Songs for Peace


H-Bomb's Thunder

(Tune: Miner's Lifeguard)

Do you hear the H-bomb's thunder
Echo like the crack of doom?
While they rend the skies asunder,
Fall-out makes the earth a tomb.
Do you want your homes to tumble,
Rise in smoke towards the sky?
Will you let your cities crumble,
Will you see your children die.

Chorus:
Men and women, stand together,
Do not heed the men of war.
Make your minds up now or never,
Ban the bomb for ever more.

Tell the leaders of all nations,
Make the whole wide world take heed,
Poison from the radiations
Strikes at every race and creed.
Must you put mankind in danger,
Murder folk in distant lands?
Would you bring death to a stranger,
Have their blood upon your hands?
Chorus:

Shall we lay the world in ruin?
Only you can make the choice;
Stop and think of what you're doing,
Join the march and raise your voice.
Time is short, we must be speedy,
We can see the hungry filled,
House the homeless, help the needy.
Shall we blast or shall we build?
Chorus:


Chevaline

(Tune: Clementine)

Once a cabal deep in Whitehall
Hid from Parliament and Queen;
And decided to provide it -
Deadly secret Chevaline.

Chorus:
First the Tories, later Labour
Bought and sold us all serene.
But we won't trust any more such,
And we won't have Chevaline.

For deployment and employment
Of its genocidal team,
Aldermaston set its heart on
Salaries from Chevaline
Chorus:

NATO stooges in high places
Picked the bones of Britain clean,
Stole a thousand times a million,
Spent it all on Chevaline.
Chorus:

Ruined towns and rotting cities
Crumble into smithereens,
But the cities are all British,
And the weapon -Chevaline!
Chorus:

Who can quarrel with the moral
Of a story so obscene:
If we mean to live in freedom,
We must cancel Chevaline!
Chorus:


O Little Town of Newbury

(Tune: O Little Town of Bethlehem)

O Little town of Newbury, how still your ruins lie.
Above your deep and dreanless sleep the satellites go by,
But from your hilltops long have flown the megadeaths of hate;
The lies and fears of all the years, which brought you to this fate.

How silently, how silently, your radiant ashes glow.
The fires of hell, the filthy smell, were long ago.
But in your rubble still we read your message of despair,
"If we must die, let others die in millions Over There!"

The tragedy is that you never really had to burn.
Both far too late and far too great you paid the price to learn;
If we want life, let other live and let the world be shared;
Let rulers go, and nations no more threaten or be feared.

For little towns like Newbury might sleep today unharmed
If they had seen that missiles mean the world must be disarmed.
And poverty and ignorance and private wealth must cease,
If there's to be a world that's free, a planet that's at peace.


Star-Spangled Missile

(Words: David Senior, Tune: Star-Spangled Banner)

Oh say can you see, by the night's eerie glow,
Where once proudly we camped on the roadside's green verges.
While broad streets and bright homes in the valley below
Are burnt on the altar of NATO's mad urges.
And the rocket's red glare, mushroom clouds in the air,
Gave proof to the world that the base had been there.
Oh say must that star-spangled missile yet cruise,
O'er this land of the free, who that fate would refuse.


Trident, Trident

(Tune: Daisy, Daisy)

Trident, Trident - what an insane idea!
Thousands homeless, all for the want of fear.
We can't afford medication, or proper education,
But we must pay a million a day,
So that Britain can disappear!

Trident, Trident - give us a break, please do.
We'd go bankrupt, all for the price of you;
We'd lose even more employment, and most of life's enjoyment.
So sling your hook to the history books,
And no-one will cry boo-hoo!

Trident, Trident - Maggie has gone too far;
The nuclear tyrant will surely lead us to war.
Before she starts attacking, we'll have to send her packing,
And pull the chair on all who gain
From the criminal arms bazaar!