Stuart Kershaw (Pictured right) is the drummer for OMD. He’s also a successful songwriter, producer, recording engineer and performer with a professional career at the coal face of the international music industry spanning four decades. He tells us how he felt when the Election was lost in May.

What made you want to get involved in We Shall Overcome?

On May 8th 2015 the neoliberal political elite secured their grip on power thanks to the manipulation of their donors, friends, future employers and partners putting pressure and making deals with the Oligarchically controlled right wing media and their control of divisive propoganda disseminated as ‘news’.

My youngest son (11) has Autism. He and his peers are facing a hierarchically enforced kind of Social Darwinism. An experiment designed to shake up the benefit system, the NHS, housing and human rights of the very people in society most in need of the above. Those who are too ill, young, or dying to provide for themselves. These tragic cases who along with ordinary working families are not responsible for the economic crisis they find themselves paying for while the 1000 richest families double their wealth and bankers borrow more money off us all to support their bonuses.

What makes you hopeful?

In 1848 a wave of change burst accross Europe. A hundred years later in the UK the NHS and the welfare state were needed to appease a population of soldiers returning from the war. Millions of Battle hardened men and women were so careworn that the establishment had to concede economic and social necessities and made them basic rights.  The UK government has been trying to claw them back on behalf of the elite ever since. But no more than in the last 5 years.

And We Shall Overcome?

I’m looking forward to kicking some political, social and economic ass!