Come all of 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.

In the factories and mills

In the shipyards and mines

You’ve often been told

Keep up with the times

Your skills are not needed

They’ve streamlined the job

With slide rule and stopwatch

Your pride they have robbed.

But when the sky darkens

And the prospect is war

Who’s given a gun

And then pushed to the fore?

And expected to die

For the land of his birth

When he’s never owned 

One handful of earth.

He’s the first one to starve

He’s the first one to die

He’s the first one in line

For that “pie in the sky”

And always the last

When the cream is shared out

For the worker is working

When the fat cat’s about.

All of these things

The worker has done

From tilling a field

To carrying a gun

Yoked to the plough

Since time first began

And always expected

To “carry the can”.