[2016]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: Freedom Rider

The album’s title track Freedom Rider is the incredible tale of Sala Udin, the young black boy who helped transport people around during the civil rights campaign bus boycotts and was brutally beaten by the police for his pains.

Parry brings a glorious gospel feel, both educational and inspirational, as he declares: “I’m gonna be a freedom rider until we’re free.”

[2016]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: Freedom Rider

There are glimpses of all this beauty in many of Parry’s previous work, but if you own all of his music, you don’t own what this "Freedom Rider" album offers. The heart of this record is revealed in the minor chord that ends the devastating “Take Your Children To The Hill”.
Striking and sickening in equal measure, Take Your Children To The Hill is a track with a twist that begins as a comfortable waltz through the trappings of a cosy life and ends as an indictment of the bubble of apathy constructed around the Western world as we watch civilisations turn to dust..
“Take Your Children to the Hill” seems a beguiling song with its tales of picnics, babies and blissful warm nights..
Only towards the end do you realise that Alun is singing about Israelis in Sderot watching and celebrating Gaza being bombed.

It’s catchy and devastating as the unforgettable lyrics sink home.
Nobody has written a song like "Take Your Children To The Hill" before…

[2014]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: Freedom Rider [2016]

April 9, 2014 by AlunParry
“I have spent the day writing this song. It was extremely emotional in the writing.
It comes off the back of several days of personal torment as I wrestle with issues around my own training to be a psychotherapist.
This is based on a true story. It brings out a lot of the concerns I have been having for the past few weeks.
It’s something that I don’t believe has really been owned and dealt with.
For John.


The dirty secret of John Hartwell’s brutal killing
“I wrote a song about John Hartwell last week. I want to say more about the background to it, so that you know the full story.
John Hartwell’s death in 1972 was a brutal one. He was stripped, tied, and put in a bath of extremely hot water.
When he was taken out, he had third degree burns over 65% of his body. He died as a result of... (continuer)

[2006]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: Corridors of Stone

Physical CD of Alun Parry's debut album, containing 10 fabulous tunes, including Woody's Song and this one, I Want Rosa To Stay, which was recently re-recorded on an EP (September 4, 2020) by Only Child, produced by Jon Lawton.

“Of all the many things to disappoint and anger about Labour’s period in office, it is their treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, a war against whom they have waged with a viciousness that cannot be understated.

I first became seriously involved in this issue as one of the co-founders of Merseyside Against Detention, set up following the realisation that the government were jailing refugees in the local Walton Prison (HMP Liverpool).

This was back in 2001. None of the refugees jailed were guilty or even suspected of a crime. Amnesty International’s investigation into Labour’s arbitrary jailing... (continuer)

[2010]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: When The Sunlight Shines [2013]

“I was told this story of London dockworker and union activist Harry Constable by my friend Martin Ralph on Thursday night, just after the close of the Woody Guthrie Folk Club..


A great proportion of the British working class emerged from the Second World War determined that they would not allow a “return to the ‘thirties,’ with the poverty and unemployment that this phrase conjured up. In the first two and a half decades after the end of this war, there was a stormy period of strikes and struggles.

There was a desire for big advances in wages and conditions of living and work; an anti-capitalist feeling that was expressed politically by the return of a Labour Government. In mining, engineering and transport, a complacent and settled bureaucracy in the unions attempted to block struggle, and the discontent... (continuer)

[2013]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: When The Sunlight Shines

The happy ending story of Julio, the Chilean who escaped Pinochet's dictatorship thanks to Liverpool dockers' union..

“This is me with Denis Anderson and Julio from Chile. The two stars and heroes of my song. Taken tonight at the Valparaiso Restaurant after the Cuba Solidarity Campaign celebration gig”.

[2009]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: We Can Make The World Stop

“We are constantly misinformed that power in any society is held by those with money or those who sit in government.
Of course, that's nonsense, as any group of workers who take strike action proves.
In any society the real power – social power – belongs to the people who make things happen. And that's us.
Bosses may own the machinery, but they need us to work it. Governments may give out orders, but they are without power if we do not obey.
We are the powerful, and every time we take strike action, we pose the question "Who governs?"
An awakening of our understanding of the huge amount of power that we hold is the first step to wielding it, and is why I wrote this song.
Dedicated to workers everywhere who refuse to lie down and be treated like dirt..”

[2013]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: When The Sunlight Shines

The miners’ strike of 1984-85 was a major industrial action to shut down the British coal industry in an attempt to prevent colliery closures. It was led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the National Coal Board (NCB), a government agency. Opposition to the strike was led by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to reduce the power of the trade unions.

The NUM was divided over the action and many mineworkers, especially in the Midlands, worked through the dispute. Few major trade unions supported the NUM, primarily because of the absence of a vote at national level. Violent confrontations between flying pickets and police characterised the year-long strike, which ended in a decisive victory for the Conservative government and allowed the closure... (continuer)

[2013]
Lyrics & music by Alun Parry
Album: When The Sunlight Shines

"I got involved with the Shrewsbury Pickets Justice Campaign during the Summer of 2009.
The campaign is the continued fight for an official pardon for the people targeted by the state during the National Building Strike in the 1970's.
Using the Conspiracy Act, never designed or used before to cover trade union activities, the bosses of the construction industry teamed up with the Tory Government to put our people in jail.
One was Ricky Tomlinson, now well known to all as a famous and talented actor.
Another was a working class hero by the name of Des Warren (1937-2004).

Des had a terrible time in prison. They wouldn't give him his own spectacles, or shoes that fit.
They also gave him the “liquid cosh”. This is where the prison service administers drugs to inmates it considers awkward.
Dessie and Ricky insisted,... (continuer)

[2010]
Parole di Alun Parry, songwriter ed attivista di Liverpool

Una canzone, eseguita senza accompagnamento musicale, che racconta una storia vera, quella di un ragazzo della working class di Manchester convinto ad arruolarsi nell’esercito a soli 17 anni e poi spedito in qualche teatro di guerra in Medio Oriente, da dove è tornato quasi subito su di una sedia a rotelle su cui resterà per tutta la vita.

[2009]
Parole e musica di Alun Parry
Nell’album intitolato "We Can Make The World Stop”

The Limerick Soviet (Irish: Sóivéid Luimnigh) was a self-declared soviet that existed from 15 to 27 April 1919 in County Limerick, Ireland. At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, a general strike was organised by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the British Army's declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. The soviet ran the city for the period, printed its own money and organised the supply of food. (en.wikipedia)