Let's drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
From a reliable source we've heard of a possible strike among the Circus workers as a result of a conflict between the Circus Agency and the workers. Hardworking Circus workers one day discovered that the Agency had made a cut in their monthly salary without giving any notice.
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Spare a part for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
And when I look into the this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray blue
Black and white
They don't look real to me
Militant Circus Workers Union (MCWU) is inspired by Lenin who wrote an article about strikes published in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya, No. 8-9 in 1924. This has later been published in Volume 4, pages 310-319 of the 45 Volume thick Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow. In this article comrade Lenin says:
What significance have strikes for the struggle of the working class? To answer this question, we must first have a fuller view of strikes. The wages of a worker are determined, as we have seen, by an agreement between the employer and the worker, and if, under these circumstances, the individual worker is completely powerless, it is obvious that workers must fight jointly for their demands, they are compelled to organise strikes either to prevent the employers from reducing wages or to obtain higher wages. It is a fact that in every country with a capitalist system there are strikes of workers. Everywhere, in all the European countries and in America, the workers feel themselves powerless when they are disunited; they can only offer resistance to the employers jointly, either by striking or threatening to strike.
You probably knew that Stalin was a great poet, but did you know that Lenin was a poet too?
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let's drink to the uncounted heads
Let's think of the wavering millions
Who need leading but get gamblers instead
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
