BILLY BRAGG LOOKS FOR THE UNION LABEL

Singer-songwriter-provocateur Billy Bragg has responded to Oliver Anthony’s #1 rant “Rich Men North of Richmond” with a song and an op-ed. He sides with Anthony—for a moment—but comes up with a far different take on the situation that torments the Virginian.

In a piece for The Guardian, Bragg—who gained fame railing against Margaret Thatcher’s England as a modern-day Woody Guthrie—writes, “At first glimpse, the video clip looked like my kind of music: a young bearded guy up in the woods of Appalachia, playing a resonator guitar. As soon as he started singing, I was on board.”

Then he got to the part about people on welfare, especially the short, overweight ones eating Fudge Rounds. He calls it a classic example of “the divisive narrative that bosses have used to pit worker against worker."

"If the poor are fighting one another over racial hierarchy or cultural grievance," Bragg opines, "their anger will be directed away from the people responsible for their plight—the rich who exploit those in work and abandon those in need. Anthony has said that he hoped the song would capture the voice of blue-collar workers who feel like they can’t get ahead, which is a laudable aim, but he doesn’t seem aware that there is a remedy for that problem, one which empowers working people.”

Bragg’s solution, which he presents in the song “Rich Men Earning North of a Million,” is unionization. He sings:

If you form a union
You’ll soon find
That working people are all of one kind
So we ain’t gonna punch down on those who need
A bit of understanding and some solidarity

Bragg writes in his Guardian piece that he’s following the tradition of “answer songs,” inspired by Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Cash and Guthrie’s representations of the working poor.

He concluded by quoting Guthrie: “I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. I’m out to fight those songs to my very last breath.”