Public services poem raises the roof at Glastonbury

In the latest stage of the union’s campaign against the Tory’s hard and fast public spending cuts, UNISON, the UK’s largest public services union, commissioned a poem from the poet in residence at Glastonbury festival.

General Secretary Dave Prentis said of the hard-hitting poem For the People, By Tony Walsh, aka Longfella:

“We are using every means possible to get the message out there about the huge dangers the Tories pose to our society, our economy, and to our public services. Tony’s rousing poem highlights the injustice of cuts, which hit the poorest hardest, at the same time as the bankers carry on pocketing billions in bonuses.”

The full poem is here

This is a short extract:

...And so this is for the people who stood up for our conditions

Through the centuries of injustice and the Tory opposition And so this is for the people and their strikes to get us welfare

Win equality and dignity, win us pensions and our health care

And so this is for the people who fought hard until they died

Against the poverty and indignity of working people’s lives And so this is for the people who campaigned for women’s rights

For contraception, votes and childcare, equal pay and all those fights

And so this is for the people who remember in our bones How we fought against injustice and the right to decent homes

And so this is for the people who are turning in their graves

At the assaults on their advances for a dignified old age And they think we don’t remember this! They think that we’ve forgotten! And swap centuries of progress for their fast race to the bottom...

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