[ A slightly shortened version of Ed Pickford’s influential song]
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
You’ve often been told
Keep up with the times
Your skills are not needed
They’ve streamlined the job
With slide rule and stopwatch
Your pride they have robbed.
But 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 his birth
When he’s never owned
One handful of earth.