Give Peace a Chance 2026
Give Peace a Chance 2026
Topical folk songs, many lamenting and protesting war. Economically motivated conflict benefits only the very few while causing immense damage, loss & suffering. The forecasts for 2026 are ominous as the new year immediately kicked off with more illegal US foreign aggression and more threats against sovereign nations. People link up and demand an end to unnecessary warmongering, sabre-rattling and war conscription while pressuring governments to follow the UN Charter on Human Rights and show full support for the ICC, the ICJ, the ECHR and the UN itself so they can all get on with their work in making the world a better place for us all.
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE!
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The mix opens & concludes most fittingly with John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band. Longtime advocate for peace June Tabor features with some moving songs from her They All Died In Passchendale & Aqaba LPs. Spotlighting three Robert Plant & Saving Grace tracks from their crucial new album. Plant seems now to have found the perfect foil for his preferred ethnic-folk-blues-rock sound. The album is a giant in his calalogue as each & every track is a killer, 10/10. The McCalmans were a mainstay of the Scottish folk circuit from the 1950s well into the 21st century. Here we showcase some tremendous songs by them from the 70s & 80s, including the incredibly moving and mournful lament I Ha'e Naebody Now and the anthemic affermation of working class pride A Man's a Man. There's also a rollicking second cut of the song here by Five Hand Reel. Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister made the most astonishing turn of his long career in 1991 as he moved people to tears with his folky war lament 1916. Two classic 1960s anti-war songs by Phil Ochs in We Ain't Marching Anymore & What Are You Fighting For? Fellow veteran activist Joan Baez comes with her superb 2019 cut of I Wish the Wars Were All Over & 1971's powerful Last, Lonely & Wretched, together with spoken words from her 1968 anti-war concept album Baptism. Neil Young & Devo pop up towards the end for a rocking cut of the Carter Family classic Worried Man Blues grafted from Young's Human Highway movie (what a great movie that was btw; just imagine being stuck in a diner car with Dennis Hopper during an acapalypse!!). We threw it in there thinking it a good topical song for this moment in time - worried indeed. Rambling Jack Elliott cut of the song is here too.
Too many other great highlights to mention. Enjoy the muic and let's HOPE FOR A MORE PEACEFUL YEAR IN 2026.
The back end of 2025 witnessed a worrying acceleration of proto-colonial war rhetoric on many offical media channels, with talk of an imminent European conflict with Russia and even compulsory conscription. Spending on 'defense'
has gone through the roof again, all this despite the fact that several
countries are facing major domestic cost-of-living, housing &
health crises brought on by years of chronic underfunding. Trump is
largely to blame for this upsurge in sabre rattling, using threats of
tariffs to push Europe & the UK into, among other things, increased
military spending. If, God forbid, widespread European war did break out it would
benefit only the US by prolonging its hedgemony. And now in 2026 we've already seen another illegal US invasion of a soveriegn country, namely Venezuela & fresh threats against Tehran. It really doesn't well for the year ahead. Other wars of economic
conquest are ongoing in Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Congo,
Central America, Greenland, South America and, yet still, the
genocide & land grabbing in Palestine continues unhindered.
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