Fantastic song but it is getting on for 23 years since it was released and it is still relevant.
When you cast your eyes upon the skylines
Of this once proud nation
Can you sense the fear and the hatred
Growing in the hearts of its population
And our youth, oh youth, are being seduced
by the greedy hands of politics and half truths
The beaten generation, the beaten generation
Reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information
The beaten generation, the beaten generation
Open your eyes, open your imagination
We’re being sedated by the gasoline fumes
and hypnotised by the satellites
Into believing what is good and what is right
You may be worshipping the temples of mammon
Or lost in the prisons of religion
But can you still walk back to happiness
When you’ve nowhere left to run?
Andif they send in the special police
To deliver us from liberty and keep us from peace
Then won’t the words sit ill upon their tongues
when they tell us justice is being done
and that freedom lives in the barrels of a warm gun
Amazing song and just as relevant, as you say.
Man alive! Thought I was the only boy in Manchester listening to the the in the 80s. With my orange sponge earphones on my portable cassette player, big glasses and bruises, it was dark times.