When that I was a little tiny boy,
Me daddy said to me,
’The time has come, me bonny bonny bairn
To learn your ABC’.

Now daddy was a Lodge Chairman
In the coalfields of the Tyne,
And that ABC was different
From the Enid Blyton kind.

He sang;

A is for Alienation that made me the man that I am
and B’s for the Boss, who’s a bastard, a bourgeois who don’t give a damn.
C is for Capitalism, the boss’s reactionary creed,
and D’s for Dictatorship, laddie, but the best proletarian breed.

E is for Exploitation, that the workers have suffered so long;
and F is for old Ludwig Feuerbach, the first one to see it was wrong.

G is for all Gerrymanderers, like Lord Muck and Sir Whatsisname,
and H is the Hell that they’ll go to, when the workers have kindled the flame.

I is for Imperialism, and America’s kind is the worst,
and J is for sweet Jingoism, that the Tories all think of first.

K is for good old Keir Hardie, who fought out the working class fight
and L is for Vladimir Lenin, who showed him the Left was all right.

M is of course for Karl Marx, the daddy and the mammy of them all,
and N is for Nationalisation, without it we’d crumble and fall.

O is for Overproduction that capitalist economy brings,
and P is for Private Property, the greatest of all of the sins.

Q is for the Quid pro quo, that we’ll deal out so well and so soon,
when R for Revolution is shouted and the Red Flag becomes the top tune.

S is for sad Stalinism, that gave us all such a bad name,
and T is for Trotsky the hero, who had to take all of the blame.

U’s for the Union of workers, the Union will stand to the end,
and V is for Vodka, yes, Vodka, the one drink that don’t bring the bends.

W is for all Willing workers, and that’s where the memory fades,
for X, Y and Z, me dear daddy said, will be written on the street barricades.

But now that I’m not a little tiny boy,
Me daddy says to me,
’Please try to forget the things I said,
Especially the ABC.’

For daddy’s no longer a Union man,
And he’s had to change his plea.
His alphabet is different now,
Since they made him a Labor MP.