In Competition 2522 you were asked to submit a right-wing protest song. There are some fine examples of this underexploited genre in Tim Robbins’s mock-documentary film Bob Roberts which features a guitar-playing senatorial candidate who appropriates the language of the Sixties protest movement to peddle his ultra-conservative message. The campaign trail is peppered with numbers such as ‘Times Are Changin’ Back’ and ‘My Land’, which rail against drugs and lazy people.
The standard was disappointing this week, with only four of you making the cut. Most went for the anthemic model of Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger, but this is hard to pull off from a right-wing perspective that lacks the righteous indignation of a mass movement feeling oppressed. The alternative might have been to focus on a sense of pathos and injustice by telling the story of an individual victim (as in Dylan’s ‘Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’) or group (Woody Guthrie’s ‘Ludlow Massacre’). You could have crafted a telling ode from the plight of a small businessman who loses house and family thanks to red tape and Brussels regulation (Gerard Benson touches on this).
The winners, printed below, get £35 each. Few entries demonstrated the simple economy of many great protest songs, but Sid Field captured some of the spirit of the early Clash. The bonus fiver belongs to Adrian Fry.
When Health & Safety have an ‘accident’ and old Nanny State’s been sacked,
The BBC’s been cleared of Trots and we’ve National Service back,
When the cops are out nicking villains instead of policing the smoking ban,
The dogs this country’s gone to will turn and give it right back to man.
When there’s education back in schools and discipline sees it stays,
The idle are chucked off the sick list and entrepreneurism pays,
When being ‘green’ is just a consumer’s choice, not a Puritan crusade,
We’ll pull back the handcart we left in Hell and point it a different way.
For we’re sick of namby-pandering, Anger Management and the rest,
The paedophiles and murderers should expect this penalty: death.
The liberals have gotten us in a stew and the only hope we’ve got
Is to pull ourselves together and so pull Britain from the pot.
The majority’s no longer silent, only curb spending and tax will fall,
Let social workers and civil servants be the first up against the wall.
With out manifesto laid out fully on every page of the Daily Mail,
Unlike the Tory leadership, we’re convinced the Right will prevail.
Adrian Fry
I’ll lay you a wager a long retired Major
Has twice the political nous
And is every way righter than any Pink blighter
Who talks about war in the House.
When we say: ‘You’re a white man’, we just mean a Right man,
We mean not his colour or shade
But the state of his feelings, and whether his dealings
Carry out undertakings he’s made.
The liberal odours of middle-of-roaders
Are terribly hard to endure,
As every wet stinker gets Pinker and Pinker,
We simply get Bluer and Bluer.
In a state of confusion they reach each conclusion
With phoney statistics to make it on,
So they screw up their faces and sit on their bases,
And leave it to Tories to take it on.
Paul Griffin
We don’t want no Human Rights,
Nor credence in Society.
Ev’ry man is for himself.
And we’re against sobriety.
We don’t want no refugees,
Asylum-seekers, loungers.
Get rid of public benefits
For left-wing scroungers.
We want out of Europe now.
End the Brussels hoo-ha.
They’re all a load of thieving toads
Just wasting all our moolah.
So wave the flag for old Saint George,
For Ing-er-land and glory.
And we won’t rest till ev’ryone’s
A raging right-wing Tory.
Sid Field
The Winds of Change, they are a-blowin’.
This ghastly lot must soon be goin’.
They grind the faces of the rich;
Ain’t life a bitch! Ain’t li-i-ife a bitch!
I know a man who made his packet
In the Once-Used Electrics racket;
’Cos they brought in new legislation
His business failed. Wha-a-at a Nation!
We mustn’t hunt. We dare not smoke.
It’s gone beyond a tasteless joke
And turned into a pantomime.
Gree-eed was good in Ma-a-aggie’s time.
If there’s a Heav’n, a place there’ll be
Where we won’t have to be PC
Or kow-tow to ‘Equality’,
And we can profitee-ee-er Tax-Free!
Gerard Benson
No. 2525: Annus Mirabilis
Philip Larkin’s poem begins ‘Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/’. You are invited to submit a poem in which this opening is adapted so that ‘two thousand and seven’ is substituted for ‘nineteen sixty-three’ and ‘sexual intercourse’ with whatever you consider appropriate. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to ‘Competition 2525’ by 13 December or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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