In the UK it would seem that the last event to bring the "protest song" into popular consciousness was the miners' strike of 84-85. That produced some cracking stuff - listen to the Oyster Band or Coope Boyes & Simpson doing Coal Not Dole as an example.

Coal Not Dole
It stands so proud, the wheel so still,
A ghostlike figure on the hill.
It seems so strange there is no sound
Now there are no men underground:

What will become of this pit yard,
Where men once trampled, faces hard?
Tired and weary, their shift done,
Never having seen the sun.

Will it become a sacred ground?
Foreign tourists gazing round
Asking if men once worked here,
Way beneath the pithead gear:

Empty trucks once filled with coal,
Lined up just like men on the dole.
Will they e'er be used again,
Or left for scrap just like the men?:

There'll always be a happy hour
For those with money, jobs and power.
They'll never realise the hurt
They do to them they treat like dirt: