Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: Anti racist songs
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:50:53 +0100

In <KeU27.25389$B56.4484086 (@) news2-win.server.ntlworld.com> on Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:35:13 +0100, "mikegibson" <mikegibson (@) ntlworld.com> wrote:

>I learnt and sang the "world turned upside down" after the local labour council in Hillingdon tried to sell off a hundred and fifty acre green belt site to Warner Brothers to build a theme park. The use of songs to protest is not exclusive to the left.

Bingo! There's the crucial point.

People's political views are in large part formulated by their personal experience. Up until the 80s I knew coal miners who held what I would have regarded as fairly extreme Right views on many subjects. I watched their experiences during the 84-85 strike change many of their views. Recently I've heard people in rural communities, who had previously viewed urban unemployment as an inevitable fact of economic life which had nothing to do with them, confess that for the first time in their lives they had begun to think seriously about the question. Perhaps they will now rediscover the vast repository of songs which express their plight, call them "folk", "trad", "protest", "political" or whatever you want.

Too many people in Britain (including some well known within our own community) treat politics as if it were the same thing as supporting a football team - "That my party has abandoned every principle it ever had and adopted the other's economic policies doesn't matter - I'll still support them because they're *my* party and I hate the other lot".

I've spent decades being attacked by the so-called Right for expressing dissent and arguing against them; now I find myself being attacked by sections of the so-called Left for expressing dissent and arguing against exactly the same policies being pursued by "New Labour". The fact these policies are being pursued by people waving a Pink rather than a Blue banner doesn't cut any ice with me. I disagree with what they're doing and I will go to my grave shouting that disagreement as loudly as I can.

I've gone in 30 years from being "an angry young man" to being "a bad-tempered old bastard" :) but the broad content of what I do is the same. I sing about what I love and I love those who disagree on principle, I love those who refuse to accept bribes to be silent, I love outlaws, I love those who say "No, you can't do that to me", I love those who say "This my life and I'll live it as I think best without doing harm to anyone else" and I despise those who are so screwed up, insecure and afraid that they regard anyone who expresses disagreement as a threat which must be silenced.

And I don't care whether that dissent calls itself Right, Left or Somewhere in Between. To paraphrase Tom Paine, if you want liberty for yourself then defend even your enemy's liberty for, if you don't, you will set a precedent which will come back and destroy you.

My objection to the term "politically correct" is exactly the same as my objection to using "fascist" as a term of abuse to conservatives, or "Stalinist" as a term of abuse to communists. These are not intelligent arguments, they are slogans hurled as weapons, every bit as much as those chanted on the terraces on Saturday afternoons - anyone who doesn't support my team is a hostile force, worthy only of abuse and invective. I regard life as being a bit more substantial than to be dealt with by flag-waving and tribal chants, from whatever quarter they might come.

If we disagree with something, express that disagreement - don't insult or vilify or try to shout down or silence those with whom we disagree by branding them with silly childish labels. Listen to what they have to say, take seriously the fact that they believe what they're saying and, above all, let none of us fall into the intellectual arrogance of believing that what we think must infallibly be correct - nobody has a monopoly on truth. As Woody Guthrie said "All you can write is what you see". And let's drop the crap about being "impartial" - computers are unbiased, human beings are, without exception, influenced by our own particular viewpoint, coloured by many factors. Let's accept the fact that each of us is biased and state our bias so we each know where we're coming from and can take that into account.

And keep singing :)

Another quote, this one by Yip Harburg who wrote "Brother, can you spare a dime" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow" -

"I am one of the last of a small tribe of troubadours who still believe that life is a beautiful and exciting journey with a purpose and grace which are well worth singing about."

--
DG

Top of Page

 

The following links are to other websites and I am not responsible for what you might find there. Sites do change without warning and it is impossible for me to keep checking that links go where they should.