It is commonly assumed that a lyricist or composer or performer is responsible for the existence of a protest song. This attribution is, in part, an artefact of copyright, but it is also a legacy of history. For many songs from the 17th and 18th centuries, there is no known lyricist or composer. But even where a name is attached, it may well be wrong to assume that they bear sole responsibility for the song. This case study is about the other, often overlooked, contributors, without whom there would be no protest song – the parties, movements, religious institutions, trade unions, music societies and others that provide the incentives, spaces, skills and resources necessary for a song’s existence.

Many of these intermediaries are straightforwardly political in character; some are interested only in the business of songwriting; and others sit in between. Equally, they differ in the role they play: from those that demand that songs be written on this or that topic, to those that simply enable songwriting of whatever kind. By focusing on the role of intermediaries, we can get a clearer sense of how protest songs get written, performed and heard at particular times and in particular places. Many songs were written in opposition to the nuclear bomb, but would they have been heard if there had been no Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) to provide the context and the occasion for those songs to be sung?

The idea that songs depend on the contribution of many different actors is, of course, not new. Much of the writing on the music industry has drawn attention to its many aspects. Martin Cloonan and John Williamson have, for instance, insisted that we should talk of the music industries, rather than the music industry.⁵Cloonan, M. and Williamson, J. (2007) ‘Rethinking the music industry’, Popular Music 26 (2): 305–22. In the same spirit, Keith Negus⁶Negus, K. (1999) Music Genres and Corporate Cultures, London: Routledge. and Richard Peterson⁷Peterson, R. (1990) ‘Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music’, Popular Music 9 (1): 97–116. have warned against the idea of the industry as being policed by a series of ‘gatekeepers’ that permit or refuse entry to music and musicians. Instead, they argue that it consists of a complex network of processes and practices. This idea of music as the product of networks has been most systematically documented by Nick Crossley in his study of punk scenes in major UK metropolitan centres.⁸Crossley, N. (2015) Networks of sound, Style and Subversion, Manchester: Manchester University Press. The intermediaries form the nodes in these networks.

Looking over our list of 250 (and beyond to the other 500), we can detect a wide variety of such intermediaries, without whom these protest songs might never have seen the light of day.

Examples of intermediaries include:

1. political parties that commissioned, subsidised or gave a platform to political song including the Independent Labour Party, Labour Party, Conservative Party, Liberal Party, Communist Party and Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain, Socialist Workers Party, Big Flame, National Front and British National Party.
2. trade and craft unions that provided opportunities for songwriting. Ian Watson says: ‘Trade union support – both centrally from the TUC and from individual unions – is absolutely necessary to the survival of progressive song.’¹⁷Watson, I. (1983) Song and Democratic Culture in Britain, London: Croom Helm, 217; his emphasis. The Public and Commercial Services Union, for example, supported Raise Your Banners, founded in the mid-1990s, ‘to raise the public profile of political music in Britain’.
3. political movements that needed songs to help mobilise support for their cause – Diggers, Levellers, Jacobites, Wilkites, Chartists, Fabians, Suffragettes, CND, Greenham Common Peace Camp, Rock Against Racism, English Defence League, and Extinction Rebellion.
4. broadcasters that played protest songs, giving them a public presence – the BBC (responsible for Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s Radio Ballads, for example), John Peel, or pirate radio.
5. music societies that taught political songwriting, such as the Singers’ Club, Raise Your Banners, the London Labour Choral Union, Workers’ Music Association, Peoples’ Liberation Music, and Music for Socialism. The London Labour Choral Union was, according to Joanna Bullivant, ‘a federation of working-class choirs organized by two successive communist musical advisors … yet was run under the auspices of the Labour Party and contained members of various degrees of political commitment (or lack of commitment)’.¹⁸Bullivant, J. (2013) ‘Tippett and politics: The 1930s and beyond’, in K. Gloag and N. Jones (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 68.
6. art schools and music schools, which, as Simon Frith and Howard Horne show, provided a space for musicians to develop their skills and their sensibility.¹⁹Frith, S. and Horne, H. (1987) Art into Pop, London: Methuen.
7. the publishers of political songs; people like Robert Thomson, James Montgomery, Robert Wedderburn, Edward Lloyd and Francis Smith, without whom songs could not be circulated. The modern day equivalent of these are the record labels dedicated to political music. Among these are Topic, an off-shoot of the Workers’ Music Association, Blackthorne, led by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, and No Masters, which describes itself as a ‘northern-based song-writing co-operative’ that seeks out ‘writers, performers and musicians who were, in their various ways, seeking to celebrate and extend those parts of the people's tradition invariably described as 'radical' or 'political'.
8. theatre groups like the Red Megaphone Street Theatre or Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, which provide a reason and opportunity for writing protest songs.
9. from the mainstream broadside printers of the 17–19th centuries through to the music press of the 20th century, the media has been intimately involved in the propagation of political song. The weekly pop papers have – at various times –invested music with social or political significance. Sounds, for example, was important to punk’s politics²⁰Worley, M. (2017) No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 24–30., just as the NME linked music to mainstream politics in the 1980s²¹Gorman, P. (2001) In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press, London: Sanctuary, 310.; and before them the magazine Sing Out forged the link between folk and CND.²²Young, R. (2010) Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music, London: Faber and Faber, 154–5. In accounting for calypso’s presence in the UK, John Cowley highlights the role of Denis Preston – ‘jazz critic, radio presenter and journalist’ – who was important to the careers of Lord Kitchener and others.²³Cowley, J. (1990) ‘London is the Place: Caribbean Music in the Context of Empire, 1900–1960’, in P. Oliver (ed.) Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 65–6.
10. the religious societies (and their humanist equivalents), often closely linked to political movements and causes, that often expressed their faith and their beliefs in song. The South Place Ethical Society is one such example, with its regular programme of Sunday concerts.

And so the list goes on. No account of the genesis of the protest song can afford to overlook the role of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in recording the history of the folk song and in supporting its present. Equally, a place should also be reserved for Dial House, Crass’s Essex base, where visitors learnt about political song.²⁴Young, R. (2010) Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music, London: Faber and Faber, 536.

The diversity of intermediaries is reflected in the diversity of their contributions. They contribute to the making of music – from the directly material (money, spaces and facilities) to the opportunity to acquire skills in the writing, performing or recording of music. They also contribute to the opportunity to realise the performance or dissemination of the music. They help to create and assemble audiences within a given physical space or to inform people of what is available (this is not just an aspect of the online world, but of all forms of media). With the protest song, it is not just musical skills that are required; there is also the matter of political awareness and knowledge, and the skills required to communicate that awareness and knowledge, and to mobilise those who encounter its musical form.

Why pay attention to the role of intermediaries? Our suggestion is that they are important to understanding how protest songs get written, performed and heard. They do not tell the whole story, but they are vital elements of it. Without these intermediaries, certain songs would never have existed – or if they existed, not been heard. Without them, the history and politics of the English protest song would have been different. These intermediaries help us to appreciate why a particular topic or event gets written about, who gets to write it, and who to hear it.

To see what all this means in detail and in practice, see the Case Study of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s Singers’ Club and Critics’ Group.

1679: Charles Blount – ‘Sale of Esau’s Birthright or The New Buckingham Ballad’. Commissioned by one of the losing candidates in a hotly contested borough election.

1682: Unknown – ‘The Whig Rampant: or Exaltation’.
The emergence of ‘party’ politics from 1680 led to hundreds of songs protesting the existence of the other party.

1740: James Thomson – ‘Rule, Britannia!’
Commissioned by Frederick Prince of Wales, whilst exiled from court.

1783–5: Charles Morris – ‘Sit Down Neighbours All. Bow Wow Wow’
First sung by James Hook at a meeting of the Anacreontic Society.

1793: Robert Thomson? – ‘Burke’s Address to “The Swinish Multitude!”’
Published in Robert Thomson’s revolutionary pamphlet A Tribute to Liberty.

1795: William Mason –‘The Plow-Boy’s Dream’
This song from the Cheap Repository Tracts is a rare example in our list of top-down propaganda.

1816: John Stafford – ‘Song Composed During Ludding Time: Watch and Ward’
It was not until 1840 that the illiterate cotton-spinner John Stafford saw his songs published.

1911: Unknown – Idris Strike Song
Written during a strike at the Idris lemonade factory in London’s Camden Town, and distributed in cheap print by the strikers themselves.

1911: Cicely Hamilton/Ethel Smyth – March of the Women
Performed at Women’s Social and Political Union meetings in the Royal Albert Hall and at protests in Holloway Jail.

1927: Arthur Hagg – ‘William Brown’
First published by the Independent Labour Party.

1938: Paddy Ryan – ‘The Man Who Waters the Workers’ Beer’
The first song to be released by the Topic record label, committed to producing ‘gramophone records of historical and social interest’.

1958: John Brunner – ‘The H-Bomb’s Thunder’
Written for the first Aldermaston march in support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

1979: Cornelius Cardew – ‘Smash the Social Contract’
This was written under the banner of People’s Liberation Music, which was formed in the early 1970s to communicate leftist messages through music. It was composed for a Mayday march in 1977 to protest at the deal (‘the Social Contract’) struck between union leaders and the Labour government to restrict pay demands.

1983: Unknown – ‘Brazen Hussies’
One of the many songs to be written by the women in the Greenham Common Peace Camp.

1989: Latin Quarter – ‘Dominion’
Commissioned for a television documentary.