Reports of the sad death of Joan Littlewood (mentioned in another thread)set me to thinking about how Ewan MacColl seems to be everywhere. Ubiquity and ineluctability are useful words. And a fragment of a song popped into my head. Another Belfast man, now resident somewhere in Australia, sang a couple of verses for me years ago and said it was by MacColl. Much later in London a young Communist Party member sang more of it and assured me it was indeed a MacColl song.

Now this may not measure up to the best of Ewan's work and it is unlikely to figure widely in the repertoire of many of today's singers, but it would be interesting to know the rest of the words. This is the little I recall....

a fragment of a ballad about Joe Stalin

Stalin was a mighty man and a mighty man was he
He led the people's army on the road to victory
All through the Revolution he stood at Lenin's side
and something something somethingtill the day that Lenin died.

What I actually remember is "All through the Revolution with Lenin by his side" but I must be wrong. Even the most unregenerate Stalinist would have problems with that,