In a week where I've just seen the Neil Young film of the CSNY tour and the fury that it invoked from modern republicans who were traditional CSNY fans and would have been youthful opponents of the Vietnam war I've just spent the evening at Exeter College in Oxford in the company of singer/songwriter Roger Lucey. He was an up and coming musician in South Africa whose increasingly anti-establishment material caused his career to be sabotaged by the authorities. They managed to prevent him from getting gigs and 'persuaded' his record company to drop him.

This from Wikapedia
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Roger Lucey (born 1954) is a musician, journalist, film maker, actor and educator who was born in South Africa. In the late 1970s and early 1980s his early career as a musician was destroyed by Paul Erasmus of the South African Special Branch, because the lyrics to Lucey's protest songs were considered a threat to the Apartheid State. Although already aware of his anti-apartheid songs, the South African Government's security apparatus only swung into action to destroy Lucey's career after he performed a radical song in a programme on Voice of America radio. The criminal methods used against Lucey formed part of the testimony given by Paul Erasmus in front of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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Roger is over here makng a film about Desmond Tutu and has taken time out to join the creative writing course being run by close friends of mine at Exeter college. In a place where it is safe for us to make our political and social feelings known through music it is an honour to meet someone whose beliefs and integrity brought him that close to the line. I'm hoping to get him into the studio before he leaves these shores and record a few songs for a future project.

I'm not starting a discussion here, just reflecting on the relative values here where, for better or for worse, we're able to express ourselves as we see fit, rightly or wrongly. I always feel very much in awe of such people. Pete Seeger ( Whose band the Weavers was excommunicated during the Mcarthy era) Mauricio, Sergio, and Vladamir who all had to leave Chile where their lives were under threat during the Pinochet years.
Certainly makes me reflect!!