The Charge

Our history speaks in thunder from a thousand village halls
 In blood and sweat and sacrifice, in honouring every call
 So the forces gathered against the thorn a-piercing in their side
 A brave new world is beckoning so the olden world must die.
 In the offices of the city, at all the tables of oak and power
 The snares are laid and baited for the approaching of the hour
 A hundred justifications and the presses are ready to roll
 The gateways to the nation they are firmly under control
 Ch: On, on, on, cried the leaders at the back
 We went galloping down the blackened hills
 And into the gaping trap
 The bridges are burnt behind us and there's waiting guns ahead
 Into the valley of death rode the brave hundreds
 We called for some assistance from the friends that we had known
 But this is the 1980s and we were on our own
 We never felt like heroes or martyrs to a cause
 Just battle-weary soldiers in a bloody civil war
 The massacre now is over and the order new enshrined
 While a quarter of the nation are abandoned far behind
 Their leaders offer the cliché words, so righteous in defeat
 But no one needs morality when there isn't enough to eat
 The unity bond is broken and the loyalty songs are fake
 I'll screw my only brother for even a glimpse at a piece of the cake
 We only cry in private here behind the shuttered glass
 When we think of the charge of this brigade, the severing of the past
 Ch: On, on, on, cried the leaders at the back
 We went galloping down the blackened hills
 And into the gaping trap
 The bridges are burnt behind us and there's waiting guns ahead
 Into the valley of death rode the brave hundreds