Descendants

Commoners Choir 'Descendants'
Second in a series of Singalong Protest songs – songs for demonstrations, marches and protests
Added August 2017

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.
“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.
“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
(Charles Dickens)

Early in the summer holidays I took my children to the National Coal Mining Museum near Wakefield. (They loved it, honestly, it wasn’t cruel!) While they were scurrying with the other kids through low hewn tunnels 140m below the ground with their helmets and lamps, our fantastic guide explained how children their age would work in absolute blackness – they didn’t waste candles on the children – for 12 hours at a time.

It took the drowning of 26 children, when Huskar colliery near Barnsley flooded in 1837, to prick the conscience of enough of wealthy society for them to stop using children under ten years old in mines. And even then, there was opposition. In Parliament, the Marquess of Londonderry said this was “a measure which affected property to the amount of £10,000,000 and such a measure should not be hurried through Parliament.”

Throughout our history those with wealth and power have sought to oppose those campaigning against inequality and injustice, fighting for safe working and fair wages, and wanting to enjoy their lives freely.

Oliver Twist was punished for asking for more; the master wasn’t afraid of one weak boy. Power and hoarded wealth are never ceded lightly. And we don’t get equality and respect by asking alone. We get ‘more’ only when those with the power and wealth are frightened they may lose even more if they don't give a little. We will only get our fair share and the respect we all deserve by working together to take it.

Change never comes as a benevolent gift – though children’s history books champion the Parliamentarians who pass laws rather than those who fought for decades and centuries to force change. It’s 150 years since Charles Dickens described that culture of grim and unrelenting poverty, cruelty and sickness among the working poor. But between then and now we’ve managed to double our average life expectancy, and that’s happened because we’ve improved sanitation, healthcare, diet, working conditions and living conditions; and we’ve improved our freedoms and our choices. These improvements weren’t handed down by grateful factory bosses and land owners, by generous Prime Ministers and judges. They came about through education, protests, strikes, riots and demonstrations.

And things are still changing, in much the same way. What history teaches us is that the protests of today will force a better place for our children to live in. That history is being made, now, by all of us. We are the descendants of the history-makers … and we are coming for you.

“There is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.” (Charles Dickens)

Alan Smith/Commoners Choir