Union Songs

We Shall Not Be Moved

Article by Wendy Lowenstein

I like Mark Gregory's new words to Which Side Are You On?

In the Eureka Youth League, we would sing an American song, We shall not be moved I hadn't realised it was a union song until I saw Harlan County, the wonderful US union film about a bitter coal miners' strike. A young miner was shot by guards and died. The camera (it was a volunteer crew) became a participant in the strike, filming his murder and funeral. And as the scabs, under armed guard were driving into the mine area, miners wives blocked the road, singing We shall not be moved with different women contributing new lines. You can go on singing it forever, changing lines all the time. It is co-operative, and very powerful. At the MUA picket in Melbourne we noticed that very few participants, knew the words even of Solidarity Forever. So I thought of this easy-to-remember-and-change song.

We shall, we shall
We shall not be moved
We shall, we shall
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's standing by the water
We shall not be moved.

You and I together
We shall not be moved
You and I together
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's standing by the water
We shall not be moved!

Other lines like: We're fighting our union, (children) (future) (Australia) etc all come to mind, but there is lots of room for originality.

Since the wharf lockout we've already seen a coming together of progressive people - at our huge union demonstration on May 6 (just three days after a good May Day march) about 70,000? people marched in Melbourne not only unionists, but also community groups fighting toxic waste dumps, the loss of parks, parents and teachers and many others.

I'd like to get together a collection of Songs for Struggle, and would welcome suggestions for appropriate lines for We Shall not be moved, suitable for one or many of the struggles that are going on now or are about to erupt.

Notes

Many thanks to Wendy Lowenstein for permission to use this article on the Union Song web site.

Wendy is a one of Australia's foremost folklorists, having been editor of Australian Tradition magazine as well as a number of books including the seminal oral history Weevils in the Flour (just republished). For more about Wendy go to Ms.45 which has information about Wendy's books including her soon to be republished "Under The Hook" coauthored with wharfie Tom Hills.

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