When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...

Subject: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: GUEST,Alistair Banfield
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 07:19 AM

Hello Mudcatters

can anyone help me locate the complete words to a song which was sung to the tune of The Red Flag

When Joe is dead,
We'll raise a cheer;
We'll sell the flag
And buy some beer

This is all I have been told so far. Does anyone know any other verses?

It may have come from the 1950s or 1960s

Many thanks for your help

Alistair Banfield

Subject: RE: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: Silas
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 07:32 AM

Thank god for that - I thought the thread was going to be a slightly less than respectful tirade against our esteemed moderator

Subject: RE: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 08:20 AM

"We're out of work and on the dole
So shove the red flag up your hole.

The uniform that we salute,
It is the clapped out bolier suit.

The Union said it'd fight for me -
It's only made a c**t of me.
I always paid my Union dues -
The bastards spent them all on booze.

But the working class can now kiss my arse -
I've got the foreman's job at last."

Don't applaud - just throw money.

Subject: RE: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: Snuffy
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 08:21 AM

If "Joe" is Stalin, it would have to date from before his death in 1953

Subject: RE: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 08:58 AM

Not necessarily, an Israeli socialist youth movement in the 60s was singing irreverent parodies of Soviet songs, such as.
'Russia is our mother,
Stalin is our father,
We wish we were orphans.'

Subject: RE: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 06:28 AM

T'was on Gibraltar Rock so fair
I saw a maiden lying there
and as she lay in sweet repose
a breath of with blew up her clothes

a sailor who was passing by
tipped his hat and winked his eye
and then he saw to his dispair
that she had the Red Flag flying there

Subject: RE: When Joe is dead, we'll raise a cheer...
From: GUEST,Loobyloo
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 11:57 AM

Something like Bryn Pugh's version must be the song my father used to sing. But of the four lines I remembered, two of them aren't in the song as Bryn knows it. As my father sang it, it started:

'The Commissar of Potters Bar
'Has bought a brand new motor car'

and like Bryn, I remember the two last lines being

'The working class can kiss my arse
'I've got the foreman's job at last!'