More than 640 songs and poems, over 260 Authors
Call them rebel songs, slave songs, songs of freedom, work songs, songs of dissent, songs of struggle, protest songs, liberation songs, labour songs, labor songs, workers songs, industrial folk songs, environmental songs, songs of equality, peace songs.
For over two centuries working people across the world have built
trade unions. This site documents the songs and poems that they made
in the process, union songs. It includes songs and poems that are being
written today, as the process of union building continues all around
the world.
Such songs are the work of famous poets as well as men and women whose names
have been forgotten. They stretch back to ancient times and are being created
today.
'Songs are very strange. Why is a song like Pound A Week Rise - rescued from my personal "scrapheap", because it was about a miners' wage claim in 1962 and I did not think it relevant in the 70s, by Dick Gaughan in about 1975 - still recorded by Americans, Australians etc - I always say there is no such thing as an old song because it is new to someone if they have not heard it before.'
Ed Pickford
