This question is implied by two familiar media narratives. One marvels at popular music’s embrace of the political (whether punk in the late 1970s or the political acts that featured in the 2019 Mercury Prize shortlist). The other bemoans the absence of protest songs in times of social and political turmoil.

The implication of both narratives is that the protest song is a product of its context (or should be). This assumption has received scholarly support, in the form of general histories of popular music that connect the form and content of popular music to its times³Friedlander, Paul (1996) Rock and Roll: A Social History, Boulder, Col: Westview Press or in the form of more specialist approaches, such as Peter Manuel’s 2017 elegy for the loss of political popular music.⁴Manuel, Peter (2017) ‘World Music and Activism Since the End of History [sic]’, Music and Politics, XI (1), Winter

We might label this approach as ‘contextualist’. Protest songs are seen to derive from their times and place. There is certainly evidence for this version of protest music history in our own list of songs, where songs are directly linked to political events, whether specific industrial disputes, the struggles for women’s suffrage, or the campaign against nuclear weapons.

However, this simple coincidence of event and music does not cover every song on our list (let alone the many others that we might have included). There are songs that relate to themes, as opposed to events, and as such cover our whole period (war and peace or injustice). Equally, there are many events that might warrant a protest song, but for which none were written (the student loan system?). And even where there is a connection between a song and an event in the world, there appears to be no necessary relationship between the event and the form of the song – its genre, its tune, its voice.

In questioning a contextualist approach, a number of alternative accounts offer themselves:

1. The singer/performer, who by virtue of their conscience or political commitments, uses their music to give expression to their views or feelings

2. The social movements that organise themselves around causes and events and which create a demand for songs to help animate and mobilise the movement

3. Musical fashion and convention, often the product of various forms of mediation, which creates a climate hospitable to the linking of music to politics (and vice versa)

There are many examples of political activists who have turned to song as a means of conveying the message. Ewan MacColl might be seen as a classic instance of this in the twentieth century. But even in MacColl’s case, the line from cause to chord was not straightforward.¹⁰Seeger, Peggy (2017) First Time Ever, London: Faber, pp.257–270. And in other cases, the connection is yet more complicated. Joanna Bullivant documents Michael Tippett’s fluctuating relationship with organised politics, one that defies easy links between political beliefs and experiences and the music he composed.¹¹Bullivant, Joanna (2013), ‘Tippett and politics: The 1930s and beyond’, in Kenneth Gloag and Nicholas Jones (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 68–85 And then, in contrast to the route from political awareness to political music, there are those who acquire political awareness from music. Both Billy Bragg¹²Bragg, Billy (2007) The Progressive Patriot: A Search for Belonging, London: Bantam Press and Tracey Thorn¹³Thorn, Tracy (2013) Bedsit Disco Queen: How I grew up and tried to be a pop star, London: Virago describe in their autobiographies how their political conscience derived from the music they heard.

But even where the songwriter brings a prior political perspective (or subsequently develops one), it does not follow that every song they write will be political or that they will write about every political issue or support every cause – see, for example, Joan Armatrading’s rare venture into protest, ‘How Cruel’. Musicians are not journalists, and even in the era before newspapers, songs did not occupy that precise topical function. Even with committed activists such as Samuel Bamford (1788–1872), the majority of their musical output was non-political – pastoral songs, love songs, songs about ghosts and fairies. As the contemporary novelist Colson Whitehead asked:

Why do I have more of a duty to be political than a plumber or teacher? We’re all engaged in in this thing called society and we all have a duty that we embrace or reject or are just too busy working to engage with in any public way.¹⁴Collins, Sara (2021) New hustle: Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead on his heist novel’, The Guardian, 18 September

Insofar as the protest song is to be attributed to the individual performer, at least in the modern period when singers tend to perform their own material, a story has to be told about why this singer/songwriter – as opposed to all the others who remain steadfastly apolitical – comes to address politics, and why some events rather than others become the object of their interest.

But such accounts may also require reference to the genre in which the artist is located, or the terms under which they are contracted, and so on. The musical conventions that prescribe what constitutes an appropriate topic or an appropriate response (something ‘we’ or ‘I’ can do) may be decisive in determining whether a protest song is written.

Noting the differences between industries and their song cultures, Ian Watson argues that the explanation lies not in the relative talents of the workers in mining or the car industry or variations in the industries themselves.¹⁶Watson, Ian (1983) Song and Democratic Culture in Britain, London: Croom Helm, pp. 12–13. After all, he notes,

while the place of work may play a central role in terms of content it was seldom the scene of the composition or performance of songs.

This thought – about where and how the songs got written – adds an important note of caution to how we account for the existence of a protest song.

Beyond this, the explanation may depend on the role of the social movement in creating a context for songs about a specific issue or cause. In the course of our research, we have encountered many examples of organisations that, in different ways, facilitated the production of protest songs, including the London Labour Choral Union, the Workers’ Music Association, Peoples’ Liberation Music, Music for Socialism, the Fabians, South Place Society, the Anti-Nazi League, the Crown and Anchor Society, the Cheap Repository Tracts. There are many more, and their various contributions will be the subject of another case study. Our research suggests that the impetus for protest songs derives from the resources or networks of associated movements or parties – such as subsidised media campaigns from Tories, Wilkites, Jacobins, Chartists, Fabians, and suffragettes.

On the other side of the story of the genesis of the protest song are the agencies that thwart the protest song. Why songs are written needs to be considered in conjunction with why they are not. Sometimes the latter may be accounted for in terms of genre (some musical forms do not admit of some topics), or some issues do not easily lend themselves to song. The former leader of Talking Heads, David Byrne, once remarked:

I find it very difficult to express political ideas in a song. My ideas tend to focus on very specific situations. For instance, in my opinion the government of Chile is a puppet of American corporations. That’s not an easy thing to put into song.¹⁸Flanagan, Bill (1986) Written in my Soul: Rock’s great songwriters talk about creating their music, Chicago: Contemporary Books, p. 306.

But there are also external factors: the actors and institutions which, whether deliberately or not, frustrate the expression of political sentiments in song. Many laws have been called into service to prevent the performance or circulation of the protest song: those of blasphemy, obscenity, noise abatement, public safety, sedition, broadcasting regulation, Form 696 and much else besides (also the subject of another case study).

There are, of course, no generalisations to be made about the origins of the protest song, but for each song there are a range of possibilities that take use beyond the simple assumption that the answer lies with either ‘events’ or ‘conscience’ or ‘political commitment’.