In 1969 in the middle of a US countryside pasture they organized a small music festival called Woodstock. The organizers (having lined up the “fine fleur” of the pop music in those days) counted on 200,000 visitors max. As the later song about that legendary festival attests, it were much more: “By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong”.
The same thing happened with the Women’s March on Washington, as older demonstrators noted. Dutch television news, in an overview of ‘Women’s March’ -demonstrations in American cities, even showed a massive demonstration in a city (not the capital) in the Mormon state of Utah; that must have shocked some conservative Republicans!
Another fact: this demo in Washington, with around 500,000 demonstrators, was larger than any Vietnam demonstration in the unruly ’60s (1965-1974). Vietnam vet and ex-Foreign Secretary John Kerry attended the Washington March. And while bully orator Donald Trump wriggled out from military service altogether to avoid being sent to Vietnam, John Kerry volunteered…
While proclaiming “America First” in his Inaugural Speech, Trump regularly saluted the crowd with a clenched right fist, the official greeting of the Communist International… and from the Sylvester Stallone film “F.I.S.T.”, about a thoroughly corrupt, mafia-connected trade union…
A Washington Post journalist collected the best texts from placards in the Women’s March. Two attracted my attention immediately, because they’re the ideal basis for a song in the Liberator Song Book for the next 8 conferences (let’s hope Trump will be gone after that).
They are:
- Super Callous Fragile Ego, Trump You Are Atrocious
- Super Callous Fascist Racist Extra Braggadocious
If you look up the scene in the musical film Mary Poppins this was inspired by, you’ll see that she is accompanied by a cartoon version of a London Soho Oompa band; why not enact a Glee Club live version?
With the LibDems joining the London march, Dutch D66 MEP Marietje Schaake marched with a large D66 contingent and 3,000 others (around 1,000 of them men!) in the supporting march in Amsterdam. I hear Justin Trudeau supported the marches in Canada.
In the Dutch election campaign, D66 used the occasion of Trump’s inauguration for another newspaper advertisement blitz on Saturday: in two page-format advertisements (in the Financieel Dagblad and the NRC Handelsblad) and in two smaller ads (in Volkskrant and Trouw), party leader Alexander Pechtold flatly rejected the discriminatory talk of Trump about women, disabled people, Latinos, blacks, liberals etcetera; and pointed out (as we did in our first blitz right after Trump’s election) that now is the time to stand up and be counted. The first blitz resulted in hundreds of new members joining (most political parties see a steady decline; D66 has just as steadily grown to 26,000!); let’s see what the result is this time.
* Dr. Bernard Aris is a historian, a D66 parliamentary researcher and a LibDem supporting member.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
No, Leave didn't win the Brexit referendum because of Northern working class voters
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
Reform under water
Geoffrey Payne
Richard Whelan
David Raw
Tom Reeve
4 Comments
The next Liberator songbook will be produced for the autumn conference. If Bernard or anyone else want to try putting funny and singable words to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious please send it for consideration to: [email protected]
I recall the late David Senior wrote something about the SDP to this tune, though sadly the words are lost.
Mr. Smulian,
I’m at present (being a D66 parliamentary researcher) very busy because of the Dutch general elections, with big roles for Geert Wilders and other populists to fight against.
I’m perfectly willing to see what I can do for the Song Book and Glee Club of the autumn conference, but I won’t be able to attend the Spring conference (our elections are March 15th, with formation talks about the new government coalition after that).
In the mean time I think a ringing rendition of the old Civil Rights classic “We shall overcome” at the Spring Conference glee club is in order. Trump has just banned US federal aid to abortions in the Third world, and plans to overwhelm the quality newsopaper reportes by holding the White House pres conferences and Daily Press Briefings in a bigger room stuffed with fake news- and conspiracy theory-peddlers like the Breitbart agency and Farages “Westmonster” agency, with a small corner at the back on the left for the Washington Post, CNN and suchlike.
And his press secretary is even fiercer in scolding and antagonizing the press than Richard Nixon’s spokesman (Nixon too always felt set-upon by the then press media)…
Serious Democrats and social liberals (defenders of civil rights and honest government) around the world have a lot of Trumpian destruction, antagonizing and distortion to overcome…
In that case, conference may have to call on the songwriting talents of the Bournemouth collective (they know who they are) to improve on the perfection that was the gammon song….
The song David Senior wrote was at the time of merger between the Liberal party and the Social Democrat Party and we were wondering what to call the new party ( very controversial).
So the song started as;
Social Liberal Democratic Expealidotius, some people say the sound of it is really quite atrocious…