Episode 25: Woodstein Media Podcast Episode 25: UK musician, poet, and activist Joe Solo on socialism, antifascism, and community building

Woodstein Media Podcast

On this episode, award-winning musician, writer, poet, activist, broadcaster and washing machine engineer Joe Solo speaks about spreading his message of social justice, anti-fascism, and socialism in his music and books from Scarborough. Not the Scarborough that will jump into the minds of people raised in southern Ontario, but the one across the Atlantic on England’s North Sea coast.
Solo began his musical journey in 1987 and has seen him leaping around with pop-punk upstarts Lithium Joe or his solo albums hammering out his unique brand of Folk, Punk and Blues. His songs bring to mind great lyrical thinkers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joe Hill, and Billy Bragg.
He’s a prolific artist, having released twenty-one albums since 2004, writing a series of children’s books for Unison on social justice and equality, running a research project on the Hull Pals Battalions in the First World War, hosting a weekly Monday night radio show; and through causes like WE SHALL OVERCOME, a campaign he helped create that pushes for a positive response from the music community to the poverty and hardship inflicted on ordinary people by the government’s austerity program, which was introduced in 2010. Since October 2015, WE SHALL OVERCOME has organized more than 1100 gigs in the UK and beyond, raising upwards of £750,000 in cash, food, clothing and bedding for those hit hardest by the cuts.
In an article for the Magazine Tribune published in April 2023, titled How Austerity Broke Britain Grace Blakeley wrote of the cuts instituted under Tory rule for the past 13 years. The article reads, “Cuts to early intervention services have created greater demands on the public sector as those in need of support fall through the net, only to end up experiencing severe crises further down the line. Poverty, homelessness, and violent crime have all increased due to the government’s decision to abandon those most in need of public sector support.
In short, as anyone living in the UK will have noticed, the institutions designed to protect our health and well-being are crumbling. Since austerity, we have increasingly lived in a society in which the population is being left to fend for itself.”
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Links related to this episode.
Joe Solo Bandcamp - https://joesolomusic.bandcamp.com/

The Men They Couldn’t Hang - https://thementheycouldnthang.bandcamp.com/music

Billy Bragg - https://billybragg.bandcamp.com/album/the-million-things-that-never-happened