Protest song
14th–19th century

English folk songs from the late medieval and early modern period reflect the social upheavals of their day. In 1944 the Marxist scholar A. L. Lloyd claimed that " The Cutty Wren " song constituted a coded anthem against feudal oppression and actually dated back to the English peasants' revolt of 1381, making it the oldest extant European protest song. He offered no evidence for his assertion, however and no trace of the song has been found before the 18th century. Despite Lloyd's dubious claim about its origins, however, the "Cutty Wren" was revived and used as a protest song in the 1950s folk revival, an example of what may be considered a protest song. In contrast, the rhyme, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?", is attested as authentically originating in the 1381 Peasant Revolt, though no tune associated with it has survived. Ballads celebrating social bandits like Robin Hood, from the 14th century onwards, can be seen as expressions of a desire for social justice, though although social criticism is implied and there is no overt questioning of the status quo.

The era of civil and religious wars of the 17th century in Britain gave rise to the radical communistic millenarian Levellers and Diggers ' movements and their associated ballads and hymns, as, for example, the " Diggers' Song ". with the incendiary verse:

But the Gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown. Stand up now, Diggers all!

The Digger movement was violently crushed, and so it is not surprising if few overt protest songs associated with it have survived. From roughly the same period, however, songs protesting wars and the human suffering they inflict abound, though such songs do not generally explicitly condemn the wars or the leaders who wage them. For example, "The Maunding Souldier" or "The Fruits of Warre is Beggery", framed as a begging appeal from a crippled soldier of the Thirty Years' War. Such songs have been known, strictly speaking, as songs of complaint rather than of protest, since they offered no solution or hint of rebellion against the status quo.

The advent of industrialization in the 18th and early 19th centuries was accompanied by a series of protest movements and a corresponding increase in the number of topical social protest songs and ballads. An important example is "The Triumph of General Ludd", which built a fictional persona for the alleged leader of the early 19th century anti-technological Luddite movement in the cloth industry of the north midlands, and which made explicit reference to the Robin Hood tradition. A surprising English folk hero immortalized in song is Napoleon Bonaparte, the military figure most often the subject of popular ballads, many of them treating him as the champion of the common working man in songs such as the "Bonny Bunch of Roses" and "Napoleon's Dream". As labour became more organized songs were used as anthems and propaganda, for miners with songs such as "The Black Leg Miner", and for factory workers with songs such as "The Factory Bell".

These industrial protest songs were largely ignored during the first English folk revival of the later 19th and early 20th century, which had focused on songs that had been collected in rural areas where they were still being sung and on music education. They were revived in the 1960s and performed by figures such as A. L. Lloyd on his album The Iron Muse (1963). In the 1980s the anarchist rock band Chumbawamba recorded several versions of traditional English protest songs as English Rebel Songs 1381–1914.
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