1976
WHITE BIRD COME DOWN * THUNDERBALL * ATTACK 8128 * UK
Set in an allegory of birds and based on, with a nostalgia for, the lost world of his youth, on this mellow, consciousness vocal cut the singer delivers a petition, aimed at the black man, to wake up to the changes going on around him. Of course change, social or otherwise, often referred to as 'development', is part of life; what is useful in relation to change is to be not only aware of these changes, but to understand how and why things change. Seen from a Marxist point of view change is due to economic forces contingent on, what he calls the 'mode of production'; the economic base which shapes its superstructure, I.e., everything else. It is the two aspects of the economic structure which Marx identifies as the forces and relations of production, that, through interaction and conflict, bring about these fundamental changes. If your not an economic determinist, that is someone who believes in primacy to the economic structure over politics in the development of human history, then you might think that politics itself is what instigates these changes through what has been described as a historic conflict between radicalism and conservatism, a struggle that is fought both on a national and international program. While yet others might have a more primitive view and like to believe change is due to forces beyond human control, as in the various religious positions. Or maybe even somewhere between the human and the extraterrestrial as in the current commitment to 'Global Warming'. Whatever the perspective on how or why things change what is crucial, for those who always seem to come off worse, is to have some influence on the mechanisms of change. It was once the driving force of left wing political movements to embody the will of the disadvantaged in the process of change, in fact the British Labour party came into being partly to give the working (class) man a voice in the development and framing of legislation. Ha, some chance.