Thursday 10 January 2013

64: Oh Mr Cameron


This song is written by Norma Parry, the mum of singer and onetime Liverpool Echo Merseyside busker of the year Alun Parry. The tune is adapted from an old music hall song (Oh Mr Porter, I'm guessing). Alun's performed it at various trade union events as well his own Woody Guthrie folk club in the Ship and Mitre, and it's since been picked up as a protest song by loads of people. In particular the Liverpool Socialist Singers (pictured above singing on the steps of St George's Hall at a rally against changes to public sector pensions) have made it their own, and have passed it on to various other similar choirs.

Clearly, you don't have to be a revolutionary socialist to have sympathy with the song, given recent omnishambles... I just wish the song didn't leave Ed Miliband off the hook, given that he stands just as much as the others for everything that is wrong with the modern political class!

5 comments:

  1. No to mention the Labour party who took this country into war and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousand innocent lives. But hey, who cares about that? Let's keep slagging off Thatcher.

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    1. To be honest, Dave, I absolutely agree with you. Locally, our failure to subject Labour to proper scrutiny has led to there being insufficient power to keep Joe Anderson in check, and that's worrying. Still, I want this blog to be representative of the different traditions of song around the place, including Liverpool trade union protest song, of which this is a good example. Should probably get around to moving it on to other songs though!

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. Hi, I can't see or hear any of the audio files on your blog?

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