WE ALL SAID ‘NO’

Bill was out on his cargo bike and he was first to see.
He said ‘They’re coming down the road, on the B four double oh three’
And he told Bob and Bob told Ginny and she let the village know
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

Mike had a word with the farming folk and they all knew what to do
They filled each road with anything big so the trucks could not get through
There were sixteen cooks at the village hall with kettles set to go
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

Roadblocks first and the ditches next and the pitch and the sharpened poles
Practised teams got the earthworks dug like a troop of giant moles
To a woman and man all the villagers took up arms and stood in rows
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

Flares went up when the battle joined and the jam-bombs went in first
Boiling jars of the best preserve designed to do their worst
Alternating flour and water, anything handy we could throw
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

Then the Parish Council stepped up sharp and a parley flag was raised
The men who drive the fracking trucks were sticky, tired and glazed
We gave our ultimatum and we said they had to go
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

We knew that was but the start of it, and we knew that they’d be back
We had drawn our declaration up in the red ink and the black
With the help of the local solicitor, he was a gentleman named Joe
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

They sent a crew from the radio with the journalists from town
We told them all our full demands; there would be no backing down.
Half the Parish council went to bat on the TV breakfast show;
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

‘Not all of us are farmers here but we all need food to eat
And we won’t allow your poisoned muck in the ground beneath our feet
There are better ways of doing this, better leave what’s below, below’
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

‘You can’t repair what you break apart and you can’t take the poison out
When you asked our democratic views we left you in no doubt
But our voices counted nothing, that was a bitter, bitter blow
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’

Now Bill’s got a great big cargo bike and delivers here and there
Most of us grow something and we trade and swap and share
We’re a village-state in Nowhere-land and the pace of life is slow, since
The day they came to frack our land and we all said ‘No.’