There Is No Shame

Lyrics

There is no shame in being defeated
When the odds are stacked so unfairly
Only a besieged sorrow
Have been severed from millions
Who believed false stories
Of benign deliverance
Scattered carelessly
By a blustering pretender.

Oh, I wish to dodge this sadness
Which makes my hand weaken
As I wring the words out
Turning them dry of hope

Could it be that those I can no longer reach
Felt too hurt, to trust in quiet reason
Too weary for sharing power?
Did the lies kindle embers of some old imagined glory?

Bombast cannot heal us
It comes in a flash car
And slinks back to padded privilege
Leaving despair
Glutted with a fearful anger

There is no shame in being defeated
When the odds are stacked so unfairly
Only a besieged sorrow
Have been severed from millions
Who believed false stories
Of benign deliverance?
Scattered carelessly
By a blustering pretender.

There is no shame
There is no shame

[These are incomplete, unofficial lyrics and may differ from the artist’s official version.]

Song Description

A poem by Sheila Rowbotham, written just after the election defeat, and now put to music. ‘I wrote this after the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn who I admire was defeated in Britain in December 2019. But Steve Skaith’s musical version has giving it a wider meaning. Songs touch on feelings that words do not necessarily reach – hearing it took what I had scribbled late at night on paper off into another realm of expression.’

There Is No Shame has not been released.