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We Were There

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 174332 ; Sandra Kerr]

Sandra Kerr wrote We Were There in 1980. She recorded it in 1987, accompanied by members of Oyster Band, as the title track of her Pukka album We Were There. This track was also included in 2000 on her Fellside anthology Yellow, Red & Gold. The original album’s sleeve notes quoted Anna Coote and Beatrix Campbell from Sweet Freedom: The Struggle for Women’s Liberation (1982):

At regular intervals throughout history, women rediscover themselves—their strengths, their capabilities, their political will. In short, there is a women’s uprising. But they have never yet secured the means of communicating their endeavours truthfully beyond the boundaries of their own movements. And since men have not found it in their interests to convey an accurate picture, the ideas and activities of these rebellious women have largely been omitted from the records.

Sisters Unlimited (Janet Russell, Peta Webb, Sandra Kerr, and Rosie Davis) sang We Were There in 1991 on their Harbourtown album No Limits. They noted:

“We need to know our past to understand our present. The present is a product of the past: we are moulded and conditioned by a past of which we are alarmingly ignorant.”—Deirdre Beddoe, Discovering Women’s History [1983]. “But then,” adds Sandra, “we would be ignorant wouldn’t we, when most histories before the mid-seventies, were written by and about only half of the human race—men. I wrote this song in 1980 as a small contribution to the idea that women have a hidden yet vital history to uncover, relate and celebrate.”

This video shows Sisters Unlimited singing We Were There in Liverpool in April 2012:

Lyrics

Sandra Kerr sings We Were There

We were there—Womankind beheld the earth
We were there—Man beside us at our birth
And the world was made for sharing
Equal giving, equal caring
Learning, growing, doing, daring
We were there
Friend and mother, sister, lover, we were there

We were there—throughout each changing century
We were there—but still must write our history
For who heard us when we cried
How many fought, how many died?
Hand in hand and side by side
We were there
Friend and mother, sister, lover, we were there

We were there—through every strike, through every war
We were there—wondering who we suffered for
Wondering when our time would come
Would brother, sister fight as one
Or would we stand alone
We were there
Friend and mother, sister, lover, we were there

We are here—though the way is long before us
We are here—and the world cannot ignore us
We will celebrate our past
And when the future’s ours at last
Who will dare to ask if we were there
Friend and mother, sister, lover, we were there