The Worker’s Song (Handful of Earth)

(Written by Ed Pickford © PRS/MCPS)

Come all you workers who toil night and day

By hand and by brain to earn your pay

Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread

Have bled for your country and counted your dead

Aye, the factories and mills

The shipyards and mines

We've oft been told to keep up with the times

But our skills are not needed now for they've streamlined the job

With lawyers and computers our lives they'll rob

Ah but when the sky darkens and the prospect is war

They'll give us a gun and push us to the fore

And expect us to diе for the land of our birth

Although we nevеr owned one handful of earth

We're the first ones to starve, the first ones to die

The first ones in line for that pie in the sky

And we're always the last when the cream is shared out

For the workers working when the fat cat's about

Now for all these things that the worker has done

From tilling the fields to carrying the gun

He's been yoked to the plow since time first begun

And I'm afraid I'm afraid the race is not run

For when the sky darkens and the prospect is war

They'll give him a gun and push him to the fore

And expect him to die for the land of his birth

Although he never owned one handful of earth

Although he never owned one handful of earth

Although he never owned one handful of earth

Although he never owned one handful of earth