Billy Bragg People Quotations

Most of the people that I went to school with - I went to secondary school - we were educated to go and work in the line at Ford's, and if we were lucky, technical skilled labor. I sort of rejected that, and thought I wanted to do something else.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.

If you thought the army was here protecting people like yourself, I've some news for you, we're here to defend wealth.

That's what I'm about -- getting engaged. Too many people don't wade in the mud with the politicians.

A part of my job is to bring the news from elsewhere to here and to take back some news from here. . . . You can't change the world singing songs, believe me, but you can offer people an alternative perspective, even on their own situations. So that's what I'm trying to do.