Song of the Labouring Classes

 

Song of the Labouring Classes

An ode to working class struggle, labour rights & unionisation

 History and solidarity through folk music and song. "The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor" Thomas Donahue (AFL-CIO USA 1979-95). The trials & tribulations of the lower classes have long been well documented and the only wonder is how come we've stood for it for so long (for millennia actually). Union solidarity and industrial action has always been the sole route to improvements in living & working standards, we achieve only when we fight to demand - they ain't never gonna just hand it out on a plate.

The conditions are again ripe for a renewal of class consciousness with the clear & present threat of fascist takeover and overt narcissist authoritarianism. Right now people around the world are showing a renewed interest in counter-fascist ideology as they reach the logical conclusion that radical socialism is the only alternative to the capitalist shitshow that's being imposed on us. La luta continua... 

protest songs - broadsides - storytelling - class solidarity - folk music classics

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"My attitude would be the same as the attitude of the working class in Germany when the Nazis came to power. It does not mean that because at some stage you elect a government that you tolerate its existence. You oppose it" Arthur Scargill 1983.

Vintage 70's & 80's broadsides by Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, including two epic suites: Bring the Summer Home charts the path of the 1381 Great Peasant's Revolt led by Wat Tyler before making bald comparisons with more contemporary times. White Wind is a bold composition that exposes colonialism, capitalist exploitation and the South African history of apartheid complete with Soweto style guitar riffs, naming names along the way. Nuclear Means Jobs wittily highlights looming threats to the workforce & environment. Sound familiar during the current monolithic rise of AI right & surveillance data centres? Lyrics like these sadly remain as relevant today as ever. Leon Rosselson was another wordsmith of worthy progressive political songs. His tracks here are likewise taken from the 70's & 80's and also remain as applicable as ever nowadays. On Her Silver Jubilee takes a stab at royal institutions and regality in general. He also does a fabulous acapella version of Patience Kershaw. Northeastern artist Bob Fox is well known for canny performances of miner's songs Tracks from his LPs The Blast (2006) and How, Are You Off for Coals? (1996), the latter a collaboration with Benny Graham (both are sometime members of popular local quartet The Pitmen Poets). They duet on the ever-hopeful When its Ours and Johnny Miner while Fox recounts The South Medomsley Strike of 1895.

True to working tradition we feature several acapella and near-acapella performances. Worksongs, true stories, laments & parodies were all performed on shop floors and at coalfaces without accompaniment and in pubs & working men's clubs with whatever limited accompaniment was available (accordian, pipes, piano, etc). Traditions and values had long been transmitted from generation to generation in this fashion and persevered the longest among large workforces. Northeastern collective The High Level Ranters which was formed at the Bridge Folk Club (close by the High Level Bridge), Newcastle and comprised Alistair Anderson, Colin Ross, Johnny Handle & Tommy Gilfellon specialised in traditional Geordie songs, often utilising well-known folk melodies. The Durham Lockout (labour stand-off in 1892) and Banks of the Dee are personal favourites here. Their excellent 6th album Bonnie Pit Laddie was released in 1975. Northumbrian singer Lou Killen recorded Oakley Strike Evictions and Blackleg Miner way back in 1961. Yorkshireman Tony Capstick gave a heartfelt live rendition of the Ballad of Accounting at a Ewan MacColl tribute gig in 1983. The Oysterband belt out the stirring Kate Sutcliffe song Coal Not Dole while the rousing Song of the Lower Classes is sung by Martin Carthy and was written by Marxist activist Earnest Jones in the 1840's. Such songs & hymnals of socialist persuasion were by no means uncommon in Victorian Britain. We end with a group rendition of the socialist anthem New Jerusalem led by the Oysterband.

Popular history in art... In the cause of hazardous & arduous labour the industrial working class has often been sent to exposed & compromised positions and mining is obviously among the most dangerous jobs. Laments that narrate disasters, explosions, massacres and other abominations abound and 7 examples of such tragedies feature here. The Gresford Disaster (Wales, 1934) is performed in suitably dramatic fashion by the Albion Band, the Auchengiech Disaster (Scotland, 1959) by Dick Gaughan, Blantyre Explosion (Scotland, 1877) sung by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Springhill Disaster (Nona Scotia, 1891-1958) by Martin Carthy, the Hartley Calamity (Northumberland, 1862) by the High Level Ranters and the Ludlow Massacre (Colorado 1914) by Christy Moore. Old Scots storyteller John Laurie gives a passionate narration of The Tay Bridge Disaster (1879). It was noted time & again that human error and, worse still, scandalous institutional deficiencies - corner-cutting, lax safety and frequent cover-ups - were frequently deemed responsible for many, if not most, travesties like these. Immoral profit vs human cost equations are, alas, nothing new. Think Grenfell Tower more recently. Rosselson has a good dig at UK safety culture in Experts. Several well aimed kicks at scabs (candy men) who are correctly cast as class traitors.

Simultaneously celebrating and lamenting popular leaders and martyrs to the movement James Connolly, James Larkin and John McLean with Christy Moore and Dick Gaughan. Gaughan features heavily due to his deep involvement with the worker's movements and Miners' Strike in the 1980's. Tracks from his True And Bold - Songs Of The Scottish Miners LP (1986) plus some vintage live performances. Ballad of '84 is a memorable and uncompromising narration of events that unfolded in Orgreave and nationally during that dreadful time. The Ian Campbell Folk Group formed in Birmingham in the 1960's and covered all corners of the folk music repertoire. Lively version of Geordie Black here and a powerful Plodder Seam. Steeleye Span track We Poor Labouring Men dates from 2000 while 1989's Padstow is a celebration of Labour Day/Mayday. Alternative piano driven cut of miner-turned-rebel song Cousin Jack by Show of Hands. Bonny Woodhall and The Recruited Collier, sung by Andy Irvine & Bob Fox respectively, both make the connection between labour force and military duty. If the lower classes weren't slaving away in sweat shops somewhere they were naturally expected to serve & die in wars as deemed necessary at His Majesty's pleasure.

Revisiting the Richard & Linda Thompson classic The Sun Never Shines on the Poor for the umpteenth time. We always feel that one! If class empathy and the quest for social justice are woke, then aggressive capitalism is fascist by definition. We must then resist and take back what should be ours in solidarity...

"The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery & despair into hope & progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic & social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life." Martin Luther King Jnr 1965.

Extended continuous mix 3hrs 15

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