I found something extraordinary yesterday. I’m not a big fan of Facebook. I can take it or leave it most days but yesterday someone warned me to check my friends list..hers had people on it she didn’t know.
I went through , checking and all was well. No one there I didn’t know.
I clicked on an old friend afterwards...and on his entries was a video I’d never seen.
It was Paul Robeson singing at the Durham Miners gala.
This got my complete attention. As a very stroppy teenager I had attended the Durham Miners gala...and enjoyed it, listening to Nye Bevin and other labour leaders expounding to great crowds all listening intently.
The song Paul Robeson sang in his wonderful dark voice was "Joe Hill"
"I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you or me."
Wow...a song from my youth, long forgotten...it all came rushing back to me.
My misspent youth, my political affiliations, the memories are all still there.
One of my claims to fame when I went to college was that I was the only person who knew all the words to "The Red Flag" and was able to reach them to the other students.
I could sing all the other socialist songs too and did...fairly frequently. The tutors were more amused than I could ever have imagined so I taught them the words too!
Happy Days!
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1 comment:
Of course, these days, songs like the Red Flag are only sung at the Labour Conference. I can't say that I have ever sung a socialist song, lots of Folk, Scots or Irish, never any English, unless you count stuff sung as school in the 1950's.
But, than, having spent the best part of my life in an organisation where politics were a private matter, and where we considered that the Tory Party were always kinder to the Services, we tended to vote that way, even if we didn't share their political worldview.
I voted Labour in 97, for Tony Blair, and my reward for that was total disillusion with any socialist politics (More Tory than the Tories). i than found the Green Party, who could be regarded as more Left Wing than any of the Corby gang or Momentum. But they scarcely get a mention, let alone votes. Shame.
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