V

 I need to mark the death of Leeds born poet and translator Tony Harrison, a working class boy made good who kept his radical politics his whole life. 

Let's have a few lines from his most famous poem, which are sadly still as valid today as they were in 1985:

These Vs are all the versuses of life
from LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White
and (as I’ve known to my cost) man v. wife,
Communist v. Fascist, Left v. Right,

class v. class as bitter as before,
the unending violence of US and THEM,
personified in 1984
by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM,

Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart v. mind,
East/West, male/female, and the ground
these Fixtures are fought out on’s Man, resigned
to hope from his future what his past never found.

The prospects for the present aren’t too grand
when a swastika with NF (National Front)’s
sprayed on a grave, to which another hand
has added, in a reddish colour, CUNTS.

There is going to be a reading of the whole poem on October 12th at Holbeck cemetery, site of his parents' vandalised grave which prompted the writing of the poem.