Worker's Song (Handful Of Earth)
by Ed Pickford
© 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 die for the land of our birth
Although we never 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