Scotland PIE and LGB research thread

[EndlessTea]

I wanted to research how PIE was eventually exposed as a child abusers lobby group and how it went from being influential and widely endorsed by groups such as Liberty and even feminists such as Harriet Harman, etc, to being reviled, quashed and the word ‘paedo’ becoming synonymous with child abuser.

I started with Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedophile_Information_Exchange and my hairs stood on end, when I discovered right away that “PIE was set up as a special interest group within the Scottish Minorities Group” and “in 1969, it was the country's first LGBT rights organisation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outright_Scotland and both were founded by Ian Dunn. This suggests that historically in Scotland, gay rights activism and child abuser lobbying have been very closely entwined.

The reason for the uncanny feeling, is because, on reading Trans Britain, I was disturbed to discover that James Morton joined a group of activists who had lobbied for amendments to the Sex Offenders Bill 1996 (around the age of consent) and called themselves The LGB Equality Network. This group strongly pushed the T at the expense of safeguarding.

Also, the fact that LGBT Youth Scotland (established in November 1989 as the Stonewall Youth Project by members of the LGBT community in Edinburgh.) has such a culture of child [redacted word which rhymes with looming]
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4703808-comes-with-a-content-warning-reduxx-exclusive-two-survivors-allege-they-were-groomed-sexually-exploited-by-staff-at-scottish-lgbt-youth-charity I get the strong sense that the links aren’t so tenuous, when we ask ourselves “was James Morton just doing the bidding of sex offenders?”.

MY IMPRESSIONS SO FAR

There has been a push for absolute impunity, permissiveness and unfettered male entitled sexual expression and sexual gratification from Scotland since the late 60s.
This has stemmed from activism by The Sexual Minorities Group and The Paedophile Information Exchange, both founded by Ian Dunn.

The polite cover for this activism is ‘gay rights’, but it is really about total sexual permissiveness.

Some of these men were QCs and formed a ‘magic circle’ where they were able to stifle prosecutions of their ‘own’.

The enemy of these activists are stereotyped as ‘prudes’ and religious people.

Absolute impunity for male sexual entitlement does not sit well with women and parents, since we and our children bear the brunt of it. Lesbians were pretty disapproving of all the sexual exploitation and abuse these men endorsed.

These male ‘sexual rights’ activists can’t have much political sway without the endorsement of women, however.

The campaign to repeal Section 28 presented the perfect opportunity to get lesbians and mothers onside, and it was during this period that the trans juggernaut was galvanised in Scotland.

This is first impressions though.

Morton concludes h’’ chapter by saying that Julia Gordon and Nick Laird are still influencing things behind the scenes (at least that was the case at the time of writing in 2017) and that LGBT Youth Scotland and also the Time For Inclusive Education campaign is ‘rapidly progressing transgender inclusion in schools’.

Here is the website for Time for Inclusive Education https://www.tie.scot/cpd on this page, it says

This is a free professional learning course for teachers in Scotland. It is The Scottish Government’s expectation that teachers in Scotland complete this course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_for_Inclusive_Education
Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) was co-founded by Scottish campaigners Jordan Daly and Liam Stevenson, after the pair met following the Scottish independence referendum. https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/13765478.the-independence-referendum-finally-gave-us-a-voice/

Again, strongly agreeing with most of what Greycats said.

But Whoa! to this response from EndlessTea: "Do you object to protecting children from sexual propaganda in schools in general, or is it the poor, vague wording?"

WTF? That's a strange, loaded response.

I'm tired and not very articulate today; Greycats is saying most of what I'd like to but better.

I'm pretty taken aback by that attempt by the OP to position people disagreeing Section 28 as "object[ing] to protecting children from sexual propaganda".

I thought this was a thread about how paedophiles habitually insert themselves into campaigns for perfectly respectable causes, eg gay rights, using them as cover and trying to manipulate the campaigns for their own ends. Which we know they do.

Now with all this Section 28 stuff, I'm wondering if I've wandered into a thread with some other agenda (homophobia? or what?), where someone is trying to insert themselves into the cause of being against child sexual abuse. Which we also know people do. Those of us around when Section 28 was first passed remember this well.

I do hope not. I think a lot of the material here is important to investigate.

It does need to be an honest investigation, though, not some pushpoll or a search for snippets to support a hidden, pre-decided narrative.

OP is concerned about "sexual permissiveness". I'm not exactly sure what they mean by that.

In the 1980s "sexual permissiveness" was code for casual sex, gay sex, in fact any sex outside marriage, and even being divorced and remarried.

All of which are things I'm completely fine with between consenting adults.

The policing of this "sexual permissiveness" usually consisted of judging and disadvantaging women, rather than reigning in male sexual entitlement.

So I'd struggle to agree with the characterisation in OP's "Impressions so far" above.

I appreciate this may be a good faith attempt by someone for whom it's history they're learning by reading, rather than a period they lived through.

Thank you Perking. I still think this thread is important and the distinctions between institutional capture and homophobia matter. As an aside, I'm also aware that the missing pieces of the jigsaw may come from gay men who are victims of these predators.

Thank you PerkingFaintly.

I am investigating as I go and have a pretty open mind, including (since looking into Hansard, etc) about how Section 28 - basically a poorly worded clause for protecting children from being subjected to safeguard-breaking Brave New World-style propaganda in schools - truthfully negatively impacted people.

I see a lot of hand-wringing “oo it was terrible, we felt as though this, and we felt as though that” but no clear correlation. Particularly by belligerent TAs. It seems now, to me, that it was mainly because the wording of S28 was really weird and unclear, which made teachers (wrongly) believe they were prohibited from intervening when they witnessed homophobic bullying.

However, now that there is no protection at all from Brave New World style sexual propaganda being taught in schools, we have queer theory and transgender ideology being pumped into schools and there is nothing parents can do.

For this reason, I currently think Section 28 should have been amended, not repealed, personally.

Anyway, that isn’t really relevant. I am going to continue looking into this in my own way.

You said “I thought this was a thread about how paedophiles habitually insert themselves into campaigns for perfectly respectable causes, eg gay rights, using them as cover and trying to manipulate the campaigns for their own ends.” and in that, you were kind of mistaken. It is a research thread into the influence of PIE into the Scottish Government. When researching, you don’t really know where you are going to end up. Just following hunches.

For ‘sexual permissiveness’ I mean what Gary Otton says in his obituary of John Hein:

Militant feminists at Glasgow’s gay centre also took exception to male sex workers advertising in ScotsGay and refused to put it on display. Hein didn’t budge. ‘Fuck ‘em’, he told me. He didn’t give a toss that the magazine couldn’t sit nicely on the top row of stationers John Menzies; he would never bend his principles. The ‘Meet Market’ of ads in the back pages reached out to every closet in remote parts of Scotland and to every fetishist wanting to share their desires. He left nobody out. He reached more people than any socially acceptable campaign group with eyes on a grant because peoples’ needs came before social respectability. He knew his audience. People who reached out for sexual reasons weren’t looking for platitudes from do-gooders. He gave them the sex first and any campaigning came after. But the social conservatives and closets didn’t always take too kindly to this liberal spirit. And many tried to take John Hein down.

Basically, people who have an ‘anything goes’ approach to sex - be it kink, abuse or exploitation. Getting off uber alles.

And being that Hein was both founder and Chair of Pride Scotia, which gave out the ‘Ian Dunn Memorial Award for Activism’ and Ian Dunn founded both the ‘Sexual Minorities Group’ and the ‘Paedophile Information Exchange’, I believe they were cut from the same cloth in thinking ‘sexual permissiveness’ was not limited to homosexuality and sex outside marriage.

"Section 28 - basically a poorly worded clause for protecting children from being subjected to safeguard-breaking Brave New World-style propaganda in schools"

No, you're mistaken there.

I don't really have the energy, and I'm sure someone more articulate will come along. But basically Section 28 was intentionally poorly worded wrt "promoting homosexuality".

The fuzziness was in order to leave teachers in doubt whether they could even admit the existence of homosexuality to gay teens struggling to make sense of their feelings in a heteronormative, homophobic world; while at the same time gaining support for the act from people who hear "promote" and think "free gift prize".

There was a norm that ""all sex outside heterosexual marriage is sinful".

The fact that for people with other agendas any breaking of the rigid boundaries of that norm was a useful opportunity, doesn't make that norm OK or harmless.

And in fact, the fervent policing of "all sex outside heterosexual marriage is sinful" offered excellent cover to those who wished to present their "sinful sex" as equivalent to all other "sinful sex".

The conversation moving on from "sinfulness" to "consent" has been, IMO, one of the real gains of the last few decades. (Including acceptance of the principal that rape can occur within marriage.)

Maybe that was how it was seen in Scotland, but in London, people would have laughed in your face if you said sex outside marriage was ‘sinful’ in the 80s and 90s.

I know the word ‘promote’ cause a lot of confusion, I remember at the time.

Looking into it again now though, I think ‘pretend families’ is really weird.

Also, looking at Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin and reading the alarming dystopian, bordering transhumanist visions for family life in the Gay Liberation Front manifesto- I’m not surprised the horses got scared.

Sorry, said I'm not articulate today (and think I will have to leave this here): I didn't explain why your view of Section 28 was mistaken.

The intent of the law, as far as I can tell and I'm sure others agree with me, was to keep homosexuality in the closet. As a side order, it may also have had keeping "all that other nasty, distasteful stuff about sex" in the closet. But primarily it was about being able to pretend homosexuality didn't exist, and to prevent any expression of it.

As an aside, I'm also aware that the missing pieces of the jigsaw may come from gay men who are victims of these predators.

Greycats, yes, that's a very good point. They may actually be listened to these days.

Thanks Perking.

As for “The intent of the law, as far as I can tell and I'm sure others agree with me, was to keep homosexuality in the closet.” it is not satisfactory for me I’m I am afraid.

1. The language ‘keep homosexuality in the closet’ is obviously the language of its opponents, not it’s proponents, so it is not really going to be a good grasp of the intent of the proponents.
2. I definitely, unequivocally, do not believe that ‘consensus of opinion = truth’ so it is irrelevant how many people agree with you and disagree with me. Relying on apparent consensus of opinion gets people up shit creek - look at Nicola Sturgeon!
3. To know the intent of the law, think about the time, what was going on. Why, suddenly from nowhere, after two decades of tolerance and - less face it - promiscuity and decadence, were politicians suddenly wanting to clamp down? It is also probably a good idea to check out Hansard and other sources eg The Gay Liberation Front manifesto. I have done a bit of that, and seen that there was an overt professed attack on the ‘nuclear family’ by the Gay Liberation Front, there were dodgy children’s books like Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. The intention, I believe, was mainly around protecting the family unit and protecting kids from sexual propaganda in schools - I think the homophobia was secondary.

Anyway, this thread isn’t about Section 28 per se, S28 is only relevant in as far as how the campaign to repeal it gave baby rapist/paedophile James Rennie legitimacy, how it brought a coalition of groups together, and how these forged relationships may have lead to Isla Bryson being sent to Corton Vale, etc.

I want to dig into LGBT Youth Scotland a bit - how long was James Morton involved? Sam Cowie joined in 2010 when Morton would have been around 30, it was a year after the pedophile ring had been brought to justice.

https://reduxx.info/exclusive-two-survivors-allege-they-were-groomed-sexually-exploited-by-staff-at-scottish-lgbt-youth-charity/

Daniel Nechtan was involved much earlier.

Just logging the Rennie-led ring:

James Rennie - CEO of LGBT Youth Scotland
Neil Strachan - Registered sex offender and former secretary of Celtic Boys Club https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/07/scottish-paedophile-ring-guilty-child-abuse
Neil Campbell - bell-ringer and after-school club helper at Jordanhill Parish Church in Glasgow https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/12829053.church-left-stunned-as-elder-guilty-of-child-porn/
Ross Webber - Bank Teller, got his sentence reduced re not conspirator https://www.bbc.com/news/10344719
John Murphy - Drama teacher Claremont High, crossdresser, DJ in a gay bar, receptionist in a gay sauna https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/ex-teacher-jailed-child-porn-charges-2435828
John Milligan - Civil servant, sentence cut on appeal https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-35813407
Craig Boath - insurance claims adjuster https://careappointments.com/care-news/scotland/88744/members-of-biggest-paedophile-ring-in-scotland-sentenced-to-43-years/
Colin Slaven - IT worker, Neil Strachan’s much younger boyfriend groomed/abused, turned abuser.

Ian Dunn’s less contentiously names ‘Sexual Minorities Group’ was later renamed ‘Outright’ and the wiki page claims “Today
Latterly focusing on work around the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Executive and Scottish Public Institutions such as the National Health Service, Police and Justice System, Outright Scotland is currently dormant with much of their former role being taken by the Equality Network [where James Morton had prominence] and Stonewall Scotland.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outright_Scotland

Here is their written evidence, by Brian Dempsey, for the Equal Opportunities Committee on the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Bill [basically, repeal S28]

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040901185325/www.outright-scotland.org.uk/campaigns/education/evidence.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20040901185325/www.outright-scotland.org.uk/campaigns/education/evidence.htm

Brian Dempsey of Outright Scotland (formerly Ian Dunn’s SMG)
Is the academic at Dundee University
https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/persons/brian-dempsey

Biography
In 2012 Brian received funding to produce two literature reviews, the first on the situation of men who experience domestic abuse and the second on domestic abuse learning materials in Scottish schools.

Brian was appointed as a lecturer at Dundee in 2007 having joined the School as a teaching assistant in 2005. He did his degree at Edinburgh University as a mature student. Prior to that he had worked in social services in Scotland and in London especially in housing and in HIV work and retains an interest in how law affects people in our everyday life.

Brian was editor of SCOLAG Legal Journal from 2000 to 2007 and and a board member of the Scottish Legal Action Group from 1996 to 2009.

In 2005 he was a member of the Solicitor General's Advisory Group on the Review of the Prosecution of Rape and Serious Sexual Offences and also a member of the advisory group working to Professor Maher at the Scottish Law Commission with reference to their review of sexual offences.

Brian maintains the website www.linsert.org

Teaching
Brian is currently module organiser for Law, Family and Society (levels 3/4) and Comparative Scottish and English Family Law (level 2) and teaches on the Private Law of Scotland 1 and Scottish Property Law modules in addition to supervising dissertations in his field.

Research
Brian is active in researching a number of areas including Scots irregular marriage, domestic abuse and LGBT law.

This seems to bring things together

I know you've got some kind of an opus going on, but I think you need to remember that there's no proof, it's speculation and Scotland is a small place.

Greycats, did you ever meet Ian Dunn, John Hein or James Rennie?

If so, what sort of vibe did you get about the culture around them?

The reason I ask is because Peter Tatchell said nobody would have thought of Dunn as a pedophile - he always had adult boyfriends, and John Hein said he himself joined PIE as a teen only wanting to meet other young men - it was never about children. Yet Tatchell has said things clearly condoning child abuse and Hein’s position seemed to be very similar to Dunn’s- around any and all things sexual, being good.

I just wonder if they are/were bullshitting to to save their skins, or if they really couldn’t see what was overt - for example that guy at the Dunn’s funeral said he’d been raped by Dunn at 15 and wanted to check he was dead. Could Tatchell and Hein truly have been oblivious to his attitude towards consent?

With the LGBT Youth Scotland, there was a culture, after Rennie’s trial, of sick jokes about it, a lack of boundaries/ gr’’ming, from what the two men were saying. As though they were just carrying on with it.

I wonder how obvious it was to other people, like James Morton (who admittedly joined early before Rennie was CEO), that something darker was going on, and a blind eye turned or what.

There is something odd. Was he working with the Czech bank’s IT?

I’ve had a good long think about this one and being that this article was written in 1993, one year after ‘Fettesgate’ (1992) and three years after Operation Planet (1990) (Operation Planet was the investigation where the 16 years old boy from a care home was held in Tam Paton, former Bay City Rollers manager,’s flat 37 Palmerston Place in West End Edinburgh and repeatedly raped over many days, where pretty much all the charges were dropped, which suggests a true ‘magic circle’ of QCs, police, etc).
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/public-inquiry-urged-probe-tam-28829630

So in that Herald article you linked to @Greycats the writer, Duncan Campbell seems to be hypothesising that there was no larger conspiracy and that Derek Donaldson had made it all up to take the heat off all of his own dodginess and that Donaldson, Hein and Gordon Gosnell are the ‘real’ magic circle, even after Operation Planet a couple of years before writing. He does have personal beef with Donaldson after Donaldson ‘savagely attacked’ him earlier that year.

To me, it seems as though there was a tendency towards scamming and fraud, it’s possible that Hein was just the technical brains, a thing about DHSS tenants - maybe vulnerable young people were being abused there? Donaldson clearly had a lot of contacts in the gay scene, journalists and so on, he also had links to Czechoslovakia, with the attempts to spy, the framing of his schoolmate and the money laundering. It does seem a bit fishy that David Senior known to Hein and was murdered there.

I think it is important to have John Hein’s obituary to Ian Dunn (in ScotsGay) reproduced in full:

Ian Campbell Dunn
1st May 1943 - 10th March 1998

Pioneering Scottish lesbigay campaigner Ian Dunn died suddenly in Edinburgh on Tuesday 10th March. He collapsed as he was leaving Edinburgh Royal Infirmary whence he had been discharged after receiving tests for shortness of breath and chest pains. He was readmitted, but doctors were unable to revive him.

Educated at Hillhead High School in Glasgow, Ian worked for a time for the Met Office at Prestwick Airport and later in London. If he had remained with the Met Office, his next promotion would have been to present TV weather bulletins.

However, he moved to Edinburgh, attending Heriot Watt University where he studied Town Planning. Unfortunately, his work in co-organising the world's first International Gay Conference in 1974 meant that he neglected his studies and didn't graduate - something he was careful to hide from his parents. Nevertheless, he worked for many years in the City's planning department until he took early retirement during the recent local government reorganisation.

In 1969, he was a founder member of the Scottish Minorities Group (which became the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group and is now OUTRIGHT Scotland). His main success was in persuading Robin Cook to move the amendment to the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 which decriminalised sex for gay men aged 21 and over, but he continued to lobby for complete social and legal equality for homosexuals.

He was also a founder member of the Paedophile Information Exchange, not because he was a paedophile, but because he believed in the rights of sexual minorities to organise politically.

When he agreed to act as 'postbox' for a paedophile theoretical journal called Minor Problems (which had been expelled from its previous mailing facility), he was the subject of a front page expose by the Sunday Mail and, although he sued the paper, he later quietly dropped the action.

The tabloid reports led to the Labour Party dumping him as a local council candidate, so he joined the breakaway Scottish Socialist Party but to no electoral success. He eventually rejoined the Scottish Labour Party of which he nevertheless remained publicly critical until his death. He was looking forward to the new Scottish Parliament - yet another of his campaigning issues - and had applied to the Labour Party to be considered as a Candidate.

As a Humanist Officiant, he regularly conducted secular 'wedding' ceremonies for lesbian and gay couples which brought him further tabloid opprobrium. However, he was at the forefront of the debate between homosexual Humanists and Christians and organised two major lesbigay theological conferences (Changing Church Attitudes) and was working on a third due to take place in 2000.

He was active in most radical causes in Edinburgh over the last quarter century or so, including the much lamented 1st of May Bookshop (with which he shared his birthday).

In the Broughton area of Edinburgh, in which he lived for most of his adult life, he took a keen part in the activities of local civic amenity and conservation groups. Most recently, he was overjoyed at the success of the campaign to save the Phoebe Traquair murals at Mansfield Place Church. It is fitting that his funeral took place there.

A prolific writer, he was a Director of Gay News, the first Editor of Gay Scotland and more recently contributed to both ScotsGay and Cruise Magazines.

He is survived by his lover Ross Watt, his parents Donald and Audrey and sister Lorna.

As Ian's personal finances were so strained, it seems likely he will leave nothing for his favourite causes. A special fund has been started and donations may be sent to Adam Cramond and Sons, 318 Ferry Road, Edinburgh.

John Hein adds a personal note:

Ian was a complex character, who was hard not to love - much as he frustrated all of us who knew him by his consummate self publicity and pig headed obstinacy. At least he never claimed to be an angel.

He clearly suffered from his middle class upbringing (he came from a well-off family which had made its money in the biscuit trade) and his parents just as clearly suffered from him - neither of them nor his sister turned up at his funeral. Long time friend Marion Bowles tells of a family wedding when she was commanded by Ian's parents to act as much like Ian's girlfriend as possible at the reception in Glasgow's posh RSAC. However, on returning to stay at Ian's parents for the night, they weren't permitted, for reasons of morality, to sleep in the same room although absolutely nothing was likely to have happened!

I first worked with Ian when he was Editor of Gay Scotland and found that, as long as you paid him what he considered to be due deference, he was a delight to be around. However, although many people's talents and efforts went to produce the magazine, it was Ian who took most of the credit and it was Ian who appeared in far too many of the photographs!

Over the years, a succession of folk came and went from the organisations with which he was involved - many of them forced out because they just weren't prepared to do the Dunn thing.

More recently, Ian was thrown out of OUTRIGHT Scotland because he refused to stop speaking on behalf of the organisation without being authorised to do so. He fought back, was readmitted and it was others (myself included) who left. It's interesting to note that some of the people who replaced us didn't last long and were no longer on speaking terms with Ian when he died, whilst many oldtimers, although despising his Cult of the Personality, recognised that our politics were nearer his than the Johnny Come Lately types who are more interested in making a fast buck than contributing to our Community.

Hard at work with ILGA again, this time in Cologne Ian suffered in his last few years from chronic financial problems which eventually forced him to sell up (for the benefit of his bankers) his beloved 30 Gayfield Square and move into modest rented accommodation next door. The final blow to his finances appears to have been running the Lesbian Gay & Bisexual Centre's Cafe - something he did to ensure the future of the Centre after an unfortunate cock-up by him in the Centre's planning status. Things weren't helped by an informal boycott by many of the people who used the Centre. It didn't help either that Ian really hadn't a clue how to run a catering establishment - much as he appeared to enjoy trying. Nevertheless, he told me only a few weeks ago that it had been one of the most enriching periods of his life.

I often thought Ian to be on the stingy side - George Broadhead of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association remarked to me recently that Ian was the only Humanist officiant who didn't send at least a token donation from their officiant's fee to GALHA - but he surpassed himself at raising funds for causes which he supported. That was something which his parents certainly noticed: they sent him a Xmas card which basically said "We read in the papers how good you are at raising money for lots of organisations. Isn't it time you applied these talents to sorting out your own finances?"

Protesting against Robert Mugabe's 'pigs and dogs' comments, at CHOGM'97 In other ways, he was typically generous, especially if it didn't cost him anything. Our next issue was to have included his offer to grow cannabis plants at his Villa in Spain on behalf of folk who could then go out and harvest the plants (presumably whilst paying to stay at the villa!). It would have caused a stushie, no doubt. And Ian would have revelled in the publicity.

Always something of a sexual outlaw, he was typically forthright when it came to his sexual interests in piss and shit. The first was celebrated in the title he took when he was beatified by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence - translated freely, it meant: Saint Ian of the Recreational Urinals. The second by his fight with HM Customs to be allowed to import sexually explicit materials involving shit.

His funeral in the Mansfield Place Church which he worked so hard to save was well attended. Amongst the hundreds of mourners were people from all walks of life. From retired clerics to practising politicians. From homosexual campaigners to police officers (one Chief Inspector represented the local police force whilst others attended incognito). Some were obviously uncomfortable at the unconventionality of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's celebration of Ian's life. One young man turned up to exorcise his own ghosts: he claims that Ian raped him when he was 15 (although I have always believed that it was more a case of mixed signals than any mens rea on Ian's part). He came, he said, "just to make sure".

Ian's coffin having been applauded out of the building, we stood around and ate the last of his favourite biscuits before going our separate ways, some of us to the Newtown for a wake of sorts.

Despite everything, I'll miss you Ian, auld bugger that you were..
Ian Buist offers us this tribute...

Lines for Ian

A great oak's fallen, In our wood,
Strong and serene, in pride he stood.
We other trees, beneath his shade,
Grew well. We flourished; unafraid
We spread our branches far and free,
Nor reckoned with mortality.
Struck down so soon, he yet lives on,
For all he lived for is not gone.
To us, who strive to take his place,
Are left his courage, love and grace,

And memories, bright as the sun.

Farewell brave friend; great heart, well done

Ian Buist 16.03.98

__

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