charge, universally known as the Poll Tax, was one of Mrs. It replaced the rates in Scotland and shifted the burden of local taxes from the rich to the poor. What followed was a series of mass protests. One held in Trafalgar Square ended in a riot as a consequence of police heavy-handedness. Rowland refused to pay the tax claiming that it was illegal and campaigned relentlessly against it.