The music of our movement

By Calvin Allen

Music and the labour movement have always been well linked – the links between labour issues and the more radical sections of the folk tradition have meant that protest and the search for an alternative society has long had people there ready, willing and able to interpret them and set them to music. If nothing else, we know of the need to collectivise issues, and singing about them is as good a way of spreading the word as any other. This is true of both the UK – with singers like Dick Gaughan, Leon Rosselson and Billy Bragg – as well as of the US – for example Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Fortunately, the same sorts of traditions have also led to there being an abundance of people seeking to catalogue protest songs as an art form and ensure that it is retained in the folk memory. Many of these can be found on artists’ websites and also on dedicated websites: the Chelmsford TUC, for example, runs a working class culture website. In Africa, too, song has formed part of protest movements across the continent, from worker choirs in South Africa during the time of apartheid, to Thomas Mapfumo chronicling corruption in Zimbabwe and Fela Kuti both corruption and oppression in Nigeria.

2009 also marks a number of noted anniversaries which labour movements worldwide should be marking. So, for this May Day, I thought I’d put together LabourList’s very own music compilation of workers’ songs: not trade union songs as such, but ones which reflect that trade unions are part of a wider movement aiming at social change and freedom, and which document that change and the role of labour organisations in striving for it. It’s not, well not necessarily, a ‘top 10’ of protest songs: that’s been done elsewhere, and quite recently too in the case of the New Unionism network, while you can also find a pretty comprehensive list of ‘politics and protest’ songs at The Guardian’s list of 1,000 Songs You Must Hear.

In contrast, this is designed to work as a cohesive compilation, so it has a flow to it and there are links between the artists or songs included. But, after all, the intention is to send you out for the May Day celebrations with a song in your heart, and the beauty is that there are plenty more choices out there. And, if your May Day moves to a different beat, we’d love to hear it!

O Freedom – Billy Bragg

One of those anniversaries is the 25th year of the start of the year-long miners’ strike, in which Billy Bragg, probably the labour movement’s most noted lyricist, slogged up and down the country taking part in rallies on behalf of the miners. I’ve chosen this less obvious choice from Billy’s most recent album ‘Mr. Love & Justice’, written in response to several noted domestic situations arising in the UK in the ‘war against terrorism’, including flimsy evidence being used as a pretext for arrest, as well as unfair trials, detention and rendition. ‘O Freedom’ warns of taking liberties with freedom, rhetorically asking: ‘Who will pay the price if/Injustice such as this/Turns our protectors to oppressors/And angry men to terrorists’.

Pound a Week Rise – Dick Gaughan

The Scottish singer songwriter and political activist Dick Gaughan first came to my attention on ‘True and Bold’, an album of traditional songs (including this tale of a miners’ pay claim) he recorded 25 years ago during the miners’ strike on behalf of the STUC. He also wrote an anthem commemorating the strike itself especially for the collection, while other songs deal with mining disasters and the lives of mining families. There’s a version of the original ‘Whose Side Are You On’ here too. This version is by Liz Carroll and John Doyle.

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We Bring More Than A Paycheck – Sweet Honey In the Rock

This US vocal group should feature in any labour activist’s music collection. Sweet Honey In The Rock wrote meaningfully about apartheid, linking the nature of oppression in Chile to that in Soweto (a song which Billy Bragg has also sung live), but this song reminds of what else working people may bring home to their loved ones and families in the course of their working lives, in terms of industrial illnesses, and the consequent need for justice.

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Johannesburg – Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron has spent his life recording songs documenting the black struggle and the political situation in America. He’s also outspoken on gay rights and on nuclear power. This song, drawn from his 1976 album ‘From South Africa to South Carolina’, commemorates the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and draws a parallel with racism in the United States.

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Aluta Continua – Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba was exiled from South Africa after speaking out and recording songs about apartheid. She returned to South Africa at the instigation of Nelson Mandela but died on stage in Italy in November last year. This song – ‘The Struggle Goes On’ – is actually about the freedom struggle in Mozambique, but reminds that even significant victories are stages in the continuing battle for a fairer world.

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Subcity – Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman famously came to public attention at Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday tribute. ‘Subcity’, taken from ‘Crossroads’, her second album, documents the daily hand-to-mouth existence of an underclass trapped into a way of life based on handouts. Echoing in one place a refrain from Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues’ – ‘this ain’t livin” – the song’s otherwise most famous line is a plea to the America of Bush Senior: ‘Give Mr. President my honest regards/For disregarding me’.

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The River – Bruce Springsteen

The Boss is well known for his songs about the working class. The story teller here tells of his life – thrown together young with his pregnant girlfriend – in a way in which his union membership came as a natural part of his growing up: ‘And for my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a wedding coat’. The story unfolds in a heart-wrenching way, telling of the destruction of individual dreams and lives that recession necessarily brings.

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Joe Hill – Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger is 90 on 3 May and Springsteen is singing at his birthday party (Billy Bragg and Bernice Johnson Reagon from Sweet Honey In The Rock are also on the guest list). They also sang together at President Obama’s inauguration, singing the full version of Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land‘. This recording of ‘Joe Hill’, taken from ‘Can’t You See This System’s Rotten Through and Through’, a collection of songs and memories Seeger also recorded specially as a miners’ benefit during the 84/85 strike, should need no introduction to a labour audience. The video is of Joan Baez’ version.

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The Whole Point Of No Return – Style Council

Written apparently too late for inclusion on the track listing (or in the lyrics booklet) of the Style Council’s first full album, this song marks Paul Weller’s growing political consciousness. Giving the lie to the notion that Style Council were all keyboards, the track features just Weller on the guitar and a series of lines based on the iniquities of a system based on inherited wealth and the need for a redistribution of power, justice and wealth in the name of a fairer structure: ‘Rising up and taking back/The property of every man/It’s so easy/So, so easy’.

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Hasta Siempre – Carlos Puebla

The Cuban Revolution is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2009, with celebrations coming to head around May Day and I came across this simple (and much recorded) paean to Che Guevara – El Comandante – written by Puebla himself, on a collection of songs lent to me by a very good friend commemorating La Bodeguita del Medio, the famous Havana restaurant known as the haunt of Hemingway and others (as well as being the home of the mojito).