I'm curious. You know that this waas sung at every Labour Party conference before tony Blair went and scrapped clause 4, right?
Is it that fact that it connects the Class struggle with imagary derived from weapons of war, parhaps? I am not saying it is, but I would like to hear you expand and explain on your thinking here, if you want to...
It didn't make me think of class struggle at all. That's worrying, isn't it?
The wording makes me think of our country's Imperialist past, and I've heard EDL members sing it. But then, I'm not old enough to remember it being sung in a different (positive) context!
Indeed. The old British Labour Party had this as the closing song at every conference.
They really did believe in building a better world for future generations and were prepared to make the effort to make it happen.
I started going to school in a little mining village in the north of England. I was about four years old when I first heard this hymn sung , and the teachers were very strong in the Socialist traditions of England back then.
Well, you have to remember that my teacgers belonged to the generation that went to Uni and got their degrees right after the war. they saw the first labour Government use the money from death duties levied from the aristocracy used to fund the NHS, and all the rest of the Welfare State. They went into teaching because they wanted to be a positive influence on kids like me, growing up in the 50s and 60s, they preached very rudimentaly Socialism with strong Christian overtones (or was it rudimentary christianity with strongly Socialist overtones- hard to tell sometimes) to children under the age of 10
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You know that this waas sung at every Labour Party conference before tony Blair went and scrapped clause 4, right?
Is it that fact that it connects the Class struggle with imagary derived from weapons of war, parhaps?
I am not saying it is, but I would like to hear you expand and explain on your thinking here, if you want to...
Reply
The wording makes me think of our country's Imperialist past, and I've heard EDL members sing it. But then, I'm not old enough to remember it being sung in a different (positive) context!
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The old British Labour Party had this as the closing song at every conference.
They really did believe in building a better world for future generations and were prepared to make the effort to make it happen.
I started going to school in a little mining village in the north of England. I was about four years old when I first heard this hymn sung , and the teachers were very strong in the Socialist traditions of England back then.
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