Henry's Songbook

Come all of you workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your country and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with slide-rule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed

And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
When we've never owned one handful of earth

We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
We're the first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
But we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about

And all of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
Aye yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

(as sung by Dick Gaughan)

[1985:] Have you ever noticed how, in times of War, the working class are the "heroic British (or American, or German, or Australian, or ...) people" yet, whenever we have fought for the right to vote, the right to work, the right to educate or any other right, we become "extremists" or a "politically motivated minority"? (Notes Dick Gaughan, 'Live In Edinburgh')