In the wake of International Women's Day, our lead track comes courtesy of a shout-out by @realstevewhite.

Written by Cassie Fox, the founder of LOUD WOMEN, 'Reclaim These Streets' is a 2021 post-punk single of such vivacity and catchiness that it takes a minute to process the intensity of its lyric. Mixing the everyday banality of precaution and anxiety with an exhilarating call to arms, the song is performed by a real supergroup of 70, ‘who form a who’s who of women in our music scene’.

You can buy the song here, with all proceeds going to Women's Aid.

Here's another charity single, raising money for the homeless. Brian Eno's 2019 contribution to the cause is the ultimate example of musical irony, its US marching song-cum-music hall jauntiness soundtracking a bitter satire of Tory misconduct and bad governance, laced with grim humour.

The suggestion came out of a talk OSV gave at Norwich's Mile Cross Library, when our very own John Street offered Brian Eno as a prime example of a politically engaged musician who didn't make protest music.

Turns out we were wrong.

The audience at that same talk had more suggestions for us. Norwich's own punks Vital Disorders figured prominently, with shouts for their '80s songs 'Bay of Pigs', 'War Games', 'Christmas Island Calypso' and 'Snatcher'.

This political punk theme was completed with Newtown Neurotics' 'Living with Unemployment'.

Continuing the Norwich theme, Ben Higham writes in with the following:

I wonder if you would consider this piece for the ‘our subversive voice’ research project. The track is called 'How Long', and speculates on the hoped for release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island. It was part of the set of The Ouagadougous, a Norwich-based band very active in the 80s and 90s (still around!) and frequent performers at events protesting injustices such as Apartheid and Mandela’s imprisonment, as well as Thatcher’s treatment of the miners. The music was written by me and the lyrics by Caroline Davison. The recording attached was released on a compilation CD of Norwich bands – Shoot The Canary, Vol. 2, 1992.

Would we consider it? Given that it's a gorgeous, infectious slice of Afro-Jazz with a huge heart, well, yes we would!

Mike Laurence also suggests another stalwart son of Norwich, Oscar Jerome, with his 'Give Back What You Stole From Me'.

Meanwhile, he may have hailed from down the road in Colchester, but a few people have been calling for more attention to the song 'John Ball', written  in memory of the radical priest famed for his role in the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, and his incendiary couplet:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

Written by Sydney Carter, the song has been performed by many artists, and you can read a deep dive on it here. We're not wholly convinced it's a protest song, which is why we only put it on our 750 long list, but it's certainly an important part of England's radical song culture.

Mike Laurence, again, also highlights a number of interesting 1980s acts we haven't included. Chief among them are Crisis, whose many protest songs include No Town Hall, Holocaust, and PC 1984. The last two in particular are depressingly relevant to debates still raging today.

And as the tanks roll back in to Eastern Europe, anti-war songs are again at the forefront of our minds. Mike offers us the 1982 single 'Stop The War / Give Sheep a Chance' by the brief collaboration called Raw Sex, Pure Energy, an anti-Falklands dance track that was among the first things laid down by Neneh Cherry.

His final suggestion is the punk outfit Chelsea, whose key songs, for our purposes, include 'The Loner' and their 1977 debut single 'Right to Work'.

John Behm is the latest of our contributors to query the project's focus on English songs – and his suggestions of well-known US and Irish protest songs in part bear out our own rationale: people are already familiar with these traditions. He adds:

does the fact that they are sung within the English tradition, as I have witnessed over the past 45 years, qualify them for consideration?

As ever, this is a good question. They're still not for us for inclusion in the project – but of course they're a key part of protest song in England, and we certainly need to keep highlighting that. One of the great things that has to be constantly reiterated about English politics and culture, especially on the left, is how cosmopolitan and eclectic it is, involving people and material from all over the world.

It's in that spirit that we want to highlight John's suggestion of the Christy Moore song 'Hands Off the GLC'. Though we don't have a recording, Moore includes the lyrics in his memoir – along with a great account of its original 1985 context. It's a perfect example of international solidarity with a local issue. Though its dedication to Ken Livingstone has not perhaps aged as well as its sentiment.

UEA's own Lee Marsden continues the Christy Moore theme with his suggestion of 'Ordinary Man', as performed by Moore, who used it as the title song for one of his albums. This one's certainly an English song, written by Peter Hames of Grimsby, and well worth a listen. Also keep an ear open for Lee's own work, which will feature in a later update on this site.

Speaking of which – your shout-outs have all been to post-1945 songs, with most of them coming from the 1970s and after. They're all great – but can it really be true that we haven't missed any crucial historical songs from the centuries before 1945? Surely not!