Raising The Standards (With Banners Held High)

 

You said that you wanted a land fit for heroes,

a place to call home that they’d show off with pride

but somewhere along the way you forgot

the reasons they fought and the reasons they died.

 

They thought they were fighting for honour and justice,

suppressing the tyrants and saving our land -

but returned to a country that punished the workers

for banding together and making a stand

 

So your songs are all dirges to the heroically fallen,

your words are all platitudes for their loss of life.

Your actions speak louder than all of your promises,

where lies are pandemic and betrayals are rife

 

Cause they died in the trenches with promises, hollow,

driving them forward and ringing in their ears

while you pocketed money that should have been spent

making jobs for survivors and easing their fears

 

Now we march all together and sing for the future,

while honouring those who we lost in the past

and we still want to believe all the promises made

as our young men were slaughtered, dismembered and gassed.

 

Prosperity offered like chocolate at Christmas.

Peace in our times and everlasting hope -

all that they got were more broken dreams,

more pointless wars, more money for old rope

 

The bosses got fat on the toil of their workers,

the bankers got fat on their interest rich loans

and the man who came back from the war that he fought in

was treated no better than their graveyards of bones.

 

So bang the drum comrade and never forget

that if silence is demanded then shout and be loud

and don’t let this government try to sell history

as though it is something for which we should be proud.

 

A century has passed and they’ve destroyed the mines,

they’ve doused the steel furnaces, grounded the docks,

left northern communities suffering and reeling

in their self proclaimed, privatised school of hard knocks.

 

There are still poor people living in poverty,

food banks are prevalent, folk on the street,

they cannot look after the homeless and feeble,

the old cannot pay for their lighting and heat.

 

From the mud of the trenches they came back home

Their future was as grey as the clothes on their back

They demanded we give them something to cling to

 A future of light in their visions of black.

 

England’s green fields, the red of the blood,

The gold we were promised, the blue of the sky

These are the colours we raise as our standard

Marching together, with Banners Held High.