Editing Protest song (section)

====20th century====
[[File:Maggie_Holland_of_the_English_Country_Blues_Band_at_Goodwood_Folk_Festival.jpg|thumb|200px|[[Maggie Holland]], known for "A Place Called England".]]

Colin Irwin, a journalist for ''[[The Guardian]]'', believes the modern British protest movement started in 1958 when the [[Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]] organized a 53-mile march from [[Trafalgar Square]] to [[Aldermaston]], to protest Britain's participation in the arms race and recent testing of the H-bomb. The protest "fired up young musicians to write campaigning new songs to argue the case against the bomb and whip up support along the way. Suddenly many of those in skiffle groups playing American songs were changing course and writing fierce topical songs to back direct action."<ref name="aldermaston">{{cite news|last=Irwin|first=Colin|date=August 10, 2008|title=Power to the people; Aldermaston: The birth of the British protest song|newspaper=The Guardian|location=London|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/aug/10/folk.politicsandthearts|access-date=November 8, 2008}}</ref> A song composed for the march, "The H-Bomb's Thunder", set the words of a poem by novelist [[John Brunner (novelist)|John Brunner]] to the tune of "Miner's Lifeguard":
<blockquote><poem>
Men and women, stand together
Do not heed the men of war
Make your minds up now or never
Ban the bomb for evermore.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.antiwarsongs.org/canzone.php?id=3201&lang=en | title= The H-Bomb's Thunder | access-date = November 8, 2008 |publisher = Anti-War Songs}}</ref></poem></blockquote>

Folk singer [[Ewan MacColl]] was for some time one of the principal musical figures of the British nuclear disarmament movement. A former [[agitprop]] actor and playwright. MacColl, a prolific songwriter and committed leftist, some years earlier had penned "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh" (1953), issued as single on Topic Records, and "The Ballad of Stalin" (1954), commemorating the death of that leader.<ref name="aldermaston" /> Neither record has ever been reissued.<ref>His widow [[Peggy Seeger]] copyrighted "The Battle of Stalin" in 1992, when she included it in her ''Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook'', explaining that after the revelations of Stalin's crimes in 1956, MacColl became ashamed of having written it and never wanted to speak or hear about it. See the [http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=39480#2832022 discussion] on Mudcat Cafe.</ref>
According to Irwin, MacColl, when interviewed in the ''Daily Worker'' in 1958, declared that:<blockquote>There are now more new songs being written than at any other time in the past eighty years—young people are finding out for themselves that folk songs are tailor-made for expressing their thoughts and comments on contemporary topics, dreams, and worries,</blockquote>

In 1965, folk-rock singer [[Donovan]]'s cover of [[Buffy Sainte-Marie]]'s  "[[Universal Soldier (song)|Universal Soldier]]" was a hit on the charts. His anti-Vietnam War song "The War Drags On" appeared that same year. This was a common trend in popular music of the 1960s and 1970s. The romantic lyrics of pop songs in the 1950s gave way to words of protest.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Anderson|first=Terry H.|title=American Popular Music and the War in Vietnam|url=http://web.ebscohost.com.www2.lib.ku.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=21&hid=123&sid=1c13513c-da4d-4bc6-af4d-ddf8e99df995%40sessionmgr114|journal=Peace & Change|access-date=December 4, 2011}}</ref>

[[File:Lie In 15 -- John rehearses Give Peace A Chance.jpg|thumb|John Lennon rehearsing the anti–Vietnam War anthem "[[Give Peace a Chance]]" (1969)]]
As their fame and prestige increased in the late 1960s, [[The Beatles]]—and [[John Lennon]] in particular—added their voices to the anti-war movement. In the documentary ''The US Versus John Lennon'', [[Tariq Ali]] attributes the Beatles' activism to the fact that, in his opinion, "The whole culture had been radicalized: [Lennon] was engaged with the world, and the world was changing him." "[[Revolution (Beatles song)|Revolution]]", 1968, commemorated the worldwide student uprisings. In 1969, when Lennon and [[Yoko Ono]] were married, they staged a week-long "bed-in for peace" in the [[Amsterdam]] [[Hilton Hotel|Hilton]], attracting worldwide media coverage.<ref name="EternalFlame">{{cite web|last=Williams|first=Precious|date=May 19, 2002|title=Eternal Flame|url=http://news.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=2328156|access-date=December 20, 2007|publisher=scotsman.com}}</ref> At the second "Bed-in" in Montreal, in June 1969, they recorded "[[Give Peace a Chance]]" in their hotel room. The song was sung by over half a million demonstrators in Washington, DC, at the second [[Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam|Vietnam Moratorium Day]], on October 15, 1969.<ref name="VietnamMoratorium">{{cite news|date=October 15, 1969|title=1969: Millions march in US Vietnam Moratorium|publisher=bbc.co.uk/onthisday|location=London|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/15/newsid_2533000/2533131.stm|access-date=December 16, 2007}}</ref> In 1972 Lennon's most controversial protest song LP was released, ''[[Some Time in New York City]]'', the title of whose lead single "[[Woman Is the Nigger of the World]]", a phrase coined by Ono in the late 1960s to protest [[sexism]], set off a storm of controversy, and in consequence received little airplay and much banning. The Lennons went to great lengths (including a press conference attended by staff from ''[[Jet (magazine)|Jet]]'' and ''[[Ebony (magazine)|Ebony]]'' magazines) to explain that they had used the word ''[[nigger]]'' in a symbolic sense and not as an affront to African Americans. The album also included "Attica State", about the [[Attica Prison riots]] of September 9, 1971; "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "The Luck Of The Irish", about the massacre of demonstrators in [[Northern Ireland]] and "Angela", in support of black activist [[Angela Davis]]. Lennon also performed at the "Free [[John Sinclair (poet)|John Sinclair]]" benefit concert in [[Ann Arbor]], [[Michigan]], on December 10, 1971, on behalf of the imprisoned antiwar activist and poet who was serving 10 years in state prison for selling two [[Joint (cannabis)|joint]]s of [[Cannabis (drug)|marijuana]] to an undercover cop.<ref name="JohnLennonOnTelevision">{{cite web|title=John Lennon on Television|url=http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob18.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071207201246/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob18.html|archive-date=December 7, 2007|access-date=December 17, 2007|publisher=homepage.ntlworld.com}}</ref><ref name="TwentyToLife">{{cite news|title=The Life and Times of John Sinclair|url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/316826/Twenty-to-Life-The-Life-and-Times-of-John-Sinclair/overview|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071111081616/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/316826/Twenty-to-Life-The-Life-and-Times-of-John-Sinclair/overview|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 11, 2007|department=Movies & TV Dept.|work=[[The New York Times]]|author=Jason Buchanan|date=2007|access-date=December 20, 2007}}</ref> On this occasion Lennon and Ono appeared on stage with among others singers Phil Ochs and Stevie Wonder, plus antiwar activists Jerry Rubin and [[Bobby Seale]] of the [[Black Panthers]] party. Lennon's song "John Sinclair" (which can be heard on his ''Some Time in New York City'' album), calls on the authorities to "Let him be, set him free, let him be like you and me". The benefit was attended by some 20,000 people, and three days later the State of Michigan released Sinclair from prison.<ref name="SinclairBiog">{{cite web|last=Sinclair|first=John|date=May 12, 2003|title=John Sinclair's Bio|url=http://www.johnsinclair.us/10for2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=875&Itemid=74|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071027090218/http://www.johnsinclair.us/10for2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=875&Itemid=74|archive-date=October 27, 2007|access-date=December 20, 2007|publisher=John Sinclair}}</ref>

The 1970s saw a number of notable songs by British acts that protested against war, including "[[Peace Train]]" by [[Cat Stevens]] (1971), and "[[War Pigs (song)|War Pigs]]" by [[Black Sabbath]] (1970). Sabbath also protested environmental destruction, describing people leaving a ruined Earth ("[[Into the Void (Black Sabbath song)|Into the Void]]" including, "[[Iron Man (song)|Iron Man]]"). [[Renaissance (band)|Renaissance]] added political repression as a protest theme with "[[Mother Russia (Renaissance song)|Mother Russia]]" being based on ''[[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]'' and being joined on the second side of their 1974 album ''[[Turn of the Cards]]'' by two other protest songs in "Cold Is Being" (about ecological destruction) and "Black Flame" (about the Vietnam War).

[[File:Clash 21051980 12 800.jpg|thumb|left|[[The Clash]], one of the pioneers of the punk movement, who protested class economics, race issues, and authoritarianism]]
As the 1970s progressed, the louder, more aggressive punk movement became the strongest voice of protest, particularly in the UK, featuring anti-war, anti-state, and anti-capitalist themes. The punk culture, in stark contrast with the 1960s' sense of power through union, concerned itself with individual freedom, often incorporating concepts of [[individualism]], [[Freethought|free thought]] and even [[anarchism]]. According to ''Search and Destroy'' founder [[V. Vale]], "Punk was a total cultural revolt. It was a hardcore confrontation with the black side of history and culture, right-wing imagery, sexual taboos, a delving into it that had never been done before by any generation in such a thorough way."<ref>Savage (1991), p. 440.</ref> The most significant protest songs of the movement included "[[God Save the Queen (Sex Pistols song)|God Save the Queen]]" (1977) by the [[Sex Pistols]], "If the Kids are United" by [[Sham 69]], "[[Career Opportunities (song)|Career Opportunities]]" (1977) (protesting the political and economic situation in England at the time, especially the lack of jobs available to the youth), and "[[White Riot]]" (1977) (about class economics and race issues) by [[The Clash]], and "Right to Work" by [[Chelsea (band)|Chelsea]]. See also [[Punk ideology]].

War was still the prevalent theme of British protest songs of the 1980s – such as [[Kate Bush]]'s "[[Army Dreamers]]" (1980), which deals with the traumas of a mother whose son dies while away at war. Indeed, the early 1980s was a remarkable period for anti-nuclear and anti-war UK political pop, much of it inspired directly or indirectly by the punk movement: 1980 saw '22 such Top 75 hits, by 18 different artists. For almost th[at] entire year ... (47 weeks), the UK singles charts contained at least one hit song that spoke of antiwar or antinuclear concerns, and usually more than one.' Further George McKay argues that 'it really is quite extraordinary to note that one-third of the year 1984 (17 weeks) had some kind of political pop song at the top of the British charts. Viewed from that lofty perspective, 1984 must be seen as a peak protest music time in Britain, most of it in the context of antiwar and antinuclear sentiment.'<ref>McKay, George (2021). [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351561323_Rethinking_the_cultural_politics_of_punk_anti-nuclear_and_anti-war_post-punk_popular_music_in_1980s_Britain 'Rethinking the cultural politics of punk: anti-nuclear and anti-war (post-)punk popular music in 1980s Britain']. George McKay and [[Gina Arnold]], eds. ''The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.</ref>

[[File:Kate_Bush_1981.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Kate Bush]] with her poignant anti-war song "Army Dreamers" (1980) capturing the emotional toll of war.]]

However, as the 1980s progressed, it was British prime minister [[Margaret Thatcher]] who came under the greatest degree of criticism from native protest singers, mostly for her strong stance against trade unions, and especially for her handling of the [[UK miners' strike (1984–1985)]], the subject of [[Sting (musician)|Sting's]] "[[We Work the Black Seam]]". The leading voice of protest in [[Margaret Thatcher|Thatcherite]] Britain in the 1980s was [[Billy Bragg]], whose style of protest song and grass-roots political activism was mostly reminiscent of those of [[Woody Guthrie]], however with themes that were relevant to the contemporary Briton. He summarized his stance in "Between the Wars" (1985), in which he sings: "I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage."

Also in the 1980s the band [[Frankie Goes to Hollywood]] released a political pop protest song [[Two Tribes]] a relentless bass-driven track depicting the futility and starkness of nuclear weapons and the Cold War. The video for the song depicted a wrestling match between then-President Ronald Reagan and then-Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko for the benefit of group members and an eagerly belligerent assembly of representatives from the world's nations, the event ultimately degenerating into complete global destruction. This video was played several times at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Due to some violent scenes ("Reagan" biting "Chernenko"'s ear, etc.), the unedited video could not be shown on MTV, and an edited version was substituted. The single quickly hit the number one spot in the United Kingdom.
Several mixes of the track feature actor Patrick Allen, who recreated his narration from the [[Protect and Survive]] public information films for certain 12-inch mixes (the original Protect and Survive soundtracks were sampled for the 7-inch mixes).