Building Up And Tearing England Down; The Social History In A Ballad

Building Up and Tearing England Down!

In this jam-packed episode we dig into Dominic Behan’s razor-sharp ballad of the same name, tracing how a few mighty verses capture a century of Irish labour on Britain’s building sites and railways. First we pit two iconic renditions against one another—Christy Moore’s pub-roar 1969 and The Mary Wallopers’ lament of the 2020s.

From there we zoom out:

• Ballads as people’s textbooks – Why songs remember the names, jokes and grievances that official syllabi leave out, and how oral tradition keeps working-class history alive.
• The Irish navvy in Britain – Long journeys, shanty lodgings, “No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish” signs, and the solidarity forged alongside Caribbean, South Asian and Eastern European co-workers.
• When labour organises, labour wins – From the mass pickets of the 1972 builders’ strike to today’s nationwide rail stoppages.
• Full-circle irony – The modern faces of union militancy in Britain—RMTs Mick Lynch, Eddie Dempsey and Unite’s Sharon Graham—all proudly tracing their roots back across the Irish Sea.

Whether you’re a folk-music nerd, a student of migration history, or just wondering why “lad culture” still belts out old rebel tunes after closing time, this episode shows how one ballad can tear down myths while building new bridges of solidarity. Tune in, turn it up, and get ready to sing along—and maybe organise—by the final chorus.