DESCRIPTION:
From Sweet Liberties, 'Broad Waters' by Maz O'Connor, performed at Cecil Sharp House, London on 28th November 2015.

'Broad Waters' is a song about a miscarriage of justice in 1985 which saw 3 men wrongfully convicted for the killing of a police constable Keith Blakelock on Broadwater Farm in Tottenham. P.C. Blakelock was killed by rioting residents of Broadwater Farm, a social housing estate which had seen building tensions between the police and the largely black residents throughout the 1980s. After an investigation which saw the arrest of around 1 in 10 men living on the estate, 3 men were convicted on evidence given by young men and boys. These men were acquitted years later, and this case became a famous example of police racism, leading to an updating of the Race Relations Act in 2000 to include public bodies. The song is a dialogue between a police man and one of the young boys pressured into testifying against the most notorious of the suspects, Winston Silcott.

Nick Cooke - melodeon
Nancy Kerr - fiddle, vocals
Sam Carter - guitar, vocals
Maz O'Connor - tenor guitar, vocals
Martyn Joseph - guitar, vocals
Patsy Reid - fiddle


Didn’t you see him there
With his hand up in the air
Didn’t you see him there
Didn’t you?

Wasn’t he pleased and proud
Of that mess there on the ground
Didn’t you find him proud
Didn’t you?

I don’t know what I saw
It was dark I couldn’t be sure

Oh don’t be shy boy
There’s no need to lie
I can see it in your eye boy
You know

He’s already told me
And he’s never going free
He’s already told me
You know

I said I don’t know what I saw
It was dark I couldn’t be sure

He’s a beast not a man
Leader of the gang
With a hammer in his hand
Isn’t he?

Isn’t he blacker than black
And didn’t he pat you on the back
When you joined his little pack
Didn’t he?

I only saw a heap on the floor
Beneath fifty men or more

Doesn’t he look a bit like you
Doesn’t talk like you do
Doesn’t he even where the same size shoe?

So if we can’t get this right
If he wasn’t there that night
Maybe it was someone else’s fight

Now I’m not making claims boy
No that’s not what I’m saying
But someone’s gotta lose this little game

So if he wasn’t there
If he really wasn’t there
Maybe it was your hand in the air

I told you I can’t be sure
There were fifty men or more
And I was looking through a half closed door
But maybe, maybe, maybe it was him
That I saw

The waters here are broad
And I cannot get near them
There’s people on the other side
Laughing in the light
And they think we cannot hear them
How I wish I could not hear them


Sweet Liberties is a joint commission by the English Folk Dance & Song Society, Folk By The Oak, Parliament In The Making, and PRS for Music Foundation to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and the 750th anniversary of the Simon de Montfort parliament.

For more information about Sweet Liberties, visit: http://www.folkbytheoak.com/sweet-liberties

EFDSS: http://www.efdss.org/
Folk By The Oak: http://www.folkbytheoak.com
Parliament In The Making: http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/2015-parliament-in-the-making/
PRS for Music Foundation: http://www.prsformusicfoundation.com/