Very eloquent and to the point, that song. I'm surprised that it's Ewan McColl's, not by the sense but by the style. It reads more like Leon Rosselson or Sydney Carter. Good song anyway. (Is there a song list of Ewan McColl's lyrics anywhere on line? I'm sure there are a whole bunch that most of us won't have ever come across, he wrote so many.)

And thanks for that fascinating post, hilda. Australia tends to get left out of dicussions about this subject.
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It's worth nothing the way that the term "travellers" - which was adopted as a way oif avoiding some of the prejudice against "gypsies", and also as a reflection of the fact that travelling people from all backgrounds have a lot of common history - has now come full circle so that it is used as an insult and a way of putting people down. With the convenient let-out for the likes of Michael Howard "Oh, we don't mean real gypsies..."   Rather like saying "I don't mean real Jews, like in Fiddler on the Roof."