‘Banned’ High Speed Rail protest song fights for Christmas charts

Protesters against the new High Speed Rail proposals (commonly shortened to HS2) have released a rather good protest song, Oak Tree Lament (Stop The HS2), to help raise the profile of the campaign.

Despite having been denied radio play as it is deemed ‘politically controversial’ the live and studio versions of the single have reached numbers four and five in the HMV charts.

The Stop HS2 campaign hopes that with a few days to go until Christmas the single will be placed highly enough to boost the campaign.

Joe Rukin said “There are plenty of tracks on the Christmas playlist every year which definitely gave views, with some coming round again, on politically controversial subjects. Look at this year, you can’t knock what The Military Wives are doing, but a big part of their success has been that the money is going to charities, which fill the services welfare void left by Government. Then you add in that they are singing about the fact their husbands are away and might get killed in a war which cannot be afforded and will never achieve it’s objectives. When I listen to it I feel an undertone of ‘Can we just end this particular war now please?’ It is right that they have been allowed to do this, but it is wrong that we can’t even get one airplay.”

Dirty Mavis lead singer Martin Davis who wrote the song, said that “We are amazed at the support and interest we are getting in this song. We are just normal people who wanted to back a good cause, with a good song. We know that we really do have an outside chance of changing the shape of the Christmas music charts, and it would be a fantastic achievement for everyone who cares about the countryside, if we could chart with this song, which was written, produced, promoted and performed entirely by the band itself.”

HS2 involves massive spending on rail infrastructure which would reduce some journeys by half an hour. However that money would be better spent, campaigners argue, on improving local transport links, improving reliability and reducing fares – the biggest barrier to passengers taking the train regularly.

With a significant impact on the countryside, and the urban areas it passes through it could see those who live near the tracks suffer a high nose train once every three minutes while the likely improvements would be in wealthier passengers taking more trips at the cost of local services.