Smash Clause 28!/Fight The Alton Bill!

The last noisy Chumbawamba single. The track Smash Clause 28! was renamed Smash Clause 29! and re-released on the 1998 compilation LP Uneasy Listening.

Smash Clause 28!

Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde, can you tell me where you've been?
I've been down to London town to pay a visit to the Queen.
Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde, can you tell me what you saw?
I saw the Queen and all her coutiers cooking up new laws;
I saw the corridors of power, with closets wall-to-wall;
And I saw the truth, the truth, behind the Emperor's new Clause!
So you burn the books, and close your eyese to every other possibility-- you got to keep your job for collaborating with the enemy. You keep throwing stones though your house is made of glass; you've helped to make McCarthyism popular, at last.
Blessed are the moralists, the Judges, the patriarchs. Blessed are the gutter-press, the AIDS-joke comedians. Praise to the guilt-mongerers, the fear-builders, the sin-fetishists.
Glory, glory, halleluia, His truth is marching on
One in ten driven underground, divisions getting wider. Hide your inclination behind a straight face and a Bible. Third Reich morality, and if the cap doesn't fit, there's a designer label for hypocrites.
Here comes the officer, knocking on your door. He's got a care order in the pocket of his uniform. Where's Radclyffe Hall? Now is the time to tear up clause 29!
Here comes the preacher checking your soul. Too late sir, I'd rather fall. We'll eat your bread and we'll drink your wine, and still tear up clause 29! Here comes the judge, hammer in hand, but we've all gone deaf to bigots' commands. Our justice will cross the thin blue line and tear up clause 29!
Here comes a brick, heading your way. A concrete opinion says all I want to say. Save your own soul, mine will be fine, once we've shredded clause 29.

Fight The Alton Bill!

In ignorance, I still assumed this body was mine, that I could choose. I had faith for charity and understanding sympathy. But no, we're seen as baby machines. Face judge, jury, and male GPs, found guilty, careless, callous, cold, and told the things we're always told by the gentle, prime-time moralist on national daily news, with persuasive smile he'll take away a woman's right to choose. They say the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. But not beyond the eighteenth week if Alton has his way.
'Have you considered what you're going to lose? Do you realize what you're asking me to do? Are there medical reasons? And, oh, by the way, you know we can't help you unless you pay?'
Desperation and a waiting list. You don't count blessings, just weeks missed. Problems are beginning to show. It's so impersonal, so painfully slow.
'Do you know what you'll put my conscience through? Do you know just how few women are as lucky as you? No, the delay's not deliberate. It just takes time. And maybe by then you'll have changed your mind.'
A history of desperation, of old wives' tales, from jumping down off ladders to using knitting needles. From gin baths, to a punch in the guts--sometimes it would work, mostly it just hurt. That these laws are to protect us is another moral con. How do they protect the given rights of any woman? They'll drive us on the back-streets, demand won't go away. We'll bleed, we'll die, because we couldn't pay. This Bill will make us victims--it's we who should decide. We want control of our bodies and our lives. Alton, don't feel too safe behind your man-made laws. Laws can be broken as easily as bones. Steal from one, and you steal from us all, and laws like yours will make re-sisters of us all!