The Work of The Weavers - After A Traditional Folk Song

Consumers in the high street
Don’t give us another thought
Too busy buying lifestyles
while our lives have all been bought
They pay a pretty penny but we get near to nought
It’s weary bloody work for the weavers

If it wasn’t for the work of the weavers,
What would you do?
You wouldn’t have cloth and canvas for your trousers, shirts and shoes,
Or designer pairs of jeans be they either black or blue
If it wasn’t for the work of the weavers

There’s bankers, politicians, businessmen and all
There’s doctors, and there’s policeman
and those that work in law
And soldiers in uniforms fighting foreign wars
And they all wear the work of us weavers

You pay twenty pounds
For a single pair of denim jeans
Us workers get nine pounds a month,
The rest we never see
It gets swallowed by the big cats
And the middle men between
No you wouldn’t want the work of the weavers

They tell our plight on television
And in lifestyle magazines
They teach it in the schools
To children in their teens
But the fashion industry is a mighty big machine
And it suffocates the voices of the weavers

Cotton from West Africa and Pakistan it’s flown
Dyed in sunny Italy and in Tunisia it’s sown
With brass buttons from Namibia
(what Green credentials you’ve shown)
In an industry that exploits the cheapest weavers

Now these folk songs for the working class
In the 19th Century
I thought that they’d be out of date
But will they ever be?
Now an underclass that’s global
While pop stars strut in Harris Tweed,
And still no one pays their dues to the weavers

Be they working in the Hebrides or South Americay
Pakistan or India they’re fighting for their pay
Just check the label in your shirt
If you value what I say
And think on the plight of the weavers