LYRICS
Should the aristocratic make you sick
Pledge to be a pleb
… just sayin’… Plebian
When in roam do as the roam-ans
Don’t take it as pathetic… alternative, quick
Serve up an order of “Conflict of the Orders”
Roam across the Roman borders
Bulk if they consider it an insult
Quote: the UK minister is sinister
Sure, the po-po can be low, low, low
But, why insult a pleb instead
Pledge to be pleb
And, when ya see someone plebby, say, “Hey!”
Shout out to the plebs all day
ABOUT THE SONG
Music
Capo 1
Am / C
Am / E
This song was inspired by a news report over a big tadoo in England. It turned out to be a sort-of theme song to the album Revolution Evolution.
LONDON – In class-conscious Britain, a Cabinet minister is in trouble over a four-letter word: “pleb.”
The single syllable was reportedly not the most profane part of Andrew Mitchell’s tirade at police officers who asked him to get off his bicycle as he passed through the gates of Downing Street. But it is the most incendiary – a pejorative term for the working class with a whiff of contempt that is bad news for a government often characterized as elitist.
Class distinctions are the great tugging undercurrent in British society – ever-present, endlessly debated, never resolved. The topic is a minefield for any politician keen to appeal to a wide range of voters. And the four-letter clanger attributed to Mitchell lands as a thudding reminder that class is still a potent and divisive aspect of British life.
Last week’s altercation between the minister and police officers guarding the approach to the prime minister’s residence has been seized on by the media and political opposition, and escalated into a political tempest with its own title: “Gategate.”
Mitchell on Monday apologized for the incident, in which – according to press reports – he told the officers “Best you learn your (expletive) place. You don’t run this (expletive) government. You’re (expletive) plebs.”
The Metropolitan Police force has not officially confirmed the account, but says it has launched an investigation into how internal police information was leaked to the press.
Mitchell conceded that he had lost his temper at “the end of a long and extremely frustrating day.”
Mitchell’s reported word choice is a blow to attempts by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-led administration to downplay its image as a privileged club.
Pleb – short for plebeian – comes from the Latin plebeius, the mass of ordinary citizens apart from the elite of upper-class patricians.
— The Associated Press
Plebs in ancient Rome
In Latin the word plebs is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is plebis. Multiple “plebs” are “plebes”.The origin of the separation into orders is unclear, and it is disputed when the Romans were divided under the early kings into patricians and plebeians, or whether the clientes (or dependents) of the patricians formed a third group. The nineteenth century historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr held that plebeians began to appear at Rome during the reign of Ancus Marcius, possibly foreigners settling in Rome as naturalized citizens. In any case, at the outset of the Roman Republic, plebeians were excluded from magistracies and religious colleges. Later on, after a general strike by the plebeians[citation needed], the Law of the Twelve Tables was promulgated, and explicitly forbade intermarriage in Tabula XI (a prohibition which was eventually reversed by the Lex Canuleia). However, before the Twelve Tables plebeians were forbidden to know any laws, but were still punished for breaking them. Despite these inequalities, plebeians still belonged to gentes, served in the army, but very rarely became military leaders.
Even so, the “Conflict of the Orders” over the political status of the plebeians went on for the first two centuries of the Republic, ending with the formal equality of plebeians and patricians in 287 BC. The plebeians achieved this by developing their own organizations (the concilium plebis), leaders (the tribunes and plebeian aediles). When the plebeians felt the situation had become dire, they would instigate a secessio plebis, a sort of general strike where plebeians would leave Rome, leaving the patricians to themselves.
Modern usage
In British, Canadian, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and South African English the back-formation pleb, along with the more recently derived adjectival form plebby, is used as a derogatory term for someone considered unsophisticated or uncultured. In September 2012 UK Conservative Party Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell was reported using the word in an expletive-heavy tirade directed at police officers in Downing Street. He disputed the accusation. — Wikipedia
from the album Revolution Evolution
by Daniel Brouse