Lancashire Lads for Lincoln

I

The mills are closed, the children hungry

Proud workingmen in soup kitchen queues

mixt wi't stondin paupers too,
Ut wilno work when works t'be 'ad.

The cotton hoed beneath the lash

The cotton picked by bleeding hands

The cotton cleaned by groaning slaves

Rots in Charleston warehouses.

For the pure cloth spun in Manchester mills

The fine cloth woven by Lancashire lads

Is dyed with blood

 And stained by chattel slavery.

And the men in the Free Trade Hall rise up

Not to demand the blockade be broken

Not to agitate for cotton to come

But to call for the end of that foul blot

On civilization and Christian faith

To call for the day when all the slaves

Shall be forever free.

II

Night falls on the silent spindles and the idle looms

The factories dark and shuttered

The cold and crowded tenements

The children crying for food,

The slight man wearing kadhi cloth

Depressed and distressed by this misery.

And you whose grandfathers stood with Lincoln

Men and women of Darwen

At Greenfield Cotton Mill

Raise your voices for freedom

Raise your arms for Gandhi

The simple man with a spinning wheel.