We're Going To The Country

"It's called evacuation. They take you to the station. They put you on the train ..." sing the evacuees and mums in We're Going To The Country from Lionel Bart's musical Blitz! The evacuation of many thousands of children from London (and indeed other large cities and towns) during World War Two is something that makes the head spin. For many children this remained the biggest thing in their lives. Being uprooted from their homes, often split up from brothers, sisters and parents, deposited with strangers in far away places with very different ways of life. My own mum was evacuated to south Wales at the start of 1941, after the heaviest part of the Blitz when the family's flat was destroyed and they were pretty much left with nothing at all. She has never forgotten leaving London by train, with a luggage label tied to her like Paddington Bear, arriving in Cardiff the night it was bombed (and a lot of Londoners thought sod this we might as well go 'ome and be killed there), going on to their new locality, being petrified at seeing the miners with their coal blackened faces, and let's not forget the kindness of strangers who took all these cockney urchins into their homes. Some kids were lucky, some were not. But honestly the immensity of the operation, and the way it changed people's lives. And yet how many songs are there about it all? Well,there was the Harry Phillips/Gaby Rogers number, Goodnight Children Everywhere, which was written "with a tender thought to all evacuated children ...", and performed by Vera Lynn, Gracie Fields, and even dear Gert and Daisy ...

This Is Charing Cross

"This is Charing Cross; It is midnight; There is a great crowd. And no light— A great crowd, all black, that hardly whispers aloud. Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother! She has a dead face; She is dressed all in black; She wanders to the book-stall and back, At the back of the crowd; And back again and again back, She sways and wanders. This is Charing Cross; It is one o’clock. There is still a great cloud, and very little light; Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd That hardly whispers aloud…. And now!… That is another dead mother, And there is another and another and another…. And little children, all in black, All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places, Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room In the dim gloom. These are the women of Flanders: They await the lost. They await the lost that shall never leave the dock; They await the lost that shall never again come by the train To the embraces of all these women with dead faces; They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and fosse, In the dark of the night. This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock; There is very little light. There is so much pain." This is the fifth part of the poem Antwerp by Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford), which The Wraiths have set to music as This Is Charing Cross. It is a haunting poem about (Ford's) WW1 experiences which T.S. Eliot famously described as “the only good poem I have met with on the subject of the war.” Pretty daft quote that actually. The Valleys by Electrelane which uses words from Siegfried Sassoon's A Letter Home disproves that for starters. The Wraiths specialise in setting poetry to music, exceptionally beautiful music for which the words chamber folk seem ridiculously inadequate, and I am eternally grateful (yet again) to Daniel for suggesting this number be included, thus triggering a love of The Wraiths' work. Serves me right for not taking notice of him earlier. Interestingly Daniel has geographical links to both The Wraiths (Bristol) and Ford Madox Ford (Merton). The Wraiths have a fantastic new (second) collection out, Welcome, Stranger, To This Place, which continues the challenge of combining poems and music in a way that is exquisite and very moving. Coincidentally Ford Madox Ford's The Soul of London, which some argue is the best book about the Capital and I wouldn't necessarily diagree, is now available as a print-on-demand paperback. I'm not sure I like what that says about publishing today no matter how much I love the book ...

Rose Ann of Charing Cross

"There by my lonely bed, a lovely angel stopped and said: 'That's only thunder overhead' And that's how we met. Rose Ann of Charing Cross, the rose you gave me never died. Rose Ann of Charing Cross, it knows one day you'll be my bride. And it will live till then, until that happy moment when I know our paths will cross at Charing Cross again, Rose Ann ..." sing the Four Vagabonds in exquisite harmony on their 1943 hit Rose Ann of Charing Cross. It's an interesting one this, as most of the popular songs of WW2 on the face of it have nothing to do with the war itself. But this is a number seemingly about a wounded soldier who falls in love with a nurse while laid up in Charing Cross Hospital. The Four Vagabonds had the hit, but plenty of others have sung it including Frank Sinatra. It was written by the American team of Kermit Goell and Mabel Wayne, which perhaps is why the location is a little eyebrow-raising and doesn't bear too close an analysis. Mind you, this was well before the hospital moved way out west. The Four Vagabonds have been cited as pioneers of r 'n' b vocal stylings, and it's easy to make the link to the doo wop boom. Listening to the group's wartime tribute to Rosie the Riveter it's easy to make links to Billy Stewart and General Johnson ...

Dagenham Dave

"I guess he lost control. And welcomed in the night. It was too much for him. What were his thoughts that night? The River Thames is cold. It keeps on flowing on. But it left Dave alone ..." The Stranglers' Dagenham Dave is a pretty tragic tale., which is odd as from the song title you might expect an Ian Dury sketch. And we won't mention Morrissey. Dave was the group's number one fan from early on, even before The Finchley Boys started following them. He sounded like quite a character. He'd work labouring, scaffolding, or whatever, making plenty of money, but he'd be the most well-read person around. He followed The Stranglers, but was a big jazz and classical buff. He was a committed socialist, by all accounts, who liked a good scrap. He had his problems though, and shortly after the recording sessions for The Stranglers' first LP in February 1977 he commited suicide by jumping off Tower Bridge. Ironically the name Dagenham Dave is slightly misleading. He was from Manchester originally, and the nickname was given to him after a stint working at the big Ford's factory in Dagenham. Dave didn't live to see group he loved so much on Top Of The Pops ...

Ratcliffe Highway

"As I was a-walking down London. From Wapping to Ratcliffe Highway. I chanced to pop into a gin-shop. To spend a long night and a day. A young doxy came rolling up to me. And asked if I'd money to sport. For a bottle of wine changed a guinea. And she quickly replied: 'That's the sort'..." sings an unaccompanied Jim O'Connor on the traditional number Ratcliffe Highway from The Critics Group's anthology of London songs, Sweet Thames Flow Softly, which was overseen by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1967. The song is a cautionary tale about being fleeced while out and about on the stretch of road which, as the excellent Victorian London site details, was notorious for its vice and violence, as a haunt of sailors and what were known as 'unbonneted ladies'. It's still there, though now known as The Highway, running from The City out to Limehouse, and still trying to shake off the notoriety of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders which in turn inspired Peter Ackroyd's great novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. The naughty/nautical nature of Ratcliffe Highway also pops up in other songs, including The Deserter from Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief LP. The traditional song Ratcliffe Highway has been performed by many people, though The Dubliners' live 1964 version provides a fascinating contrast to The Critics Group's ...

Bethnal Green Tube Disaster

"Let me take you back to the second world war. A time of great valour. A time of folklore. To a place in the east end they call Bethnal Green. Battle scarred by the Blitz. Can you picture the scene? There's a tube station all Londoners know. It's between Barmy Park and Paradise Row. It was used as a shelter by families all around. When the siren gave the warning they'd go underground ..." One of the finest examples of using the pop song form to tell a story is Bethnal Green Tube Disaster from Frank Tovey & The Pyros' Grand Union LP. It captures the tale of how on the night of 3 March 1943 173 people were crushed to death in Bethnal Green tube station which was being used as a shelter during the Blitz. The full story is told in Frank's song or in accounts available online. At the time of writing this terrible civilian disaster is topical again as a campaign is being waged to raise money for a fitting memorial to be built for those who died unnecessarily. It can be supported by visiting the Stairway To Heaven Memorial site. Let's also remember Frank Tovey who wrote some of the finest London songs of our time ... The disaster is also remembered in a quite lovely song, 15 (3 March 1943) by the group Resigned on its CD, It's Still My Bethnal Green.

Iron Lady

"The Iron Lady she no easy ..." When the media draws up its list of anti-Thatcher songs it's made up of the usual suspects. You don't see UK reggae tracks like Macka B's Get Rid Of Maggie on it, for example. Or Iron Lady by Demon Rockers, an early incarnation of the Ragga Twins, which covers an impressive array of subjects such as money spent on nuclear weapons, housing conditions for the poor, unemployment, police harrasment, the death of Colin Roach, and how these issues impact particularly on places like their own Hackney. The rough house masters Flinty Badman and Deman Rockers were graduates of Unity (the sound system rather than the theatre ... you need the Honest Jons collection Watch How The People Dancing). As the Ragga Twins they released a string of classic singles in the early '90s, such as Wipe The Needle and Hooligan 69, as well as the LP, Reggae Owes Me Money. Soul Jazz has issued an essential round-up of the Twins' finest moments, including a couple of bonus Demon Rockers tracks. The Twins were the first signing to Shut Up And Dance's label, and the set-up would produce some of the best music ever from the UK with its mess of dancehall, hip hop, house and anything else they felt worth 'alf inching. The names a bit of a red herring too, as they did anything but shut up, covering some of the thorniest issues of the day, from hard drugs to homelessness to admission policies. Tracks like Shut Up And Dance's own Save it Till The Mourning After and the remarkable Nicolette's Waking Up still sound magnificent ...

Look Around

"Words? What words? How can the likes of me find the words for what we 'ave to go through?" says Vivienne Martin in her role as Kate at the start of the number Look Around from the 1965 musical The Match Girls, which had words by Bill Owen (yes that ...) and a score by Tony Russell. The musical had evolved from a 1940 play by Robert Mitchell for Unity Theatre. Bill Owen was closely involved with Unity for many years, long before finding fame in Last of the Summer Wine. The East End of London has an important history of trades union activity, from the dockers to more recent struggles against low pay for contracted-out NHS services. But the story of the 1888 match girls strike is perhaps the most significant event in the area's social history. Campaigning journalist Annie Besant had written an article, White Slavery in London, highlighting the appalling conditions girls were working in at the Bryant & May factory in Bow and the effects of phosphorous poisoning. Following publication the factory's owners tried to get the match girls to sign a statement saying the article was wrong, but they refused. When one of the girls was sacked, her colleagues came out on strike. Their campaign was fought with great vitality, and gained support from many leading socialist figures. The girls won, and one of the outcomes was the formation of a matchworkers' union. As for the musical itself? Well, it had a short run in the West End (ah then you had shows by Lionel Bart and Anthony Newley in those pre-Lloyd Webbed-Foot times), and the surviving original cast recording has a lot going for it in a jazzy cockney kinda way. And I have to take my 'at off to the splendid person that posted Anita Harris' interpretation of one of the show's numbers on YouTube ...

Trade Union

"Very much in the present is the Bengali group Dishari, singing Trade Union, a rallying cry to fellow Bengali workers to stand together under the Trade Union banner ..." runs Hannah Charlton's sleevenotes to Robert Wyatt's Nothing Can Stop Us collection. Dishari was a group formed by Abdus Salique. He had moved from Bangladesh to the east end of London at the start of the '70s, and was very much a part of a period of change where the Bengali community grew in the area while the Jewish population gradually moved away. In a recurring pattern the Bengalis had to face racism and poverty, but Abdus Salique was among those determined to fight. He became involved in trades union politics, and formed the group Dishari to give a voice to his community which he felt was not being represented in the Labour movement or the arts. Robert Wyatt gave the group the opportunity to record a song as part of a series of 7"s he put out on Rough Trade in the early '80s. The track they recorded was Trade Union, which was a call for Bengali workers in east London to get involved with the Union movement. Significantly, because of the Robert Wyatt/Rough Trade link it was a song heard by an audience outside the Bengali community in and around Brick Lane. In the 40 odd years he has been in London Abdus Salique will have seen major changes in the area, from the race attacks in 1978 and the murder of Altab Ali through to the rebranding as Banglatown and the City's encroachment with its clubs and cafes. He has continued as a business man, becoming chair of the Brick Lane Traders' Association and continuing to speak out about how he feels the Bengali community should be represented. Meanwhile a new generation has its own struggles, and understandably it is more interested in using grime or hip hop to express itself. Among the new generation is Naga, who is very much in the present ... and indeed has performed at the Rough Trade 'superstore' now based in the old but very different East End ...

The Spirit of Cable Street

"Back in '36 down at Cable Street. State and blackshirts marched but they met their fate. Workers' class hatred drove them off the street. Fascism is class war. Unite in the spirit of Cable Street. From Cable Street through the nazi wars. Workers stood their ground fighting fascism. We should learn from them that there is no passive way ..." Cornelius Cardew's The Spirit of Cable Street which he recorded with People's Liberation Music (available on the Consciously CD) makes explicit the connection between the momentous events of 1936 in Cable Street when the Jewish East End, together with local dockers and others, rose up to fight the fascist threat and the continuing struggle against racism and fascism. It carries on: "Now at Red Lion Square the people fought with bare hands. Like their parents did down at Cable Street. Keep alive the fighting spirit of Kevin Gately ..." referencing an anti-racist demonstration in 1974 to stop the National Front during which a student was killed. This was an interesting song for the pre-punk '70s. The usual career trajectory is to start out with a revolutionary fervour which fizzles out along the way. Cardew came from an academic background, studied with Stockhausen, was closely involved with the improvisers, was featured on Sonic Youth's Goodbye 20th Century,and so on. In the early '70s, however, he disowned his past: "I have discontinued composing music in an avant garde idiom for a number of reasons: the exclusiveness of the avant-garde, its fragmentation, its indifference to the real situation in the world today, its individualistic outlook and not least its class character (the other characteristics are virtually products of this)." He became more involved with Marxist/Communist politics and action until his death in 1981 when he was killed in a hit-and-run incident in east London. One of the quotes often used in relation to Cardew is one from Robert Wyatt: "If the word 'romantic' should be rescued from the whimsical sentimentalists, it is so that we could then apply it, properly, to Cornelius Cardew: a real fountain of breathtakingly adventurous music." It is easy to see similarities between the politics and work of Cardew in the '70s with what Robert Wyatt has been doing since linking up with Rough Trade at the start of the '80s ...

My Home in Morgan Street

"My home in Morgan Street. It makes me happy, it's good. I have my own room. Though it reeks of stinking fish. There stands a girl in a dress. Shouting 'Six a penny baygels!' And a small Jew with his fiddle is playing the violin ..." The song My Home in Morgan Street is one of the highlights of Whitechapel Mayn Vaytshepl, a fantastic CD from Klezmer Klub. It is a collection of songs that celebrates the old Jewish East End. Some of the songs are adaptations of ones collected by friends and family, handed down by oral tradition, which the defiantly vibrant but desperately poor community would sing. Other numbers are new interpretations of folk songs and dances, played in the klezmer tradition, revivifying the spirit of the past. The CD is wonderfully infectious, and filled with London references. What makes it particularly important is that the history of the Jewish East End has generated a number of great books and memoirs, from Joe Jacobs to Emanuel Litvinoff to Bernard Kops to Rachel Lichtenstein, and all these mention the community's music and dancing. So Klezmer Klub's work in bringing this music to life is particularly welcome. But this is not just something worthy. It's some of the most uplifting music that's appeared in a long time. Please visit their website and treat yourself to a copy ...

The Liberty of Norton Folgate

"Once round Arnold Circus, and up through Petticoat Lane. Past the well of shadows, and once back round again. Arm in arm, with an abstracted air. To where the people stare out of the upstairs windows. Because we are living like kings. And these days will last forever. 'Cos sailors from Africa, China and the archipelago of Malay jump ship ragged and penniless into Shadwell's Tiger Bay. The Welsh and Irish wag tails, mothers of midnight. The music hall carousal is spilling out into Bow firelight. Sending half-crazed shadows, giants dancing up the brick wall of Mr Truman's beer factory, waving, bottles ten feet tall. Whether one calls it Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets or Banglatown, we’re all dancing in the moonlight, we’re all on borrowed ground ..." There are certain acts, such as Madness, Ian Dury, Squeeze, The Clash, Pogues and Saint Etienne, that have not really been featured in this project because they are so closely associated with London songs. That is not a reflection on their work. Far from it. Madness, for example, are pretty much held in universal affection. They could trade on sentiment, and tread water on the festival circuit. But their most recent work, The Liberty of Norton Folgate, is their finest yet. And in the pop context it's a struggle to find others who have come up with their finest and most adventurous record after 30 odd years. The title track is a remarkable achievement, which is why it is included here. In its survey of the east end there are enough London historical, literary and popular culture references to keep us amused for donkey's years as we follow up clues, from music halls to the docks to the markets to the places of sanctuary ... in me secondhand coat.

Bow Bells

"Bow bells are London bells. And no bells ring like Bow bells ring. A ding-dong, the sing song Bow bells ring. Bow bells are happy bells. And when they ring to me they bring a spring song, a ding-dong kinda thing ..." sings Donald Peers (I think) with Robert Farnon's Orchestra in Bow Bells, a number from the 1947 film Dancing With Crime which starred Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim and a young Bill Owen. Robert Farnon was a Canadian who settled in London after WW2 and became the king of light orchestral sounds. His name has cropped up on countless credits, from TV themes like The Prisoner to collaborations with George Shearing. He also did the arrangements for Frank Sinatra Sings Great Songs From Great Britain, Sarah Vaughan's magnificent Vaughan With Voices, and worked extensively with Tony Bennett. Bow Bells of course are central to the whole Cockney thing. If you're born within the sound of the Bow Bells then you're a proper Cockney. The bells themselves are more in the City than the East End of London, being part of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside rather than the district of Bow. The church was hit during the Blitz in 1941 and it would be another 20 years before the bells rang out again (so oddly they wouldn't have been ringing when Dancing With Crime was released). You can argue til the cows come home about the true meaning of Cockney, and the attendant cliches and characterisations. One of the enduring Cockney teams is Gert and Daisy - the Cockney characters of Elsie and Doris Waters (their brother was one Jack Warner) who were particularly popular during WW2. One of their numbers was Cockneys At Heart - And Proud Of It Too. While the sisters were from the east end the song takes the term Cockney in the broadest sense. But then London's always been a broad church ... and its congegration likes a good old knees-up!

Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)

"The towers of London, these crumbling blocks, reality estates that the heroes got. And every hour's marked by the chime of a clock and whatcha gonna do when the darkness surrounds?" sings our patron saint at the start of Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) - a song so cool it quoted Phil Ochs' United Fruit when no-one much seemed to care. It is one of the enduring media myths about the punk years that all the groups were singing about tower blocks and being on the dole. But was that really the case? Some songs do spring to mind, such as Chelsea's High Rise Living and the TVPs' 14th Floor. The list is not a long one though. One slightly more oblique entry in the high rise living chapter of the London songboook would be Rubella Ballet's fantastic Arctic Flowers. Rubella Ballet were (are!) a day-glo punk outfit, often associated with the Crass anarcho scene, sometimes with the goth or positive punk ones, but they're just unique. The music was often melodic and hypnotic, comparable to the Banshees at their best. Core of the group are punk evangelists Zillah Minx and Sid Truelove, and they're still spreading the word. Among the striking videos they have posted on YouTube is this promo filmed in 1981 on the roof of Balfron Tower, a council block in Poplar, east London, where they lived in a flat for 11 years on the 24th floor. And this fades in slowly ...

Towers of London

"Towers of London when they had built you. Did you watch over the men who fell? Towers of London when they had built you. Victoria's gem found in somebody's hell ..." sings my childhood idol Andy Partridge on XTC's unusually forthright Towers of London. For no matter how impressive the Victorian architectural achievements were, there was a huge price to pay in terms of human life. The architects may have monuments built so we remember their names, but who remembers the families of those who fell by the wayside? Andy explained the thinking behind the song to an XTC fansite thus: "I saw an engraving of workmen building something under London - I'm not sure what - but they were in this huge underground corridor, with a hole in the top where the sunlight was coming in, and there was a pit pony down there, with a half-dozen navvies. And I thought, I'm going to write a song about London, but I'm going to write it from the point of view of the people who actually built it - the 'navigators' or canal builders. They were people who dug the canals, people who dug the Undergrounds - basically the labourers of the Victorian era, who were known as navvies. A lot of them were Irish, or people from the West Country, or from up north in England, so they were considered to be stupid yokels, generally, and they were looked down on, largely, by the population. You know, 'expendable' types."

Down Below

"Hatton Garden is a spot ... that we like to go a lot ... since a bloke in Leather Lane dropped a diamond down a drain ... we've been waiting .... but in vain ... " sings Ian Wallace in his recording of Sydney Carter's Down Below. Ian Wallace? That Ian Wallace? Oh yus. And Sydney Carter's the Sydney Carter that wrote the Lord of the Dance. So Ian Wallace singing Sydney's little ditty about what goes on underground. Anyway, when folks talk about the wonders of Victorian architecture they tend to refer to the grandeur of buildings such as the Royal Albert Hall or St Pancras Station. But one of the great architectural achievements of the Victorian era was, well, down below. The network of sewers built in response to The Great Stink of 1858 was a great success, and among the features of the scheme was pumping stations in key locations such as Abbey Mills on the River Lea and Cross Ness down on the marshes in Erith. One of the key architects of the scheme was Sir Joseph Bazalgette. He was also the man behind the Woolwich Free Ferry, which started in 1889 and runs to this day (though daily traffic bulletins will often inform you there is a reduced service) linking Woolwich on the south east side of the Thames with North Woolwich in east London. Sir Joseph's great-great-grandson is one Peter Bazalgette, the media mogul responsible for popularising Big Brother and other reality TV formats. Ironically the original Big Brother house in east London is a short distance away from Abbey Mills. Sydney Carter isn't the only person to write a song about the sewers beneath London ...

Dirty Squatters

"Some dirty squatters moved into my street with their non-sexist haircuts and their dirty feet. Their dogs, cats. Political elite. They may have beds but they don't use sheets ..." Zounds' Dirty Squatters starts off in typical Daily Mail Tory tabloid rant mode but there is a nice twist at the end when Mr Angry finds his job's not going too well and he's beginning to think if you can't beat 'em then join 'em. Zounds was one of the groups closely associated with the Crass anarcho-punk thing. Funny phenomenon that scene/subculture, with all the kids walking round in their leather jackets with the circle-A branding on the back. It's easy to be cynical, but things are never simple, and in fact Zounds was a cracking group with fantastic tunes and smart lyrics. Their LP for Rough Trade, The Curse of Zounds, was even produced by the incredibly important Adam Kidron around the same time he was working with Orange Juice, Scritti Politti, Raincoats, etc. Actually a number of the groups associated with Crass were great, like The Mob, Rubella Ballet, Poison Girls, but Zounds' sounds resound still. Zounds was associated with the squatting/punk community around Brougham Road, Hackney. And it would be interesting to know statistics on the number of discarded/derelict properties in central London in the '70s/early '80s which were used by squatters, and of those squatters how many were seeking a new life/identity in London rather than being born 'n' bred in the metropolis. There have certainly been arguments made for squatters saving Victorian London from the town planners, with the irony being that these saved properties now sell for ridiculous sums which only the likes of Kate Moss can afford. Anyone know the link between Kate Moss and Zounds? Here's a clue ... Blyth Power!

On The Bombsite

"On the bomb site you be mum and I'll be dad. He'll be sad. Waiting for the boat that sails down Garden Street ..." sings Duncan Browne on the gorgeous track On The Bomb Site from his 1968 LP Give Me Take You on Immediate. His partner on this record was the lyricist/poet David Bretton. Now I don't know whether David was from London (though there's a Garden Street Stepney way), but his words for this song will strike a chord with the generation of children who grew up in the Capital in the post-WW2 years for whom the bomb sites were their playground. It's something captured in Leslie Daiken's 1957 film One Potato Two Potato . A couple of years earlier Ken Russell had composed a photo-essay on the Teddy Girls for Picture Post magazine. These photos were then 'lost' for 50 years until some invaluable salvage work resulted in an exhibition at the Spitz Gallery called Bombsite Boudiccas. It was an incredibly important piece of archaeology as it challenged prevailing stereotypes about female '50s fashion. Russell had taken his photos around Walthamstow Market and bomb sites in the area. The girls I believe were art school friends of Shirley Kingdon, who would become Russell's first wife. There's actually some great footage from Russell's first films, from that era, on YouTube with his blessing. One clip is from a 1959 BBC documentary, and features Davy Graham playing Cry Me A River, with some great bomb site backdrops and beautiful beat girl. The astute among you will at this point mention there's a brief clip of Davy in Joseph Losey's The Servant ...

Missing You

"All ye young people now take my advice. Before crossing the ocean you'd better think twice. 'Cause you can't live without love, without love alone. The proof is round London in the nobody zone. Where the summer is fine, but the winter's a fridge. Wrapped up in old cardboard under Charing Cross Bridge. And I'll never go home now because of the shame. Of misfit's reflection in a shop window pane ..." sings the great Christy Moore on his recording of Jimmy McCarthy's Missing You. The song tells of the dangers of crossing the ocean from Ireland in search of prosperity in London. The striking thing now about the song is the reminder of how in the '80s the Irish in London were often seen as drunkards fit only for digging up the roads or as potential bombers. Society needs its bogeymen it seems, and it's only the races and religions that change. Christy had covered the Irish navvy theme before, naturally, including the recording of Dominic Behan's Paddy On The Road, the title track of his debut LP: "So come all you navvies bold who think that English gold is just waiting to be taken from each sod or the likes of you and me could ever get an OBE or a knighthood for good service to the hod. They've the concrete master race to keep you in your place, the ganger man to kick you to the ground, if you ever try to take part of what the bosses make when you're building up and tearing England down ..."

The Grapes of Wrath

"The rain won't wash away their tears. The time has passed for crying. Cardboard walls against the cold. Where's the point in trying?" The Tyrrel Corporation invoke the spirit of John Steinbeck to condemn the economic policies that led to a rise in homelessness on London's streets on their track The Grapes of Wrath from the fantastic North East of Eden LP. Cardboard City was a congregation of homeless souls sleeping rough in the bullring at Waterloo. It was for many years a symbol of Thatcherism's failure right in the heart of London. It was cleared away and the bullring destroyed in the late '90s, to be replaced by a multi-million pound pointless BFI IMAX cinema. A totem for New Labour? The Tyrrel Corporation was sharp enough to realise that deep house Chicago style with socialist lyrics was a perfect mix. But then who could resist Marshall Jefferson, Ten City and the soulful vocals of (the splendidly Dickensian named) Byron Stingily ...