It is good to see that the Arts & Humanities
Research Council is funding a project on the history and politics of the
English protest song since the 17thC, based at the University of East Anglia.
The University is now looking to recruit a Senior Research
Associate. For details, see:
This will be fascinating project and I am sure
that there will be a large number of political activists and performers of
protest songs who will want to see how they can assist.
There is a rich literature that will frame the
context including about the Diggers, the Radicals of the turn of the 18th/19thC,
the songs inspired by the Peterloo Massacre, Chartism, the socialist and
labour, and peace and anti-war movements. Then there are the lives of individual
performers and song writers such as Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, the work of people like Roy Harper and Dave
Harker, and the activities of the Workers’ Music Association and socialist
choirs.
The researcher will need to explore archives
around the country particularly in collections of ballads and broadsheets, such
as those at Newcastle Central Library’s Local Studies, many of which were
listed in the North East Popular Politics Project (2020-13). How many songs used in election campaigns in
the 19thC can be regarded as protest songs? The research team may want to
explore this with the team running the English elections project based at
Newcastle University.
There are studies of individual songs like of The Powtes Complaint’ by Todd A. Borlik
and Clare Egan in “Powte”: The
Authorship, Provenance, and Manuscripts of a Jacobean Environmental Protest
Poem.
Specialist
Archives, Libraries & Museums
There will be relevant resources at the Working
Class Movement Library in Salford and the People’s History Museum in
Manchester. On 1 August the Museum is running a workshop for mothers and
toddlers ‘My First Protest Song’.
https://phm.org.uk/events/my-first-protest-song.
https://phm.org.uk/events/my-first-protest-song.
It will be
worthwhile the researcher talking to Stefan Dickers, the archivist at
Bishopsgate Institute, and look at the material held at the Central for
Political Song at Glasgow University.
The team may wish to build up its own library. If
it does it will need help to advertise this so that individuals can contribute
material collected over the years, like the song sheets of Battersea’s Panto
Politica group in the 1980s, who penned their own songs about the Wandsworth
Tories, Thatcherism and the attack on the GLC.
How Popular Were/Are Protest Songs?
A key
question to be asked is how many people in the past knew the protest songs and
sang them, and how many today. My own
research into the political and social use of song shows that many activists
mention the songs they sung in their autobiographies, or are referred to by
their biographers. e.g. Tom Mann and Harry Pollitt. My research into a wide range of aspects of
the labour movement in the 19thC and early 20th Centuries has
illustrated how reports of demonstrations, meetings, fundraising concerts and
dinners shed light on protest/political songs.
Looking
Backwards And Across The Atlantic
Another way to look at the songs is to take the
repertoires of current singers and trace the songs they sing back in time. Of course
it will need to be remembered that many protest songs used in 20thC England have
come from the United States. While the research focusses on England the role of
the protest song in Ireland, Scotland and Wales cannot be ignored, and the
interplay between the protest movements and cultures across Britain’s internal
borders. Five new protest songs have for example been composed in Wales.
For readers who want to know more about the
history of protest song the following site on the Internet will help.
What
is a protest song?
A key question is what is the definition of a
protest song, and what is its relationship with political songs, such as The Red Flag.
Nicky Rushton, a local singer, working as protest singer in residence at Durham
University, defines a protest song as:
'It is a protest from the masses or a protest from
an individual, for change in society and those words are put to music. Most
lyrics call for direct change while others use humour, irony, a soulful
Ballard, all of these forms can make a point. A protest is to stand up to
the rights of people who look or can be different to you, to unite together to
amplify our voices as one. A statement put to music is a powerful tool. There
are many obvious well-known examples of Protest Songs. One from the black
protest movement would be “we shall not be moved”; Joni Mitchell
wrote big yellow taxi in 1967 about climate and change, looking out of her hotel
room in Hawaii “paved paradise, put up a parking lot” and Pulp wrote about
class and education in “Common People”.
A protest can relate to equality of everyone or
the equality of an individual. All my favourite songs have a message.'
Rushton has been commissioned by the Department of Sociology to write four songs ‘that
communicate what research we do to a wider, non-academic audience.’ He has
been working with four research groups (health and social exclusion, violence
and abuse, higher education and social exclusion and communities and social
justice), to write the songs.
He has also been working with students and groups both
inside the University and in Durham City/County ‘to encourage protest
song-writing as individuals and/or groups about issues of social justice that
we feel passionate about.’
International
Comparisons
For readers who want to see how protest song can
be researched and written about in another country may wish to read the PhD Striking a Discordant Note: Protest Song and
Working-Class Political Culture in Germany, 1844-1933. University of
Southampton Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences School of Humanities. DPhil
Thesis. 2010.
How
Many Hidden Protest Songs Are There?
It will a be necessary to look at songs which are
not necessarily regarded as protest songs, for example in the world of pop,
rock, garage, grime, etc. The Specials’ Ghost Town, for example, is regarded by Abigail Gardner (2017) as: ‘a haunting
1981 protest song that still makes sense today’.
The
Relationship Between Protest And Political Songs
A lot of songs sung in the labour movement are
classified as political songs. Are they also protest songs?
Back in 1991 the Labour Party Conference sang We Shall Overcome.
James Naughton in the previous Sunday's Observer had asked which dragons
still need to be slain. Roy Hattersley wrote replying:
'Until
that moment it had never struck me that we - the army of the comfortable, in
size as well a circumstance - were singing about ourselves. I imagined that, in
our sentimental way, we were anticipating victory over prejudice and poverty.
If we looked ridiculous, we were absurd in a good cause.
We
also sang in praise of our past - in celebration of campaigns already fought
and battles bravely won....
The
Red Flag, also featured on the last day of the conference, explains in its
second verse what political singing is really about. It recalls a time when
"all around was dark at night" and
- on the subject of the flag itself - reminds us that because "it
witnessed many a deed and vow, we cannot change the colour now". The
language is ponderous but the message is clear.
When
we sing We Shall Overcome, we are in part giving thanks for those who overcame
in the past. We sing about civil disobedience in the south, the lone black
student signing the college roll in Montgomery, tent city around the Washington
monument, and Lyndon Johnson beginning to redeem "the hundred year promise
of emancipation".' ('Endpiece' column headed Songs to make the party swing, The
Guardian, 12 October 1991)
Can Spirituals
Be Seen As Protest Songs in England?
Another
question that could be explored, particularly given the Black Lives Matters
campaign, is at what point does the singing of
African-American spirituals in England become protest. They were made
popular in the 1870s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and went on being popular. Henry
Wood helped popularise them in his Music of the All Nations part-work magazine,
in which he published many of the arrangements by H. T. Burleigh. They were a
key feature of Paul Robeson’s concerts
in the UK (see my Politics and Culture.
Paul Robeson in the UK).
What Next?
So
potentially a big agenda. The project team may well need to build up links with
local historians and activists who are interested in carrying out research in
their local area.
Note. I sent project team member Professor
John Street at East Anglia the draft of the
above. In thanking me he says that the blog ‘makes a number of very important
points and gives some very useful steers. We hope to be as inclusive as
possible, within the limitations imposed by geography (i.e. England) and ‘song’,
so yes, it would be good to find a place for Alan Bush and Pulp. We also want
to engage with as wide an audience as possible. The grant provides support for
a mobile exhibition, two concerts and a song writing workshop.’
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