Always blew like hell beside the Winter Gardens,

playing havoc with the wives’ hairdos.

Sunny Jim Callaghan and his silly song,

fishermen's tales about catches and the EU.

 

A little arm-twisting, word in the right ear;

the workers, united, will never be defeated.

Late-night curries and composite motions.

Flying pickets, tactics; that wasn’t my department.

 

Papers screamed about ransom and blackmail,

sneered at our accents, syntax, cloth caps.

They should have let us run our country; we’d

have done it better than those Eton chaps.  

 

But the road from Saltley only led to Wapping.

I remember the beer-soaked talk in the bar.

“That woman? The grocer’s daughter? Not a chance.

You’ve heard her talk? They’ll see through her.” 

 

Oh, we did like to be beside the seaside,

escaping smoke-filled rooms for the prom, prom, prom.

Kiss me quick on the pier, know what I mean?

Happy days before the wives came along.