Martin Simpson - Palaces of Gold, an old song for Grenfell

posters in Shoreditch, 2024

When I saw the great folk singer/guitarist Martin Simpson playing earlier in the summer (at the Goose is Out folk club, the Ivy House by Peckham Rye) he played a song which he said he had pledged to sing at every gig until there was justice for the Grenfell fire dead and their families. The song was  'Palaces of Gold', written by Leon Rosselson and which Simpson has been singing for many years. Rosselson originally wrote it in response to the Aberfan disaster of 1966 when a coal tip slid down to bury a school in Wales, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Although about a specific tragedy there is, as Simpson recognised, a universal aspect to the song. Namely that some lives are deemed to matter more than others, and that disasters like Aberfan and Grenfell wouldn't be allowed to happen to the families of the rich:

'If the sons of company directors,

And judges’ private daughters,

Had to got to school in a slum school,

Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley,

Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry,

With a view onto slagheaps and stagnant pools,

Had to file through corridors grey with age,

And play in a crackpot concrete cage.

Buttons would be pressed,

Rules would be broken.

Strings would be pulled

And magic words spoken.

Invisible fingers would mould

Palaces of gold'.