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.

This was a holiday well away from smoke-filled committee rooms. Rowland, May Chipulina, my sister Baba and me stayed in South Ronaldsay, visited just about every archaeological site on the various islands and played bridge every evening. The ferry from Scrabster was the SS Ola. The locals called it the Rolly-Poly Ola for reasons which we soon came to understand on the return journey after some very windy weather.