The lyrics to Walls Come Tumbling Down, with Weller's rant toned down by the melodic contribution of former Wham! backing singer (and later Mrs Paul Weller) Dee C Lee, are an outraged dissection of the capitalist system, warning the British public to beware of the "donkey's carrot" of jobs that will turn you into a wage slave forever paying off debts for home electronics they can scarcely afford. "I went through a period of political awakening," says Weller, quoted in Rachel's book, "a realisation of how the system worked." Weller had as younger man been linked to the Right, but in the 1980s as The Jam neared the end of a hugely successful ten-year career, he began regularly appearing at socialist benefit gigs in support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, striking miners and other causes supported by the Left in general and the Labour Party in particular. Rachel's book is an easy read told in soundbites transcribed from interviews with the many musicians, politicians, journalists and activists involved, including of course, Paul Weller. The book tells the story of a vibrant period in British music history in which musicians worked together with the intention of making lasting social change and obstructing the rampant rise of Thatcherism in the last 1970s and through the 1980s. The song recently gave its title to the 2016 book Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge by Daniel Rachel. Former Jam frontman and "Modfather" Paul Weller was determined that The Style Council's 1985 UK Top Ten hit Walls Come Tumbling Down should be a "balls-out soul tune" from the Motown mould and so you could be forgiven for failing to notice at first that this hip-swaying Eighties pop hit is a red-blooded, revolutionary protest song with the very positive and provocative refrain of "Governments crack and systems fall / 'Cause unity is powerful / Lights go out, walls come tumbling down".
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