MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Just my type
On UK Disability Awareness Day ANGUS REID celebrates the art of KEITH ARMSTRONG, a pioneering activist and writer whose unique body of artwork is a vision of protest and peace
Ward 16 poem, 1972; My Typewriter Is Not Typing Like It Used To, 1977; The Plane Tree, 1999
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ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
KEITH ARMSTRONG (1950-2017) was a dynamic activist for the rights of people with disabilities. He was also highly creative, working as an artist, poet and musician, and a serious scholar of the history and linguistics of disability.
He contracted polio during infancy. In his teens he could just about walk but at the age of 20 he spent an entire year in hospital, undergoing complex back surgery. He would spend the rest of his life on crutches and, increasingly, in a wheelchair.
Yet he attended countless demonstrations — for CND, housing rights and against the government of the day, as well as those demanding disability rights — and was arrested more than once.
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