COP26: What’s This?

November 2021 saw the global climate talks known as COP26 held in Glasgow.

The COP26 Coalition organised decentralised mass mobilisations across the world, bringing together movements to build power for system change – from indigenous struggles to trade unions, from racial justice groups to youth strikers.

This is my contribution. he words are by Steve “Protest Family” White and I set them to a tune of my own devising. It was great to go some collaborative songwriting like that, and great to have such a great songwriter as Steve on tap to call on!

I was also pleased with the edit in the “It’s a Wonderful World” introduction.

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Then as part of the day of action I was privileged to perform the song in Barkers Pool Sheffield…

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COP26, what’s this?
COP26, what’s it gonna fix?
COP26, just more politics
And we’re running out of time.

This flooding is brought to you by Microsoft
This wildfire by Sainsbury’s and our friends at Sky
This drought by Unilever and some others we forgot
We’re saving the planet
One multinational at a time

Your speech is sponsored by “blah, blah, blah”
Your blind eye by corporate environmental crime
It’s greenwash, we know what you are
You’re not saving the planet
And were running out of time

You’ve got the tarmac, but we’ve got the glue
You’re stuck on the motorway, and we’re stuck on it too
You can stick your air source heat pump scheme,
‘Cos that just will not do
You’ve got the tarmac,
but we make the glue!

Our Song Will Go On – The Peekskill Story

Taken from a Topic 78 (No. TRC28 – Topic was at that point part of the Workers Music Association) featuring Paul Robeson, Howard Fast Pete Seeger and the Weavers these two sides document the Peekskill riots.

I’ve recently come across the Howard Fast book that’s shown in my little photo montage and it’s really quite remarkable so I may well return to this topic soon.

When I Get My Bolshevik Blood Up

I came across the title of this song in Michael Kilgarriff’s book “Sing us some of the old songs, A guide to popular song 1860 – 1920” and had to dig it out at the British Library. Disappointingly, but not really surprisingly it turned out to be very anti Bolshevik, …

Rufus John – The Internationale

Rufus John sings The Internationale on a record released by the Lansbury’s Labour Weekly newspaper, founded by Labour MP George Lansbury and which ran from 1925 to 1927 and which was an important source of news during the 1926 General Strike.

We Are Waltham Forest

This performance was part of a campaign to protest cuts to the National Health Service in 2013.

The song was written by Steve White from my band, Steve White & the Protest Family. He doesn’t usually write on commission which is a shame because he did a great job!

The performance is from the top of the market in Walthamstow.

Which Side Are You On?

This is the Protest Family’s version of Florence Reece’s archetypal protest song “Which Side Are You On?” with Steve’s changes bringing it bang up to date.

No Master

I live in Walthamstow in East London. Our most famous son is nineteenth century artist and radical William Morris.

This is my arrangement of his song “No Master” from the 1892 collection “Chants for Socialists”.

Dandelions

Dandelions is a powerful protest song about the treatment and resistance of ordinary soldiers during the first world war.

It was written by my friend Steve O’Donoghue. I’ve heard him sing it at the folk club many times.

I approached the No Glory group who campaign against the glorification of war and they agreed it would make a powerful statement as part of their Somme centenary campaign.

Steve sings the song unaccompanied but No Glory gave me a modest budget and I arranged and recorded the song with a group. No Glory then put together this powerful video to go with it.

I blogged about the process of the recording in this post on the Steve White & the Protest Family blog – https://protestfamily.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/dandelions/