Oooh, warm glow all over, that done a good thing feeling...The tune can be had from Roy Bailey's cd 'Business as Usual', ISBN 0203930 940023, published by Fuse Records, CFDC 400 in 1994/5 OR on a double cassette that I can't lay my hands on, but may be available if you contact Roy or his agent directly. The cassette is called 'The writing on the wall', and is a recording of a talk that he did with Tony Benn MP (fka Sir Anthony Wedgewood Benn)about this very sort of thing - the empowerment of the masses. An excellent selection of songs, it includes 'Tolpuddle man', 'Little Red Courvette (the $65 car song mentioned elsewhere), 'Rosa's lovely daughters' and others of a socialist/humanist bent. Please be careful if trying to get it through your library, as there is a book by Tony Benn with the same title, and there is also a book called 'The writings on the wall', a series of essays on the beginnings of the punk rock movement, as derived from various toilet walls, from what I could gather, speed reading it....
If you get the chance to see Roy perform, ask him, and he will be only too pleased to sing it, he says he likes requests, he doesn't have to think what to do! Similarly, if you are of that sort of mindframe, or just like to hear an amusing person discussing social history with an anti-establishment bent, get hold of anything that Tony Benn has written, he is one of natures' true gentlemen, and good at taking the p*** out of himself. He is also an excellent historian.
On a poseur note, I was at the folk club one night (about 300 years ago it feels....) when Graham Moore, a regular there, came in. He stood up to sing (he did an excellent version of 'fishing for the humpbacked whale') and asked if he could try something he'd written that week for a community play to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, so that puts it to 1983/4. He sang 'Tolpuddle man' and received a good 8-10 seconds stunned silence, before the applause started, it was that powerful an image. I know, I was there.....
LTS