People Power : Fighting For Peace - Raised Voices and Lizzie Shirley
Elizabeth Shirley [singing]: “There's a whole world out there full of cheating and lies, where your friends aren't your friends and hellos are goodbyes.”
Elizabeth Shirley: “I’ve always known quite a few protest songs and political songs anyway but about twenty years ago I decided to do a new show called “Sing and Survive”, which was with a pianist friend of mine and we sang Brecht songs, who was a Communist playwright, German bloke, you probably heard of him. We did some Brecht songs and we did socialists songs and protest songs from around the world in a cabaret format. So we, it was quite entertaining, but it was also very informative or had a good spirit about it. Singing is intrinsically an emotional experience that bonds people together, so that bonding experience with the politics, with people of like mind is actually quite powerful emotionally for people because you know that you're singing with people who are saying the same as you are. I can't remember my first protest, but I do remember very vividly in the 1980s the CND marches, which were enormous, and I remember going on a few with many friends. I lived in Camberwell then and I mean, we used to meet up in a big gang and just all go together. Oh, and I remember going to Greenham Common in 1982, I think. And hundreds of coaches went and loads, I was living in Camberwell then again and we just had loads of women going together on coaches. I think we hired about three or four coaches and we all, one of the demonstrations at Greenham Common, we all held hands made and, and encircled it and there was lots of singing, wasn't, that was intrinsic to the whole movement going on there and some of those songs are still sung, of course. On the demonstrations that I went on, the atmosphere was fantastic. There was an amazing feeling of solidarity and that what was happening was wrong and that we all should protest about it and there were men went as well, it wasn't just women. There were lots of men who went and were quite happy for women to lead it and just be part of it.
And you just felt like you were making friends, you know, there was a great sense of solidarity. It was wonderful. I think I'd always been anti-war since I was a little girl since I saw photos of the First World War and heard stories from the First World War, from grandparents and then my parents about the Second World War and losing an uncle in the Royal Air Force over Germany in 1944, hearing all those stories about him and about the abuse of power during the First World War for my granddad.
So I'd always had a sense that, that war was wrong and that often it's more about other issues rather than justice. He wasn't a pilot or a bomber, I can't, I think he was a navigator, actually, can't remember now. And so that had impacted very strongly on my family, obviously, my mother's family. And I think maybe that individual sense of how war, damaging war can be also helps with your overall picture of what war is about. And I think my generation ‘cause we grew up in the shadow of the First World War and the Second World War, I think it's been very, I don't like the word impactful because that reminds me of President Bush, but it's had a great impact on us emotionally and psychologically those two wars.
It was all negative, I'm afraid. There was no sense of that he died for a good cause or anything that I can remember. And my mother even said a few years ago, but she wondered if he'd been able to live, knowing that he’d dropped bombs on people, you know, so she'd even thought about it from his perspective. But the Second World War, you know, I mean the Nazis, what could we do really at that point? Protest changes things in a way that you hadn't foreseen. So, you might not stop the invasion of Iraq, which we didn't did we in 2003 but the resonances of it go on, because somewhere in somebody's mind they're thinking, ‘oh God, a million people, oh my God’. How can we not protest? How can we just sit at home, watch telly and allow it to happen? Do you know what I mean, it's almost like our duty to protest and if we don't use these mechanisms for change, i.e. protesting or whatever else there is, whatever other avenues there are, well then, we're failing other people all around the world ‘cause not, you can't protest in every country, can you? So, we've got to use the few, few freedoms that we have to affect change for the better.
Collectively, it's that collectivism and people, if people are powerful economically, then they're truly powerful, I believe. I think music is intrinsic to being a human being. You can't be, to me, you can't be human and not like music or not respond to music in some way. So, the expression through music of struggle, of protest is non-negotiable, I mean you can't divorce the two, really."
Elizabeth Shirley [singing]: “Where I don't want to go exploitations dressed up with royalty in tow and the cameraman's click is louder than a gun. It's a show, a contest, and they're all having fun.”
Raised Voices is a London-based political choir which has been in existence since 1986, singing a repertoire of anti-war, environmental, social justice and other songs at protests, marches and demonstrations.
Musical director Elizabeth Shirley has been involved in protest for more than 40 years, taking part in demonstrations at Greenham common, CND marches and the million-strong march through London against the Iraq War in 2003.
Her own anti-war stance has been informed by the death of her uncle in the Second World War as well as broader sense of social injustice.
For Lizzie, protest and music are inextricably linked.
‘I think music is intrinsic to being a human being, to me, you can’t be a human without responding to music, so the expression of struggle and protest, through music, is non-negotiable,’ she said.
