This Land Is Your Land. (Night Off).

Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Breakfast With Friedrich Engels.

I hadn’t realised quite how worried I was about the possibility of Reform winning the Caerphilly by-election. Their polling and subsequent media coverage made it seem inevitable that the hard right populists would topple Labour’s century held dominance in the area and return a Member of the Senedd. The Labour Party were trailing a pitiful third place and ran a dismal campaign, plaintively lying to the electorate that they were the only ones who could stop Farage’s candidate. My brother pointed out that they could get fewer votes in the area than our great grandfather did. In the Caerphilly by-election of 1921 Bob Stewart, fresh out of prison, stood as the first ever CPGB Parliamentary candidate and came last in a three horse race against Labour and the Liberals. He received 2, 592 votes – 10.3% of the total. The CPGB were never an electoral powerhouse. Thankfully, in 2025, the Reform victory was not to be. I think a lot of people were spooked by the polling and voted for Plaid Cymru who romped home by a comfortable margin proving swivel eyed racism is not the only game in town. Though over a century later, Labour’s share of the vote was only marginally higher than Bob’s achievement- they scraped 3, 713 – 11.02% of the total. A humiliating indictment of the party which was, until comparatively recently, my natural home.

Despite Reform’s defeat in Wales I don’t think the danger is over. The swing towards them was worryingly impressive. So, a pause in their ascendancy; not a total wipe out. That the Conservatives lost their deposit is cold comfort.

The prospect of Reform winning power terrifies me. I’m a child of the post war consensus. Just as Margaret Thatcher was dismantling it I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of its benefits and it formed my political worldview. All I want is a compassionate welfare state working as an effective safety net against poverty, an NHS which remains free at the point of use, the opportunity to pursue education for its own sake without the fear of impoverishing yourself and decent housing for all. In this day and age that’s tantamount to living in cloud cuckoo land. I’ve probably got another eight general elections left to vote in before my death and the realisation that I’ll never see the building a New Jerusalem is dispiriting to say the least. The possibility of it ever existing retreats as another round of endless migrant bashing takes hold.

America, with its mad king and ICE paramilitaries disappearing people on its streets gives an indication of the direction of travel should Farage wind up in Number 10. But, after you’ve stopped the boats; after you’ve deported your friends and your neighbours; after you’ve waged war on woke, shrunk the state even further and redesigned the economy in the mould of Javier Milei what happens when people realise their lives are still shit? Rising inequality and poverty will not simply disappear. I’d like to think we could avoid reaching this point but I’m not optimistic. As a country we seem set on becoming smaller and meaner. Trapped in a doom spiral of spite.

Hope and defiance are in short supply and you have to cling on to them when they come your way. Being on the left, I’m used to being on the losing side and I need my consolations. The Gillian Welch and David Rawlings concert in Manchester on Saturday night might just keep me going for a little longer.

I was first introduced to the Nashville pair’s music through the soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou? – a dustbowl retelling of The Odyssey. But it wasn’t until I met my partner, who was a huge fan, that I really began to take notice. Almost twenty years ago she gave me Welch’s third album Time (The Revelator) as a present and its earthly melancholy has kept me spellbound ever since.

I’ll remember one moment from Saturday night forever. Still amazed that two people on a bare stage, discreetly lit can weave magic solely from their pure voices and dizzying guitar picking. At one point they played I Hear Them All – a Rawling’s number. A quiet, plaintive song offering compassion to America’s downtrodden it takes on a special resonance while Donald Trump sits in The White House.

So, while you sit and whistle Dixie with your money and your power

I can hear the flowers a-growing in the rubble of the towers

I hear leaders quit their lying, I hear babies quit their crying

I hear soldiers quit their dying, one and all

I hear them all

I hear them all

I hear them all

Midway through the song the playing got more forceful and the pair segued into a spirited rendition of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land. This folk standard has long been sanitised by over familiarity, the song often serving as a complacent call for American unity and a more palatable liberal reading of manifest destiny. Jennifer Lopez performed it at Biden’s inauguration. However, Rawlings opted for the rarely sung verses from Guthrie’s original manuscript. Verses which pinpoint the problems he saw in the United States in the 1930s and 40s in the manner of William Blake’s London.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, 
By the relief office I seen my people; 
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking 
Is this land made for you and me?

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.” 
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

I don’t know where the tears came from but it was at this point that I practically dissolved. Luckily, my partner is used to this. I don’t imagine for a moment that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are radical leftists but by Christ it’s a comfort to know there’s people out there who view the world with empathy and who know exactly who the real enemy is. I don’t know how we’ll escape from these bleak times but that performance offered a little bit of light. You can hear this version of the song on Another Day, Another Time, the live album celebrating the music of another Coen brothers film Inside Llewellyn Davies. It had a profound effect on me.

The next morning before heading back to Yorkshire we stopped to visit the statue of Friedrich Engels that stands outside the Home arts centre.

I am a sucker for a Soviet relic but it’s weird that it’s a hop skip and a jump from the Engels Apartment- a £2.5 million luxury penthouse named after the author of The Condition of the Working Class in England. I’m sure this says something about Manchester’s radical tradition but it echoes Engels’ assertion that the city is where, “The social war, the war of all against all is […..] openly declared.”

Alan Stewart.