How humbling that my Les Miserables hit has helped fight for freedom

How humbling that my Les Miserables hit has helped fight for freedom: Lyricist Herbert Kretzmer was delighted to hear his anthem from hit musical being sung by Hong Kong protesters

On Sunday, two million protesters in Hong Kong were singing these lyrics with passion and gusto. They were calling for freedom from the mighty power, influence and surveillance of mainland China

On Sunday, two million protesters in Hong Kong were singing those lyrics with passion and gusto. They were calling for freedom from the mighty power, influence and surveillance of mainland China.

It was an extraordinary display of people power in our former colony: one resident in seven took to the streets to gather in front of their parliament, arms crossed above their heads in a symbol of defiance.

As I watched them on television from my home in West London, I felt a lump rise to my throat.

Not only because I admired their bravery in standing up to Communist China, which is trying to force a new extradition bill on Hong Kong that could consign anyone living in the Territory to the sham Chinese ‘justice’ system. But because the words they were singing were words I had written 33 years ago — and I knew the song in question had been banned in China.

I was 60 when I penned the lyrics to Do You Hear The People Sing. A journalist all my life and sometime songwriter, I was working as TV critic for this newspaper when Cameron Mackintosh, the now legendary theatre impresario, asked me to adapt the libretto of a French musical, Les Miserables. It was based on Victor Hugo’s classic 19th-century novel and enjoying a successful run in Paris.

The original French lyrics for the signature song warned of the ‘will of the people’. To me, that felt like political grandstanding — so I rewrote it to link the idea of liberty and democracy with the song title itself: Do You Hear The People Sing?

My song sought to demonstrate the power of words when set to inspirational music — a power that can mobilise millions, silence guns and lay down weapons.

I believed that such a protest song, sung in solidarity, could overwhelm not only the repressive 1830s French police state depicted in Les Miserables but also the mighty dictatorships of our own times, whether in the form of Soviet Communism, fascist regimes or the supporters of Apartheid in my homeland, South Africa.

Remember, I wrote the lyrics some years before Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.

More than two million people took to the streets in Hong Kong to demonstrate against a proposed extradition bill to China

The demonstrators were singing an anthem from Les Miserables which was written by Herbert Kretzmer

But I never imagined Do You Hear The People Sing? might become an anthem for protesters everywhere, from Venezuela to Taiwan, Turkey and Hong Kong.

When people ask me why the song remains so popular, I answer that I tried to tell the truth about one of the key issues of all time: injustice, which can turn men and women into slaves, cause anger and humiliation and crush the human spirit. Yet it ends with the words ‘When tomorrow comes’ because I truly believe that hope can never be extinguished.

Although I never envisaged going to the barricades myself, I was undoubtedly influenced by the inhumane Apartheid system that I witnessed when I was growing up.

In 1930s and 40s South Africa you could not escape the brutal, discriminatory reality that poisoned life there: black people were treated as cheap labour and second-class citizens. My family lived in Kroonstad, Orange Free State, and I soon became aware that even as a boy in short trousers I could enjoy a life of privilege for no better reason than that I was born a wit baasie — a ‘little white master’.

I felt the injustice of this but didn’t feel I had the drive, commitment or sheer physical courage to join ‘the struggle’ against Apartheid.

Perhaps with Do You Hear The People Sing? I have made a contribution to that fight in a different way. The song, like several others I wrote for the musical, has enjoyed a life of its own as a battle cry against oppression.

It is just one of the many joys and surprises that have come my way because of my role in the extraordinary phenomenon that is Les Mis.

I never thought for a moment that it would become the longest-running musical in the West End (33 years and counting), the fifth-longest running Broadway musical, and the second-longest running musical in the world, with openings in every major city.

It has garnered eight Tony awards and topped a poll of Essential Musicals.

I never imagined Do You Hear The People Sing? might become an anthem for protesters everywhere, from Venezuela to Taiwan, Turkey and Hong Kong

It was the kind of success I could only have imagined when I arrived London in the 1950s to try my hand at journalism.

All through those years I was writing lyrics, too, including those for She, my friend Charles Aznavour’s worldwide hit of 1974.

When Cameron Mackintosh came to me with the idea of reworking Les Miserables for an anglophone audience, I took unpaid leave from the Daily Mail and holed myself up in John Cleese’s old flat in Knightsbridge, which I had just bought.

For five months I scribbled verse after verse in longhand, on yellow legal pads. I often forgot to eat and sometimes to sleep as well, totally absorbed by the challenge before me.

I kept beside me what I called my ‘voodoo’ objects: a candle that I’d lit on the first day and wouldn’t extinguish until the manuscript was completed; a teddy bear that the actor Terence Stamp had given me for good luck; and a sign on which I’d written simply ‘Tell the story’.

The musical opened at the Barbican on October 8, 1985, to mixed reviews. One of the worst was by my colleague, the Mail’s theatre critic Jack Tinker, with whom I had shared a desk for years. Jack dismissed Les Mis as ‘The Glums’ and said that in his opinion it would never transfer to the West End. I didn’t think the production would survive that!

The musical opened at the Barbican on October 8, 1985, to mixed reviews. One of the worst was by my colleague, the Mail’s theatre critic Jack Tinker, with whom I had shared a desk for years.

Jack dismissed Les Mis as ‘The Glums’ and said that in his opinion it would never transfer to the West End. I didn’t think the production would survive that!

But within a week there were queues around the block for tickets and the box office phone lines were jammed. We even received the royal seal of approval when Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson both came to see the musical — more than once.

More than 30 years on, I owe Les Miserables a great deal. I have enjoyed tremendous success and good fortune because of it.

And I am conscious that it has given me something else, too: an extraordinary legacy. Today I can hear people around the world singing the verses I penned because they feel injustice and want change.

Do you hear the people of Hong Kong? They are standing up for their rights.

At 93, I can only be with them in spirit. But my words are on their lips — and I am singing with them, too.

More than 30 years on, I owe Les Miserables a great deal. I have enjoyed tremendous success and good fortune because of it

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