Bragg says his older songs are relevant again, “which is troubling”

British musician and activist Billy Bragg returns to bash out pertinent political messages.

Billy Bragg has rescheduled his Australian tour to February.

When he first played in Queensland in 1987, Britain’s foremost political singer-songwriter Billy Bragg was witnessing the end of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government.

The political sentiment was a match made in heaven for a Billy Bragg show, taunting the audience with a story about coming across a “Joh for PM” bumper sticker on a car while in Sydney.

“Fortunately this was on a Volkswagen Beetle,” he told the crowd. “I’m saying fortunately because it only took three of us to turn the thing over.”

Phoning from his home at Burton Bradstock, Dorset, in south-west England, Billy remembers every detail of the show.

“Someone like me, coming to Queensland, every lefty from miles around came to Brisbane for the show. It was just brilliant. They were mad for it because no-one was singing those kinds of songs. They just didn’t get any of that stuff up there. None of this cool Melbourne, Sydney vibe. They were just all over me like a rash. That was a gig-and-a-half I tell ’ya. It was great. It was a lovely gig, I’ll never forget it.

“Everyone was drinking from big jugs on the table, which we thought were water but they turned out to be spirits.”

Billy Bragg in Melbourne in 1989.

Billy was touring on the success of his classic album Talking with the Taxman About Poetry and the cheers of the crowd at Easts Leagues Club were to songs like There Is Power In A Union.

Thirty-three years later, and with Labor in power in Queensland, Billy is as relevant as ever with a climate of decimated union membership, serious challenges for Australia’s media, inaction on climate change, and attacks on freedom of speech and the right to protest.

Billy returns to Australia in January and February with a retrospective series of three shows in each city, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

“It’s always good to reach back into that period. Some of the songs I wrote back then are becoming relevant again, which is troubling,” he says.

“Trade unions are absolutely a key aspect of holding those in power to account in the workplace.

“Both our Labour Party and your Labor Party came out of people’s attempts to hold the employers to account in the workplace and it has been the diminution of that right that has left us in a situation where the gap between the rich and the poor has only got wider in the last 20 years.

“We need to be restoring workplace rights as a first step towards ensuring that people can live on the wages they earn.

“In our country, the majority of people that are living in poverty are also in work. Work isn’t paying to get them above the poverty line and that is because they are no longer able to bargain for wages and conditions in the workplace.”

The argument is a key theme of his recently-released book, The Three Dimensions of Freedom.

“How we hold the powerful to account is absolutely crucial. Authoritarianism is a genuine danger these days. It doesn’t begin when you have a police state.

“Authoritarianism begins when those in power feel they can act with impunity. That’s where we are with Boris Johnson and … Donald Trump and that’s why I think accountability is important.”

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back will feature three shows on consecutive nights, the first being his current set, the second centred on his first three albums and the third night concluding his first decade of recording. The shows will be performed in an intimate setting centred on the songs with just Billy on stage.

“Just me all on my lonesome. What we call ‘Bash ’Em Out Bragg’. Just two guitars and me.”

■ Billy Bragg, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, The Triffid, Newstead, rescheduled to February 23-25, tickets at oztix.