May be helpful to say where I'm coming from .....
Before WW1, when poor relief was in the workhouse, where minimal food was provided & meaningless work was demanded - scrubbing & rescrubbing, shovelling rocks, turning treadwheels ...you went there to die.
One local hospital has an interesting display of when it was a workhouse;
Another was a lunatic asylum.
My father, Lloyd George Day was the 8th in a poor family. The previous year Lloyd George had the first National Insurance Act passed. (My mother was Doris Day, but that's another story.) His parents were so grateful for the provision that they gave him the name. A few pence were deducted from wages, a few paid by employer, & a few by the government, you could claim relief when unemployed.
In the previous centuries, fields were enclosed by the landowners who even owned the wild rabbits - snare a rabbit & you could be transported, at first to the American colonies, then to Australia, leaving the family destitute.
Work was casual - farm in season, loading & unloading ships, etc. Steady employment was in the mills at slave rates & long hours.
This song tells the account of the hardships - read the story of the author at the end.
There was no "wild west" where you could hitch your wagon & stake out a farm. People were totally dependent on employers.
I was born in 1939 & lived through WW2. My mother was always singing, & I remember Paul Robeson's lullabies. We had his songs on 78s, played on a windup grammaphone. In the 50s I wondered why we never heard him on the radio, & Mum stopped playing his records. When I asked - "He was a communist."
1946-7 I became very ill - 6 months off school with a chest complaint. The NHS was established & a radio appeal for an X-ray machine for Gt Ormond St Hospital was so over supported that Southampton got one as well. I was one of the first to be xrayed. It wasn't the suspected TB, & I fully recovered.
I digress -
Around 1980 I bought a remaindered record of Paul Robeson & decided to learn about him. Why did he espouse rights for the negro & trade union & the poor?
Negro soldiers fought & died for European freedom, but when they returned, they found they had no rights, hundreds suffering lynching. Paul spoke up for them & his passport was taken away, every concert hall in the US was closed to him. His records were taken off the market. But he was NEVER indicted for any crime. Just accused of being "unamerican."
The NHS & Socialism provided the health care I needed, free schooling & a grant for university education. I completed my education with no money, but no debts. We married a year after I graduated, bought a home with a deposit provided by the firm, & raised our family.
I'm happy to pay the national insurance & the state & local taxes that provide the health care & stable community we live in. A health service that under a Conservative government is being deliberately underfunded so it can be sold off for being inefficient.
