With Everything To Lose

(album: Our Favourite Shop - 1985)

From the playground to the wasteground
Hope ends at 17
Sweeping floors and filling shelves
Forced into government schemes
11 years spent to dig out ditches,
Forget your schoolday dreams
Guarantees and lie-filled speeches,
But nothings what it seems
Qualified and patronized and with everything to lose.

No choice or chance for the future
The rich enjoy less tax
Dress the girls in pretty pink
The shit goes to the blacks
A generation's heart torn out
And covered up the facts
The only thing they'll understand
Is a wall against their backs
The only hope now left for those

With everything to lose
With everything to lose
With everything to lose

In desperation empty eyes,
Signed up and thrown away
There's drugs replacing dignity,
The short sharp shock repaid
There'll be no money if you dare to question
Working the Tory way
The truth is up there carved in stone,
Where 21 dead now lay
A family's loss for a few pounds saved

With everything to lose
With everything to lose
With everything to lose
With everything to lose
With everything to lose