Songfacts®:

• After half a decade of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, Style Council's Paul Weller was well and truly riled. He recalled to Uncut magazine in 2021: "From the time Thatcher got in, as far as I'm concerned, from 1979 onwards, it was horrible, but I think it reached a peak in 1984, 1985. It was pretty rough. Pitched battles between the police and the miners, the unions getting smashed, mass unemployment. You were on one side or the other."
  
  Here, over a pounding beat, Style Council tackle political oppression and complacency.
• Are you gonna get to realize
  The class war's real, not mythologized
  And like Jericho
  Yes, the walls came a-tumbling down
  
  The Old Testament Book of Joshua Chapter six recounts how the Israelite army led by Joshua marched around the Canaanite city of Jericho, whose fortified walls were up to 25 feet high and 20 feet thick. After the seven priests blew their trumpets, Joshua ordered the Israelites to shout, and the walls collapsed.
  
  Weller is urging the British working class to rise up and revolt. Then, in the same way that Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho, the walls of the Conservative party will come a-tumbling down.
• Weller sang lead and also played the guitar. The rest of the instrumentation is:
  
  Bass: Camille Hinds
  Drums, percussion: Steve White
  Hammond organ: Mick Talbot
  Piano: Helen Turner
  Vocals: Dee C. Lee
  
  Mick Talbot recalled to Uncut: "On Walls we had that golden six, really - me, Paul, Steve White on drums, Dee singing, Helen Turner, who was a very important part of our live band - she played piano so I could play Hammond organ and get it all down as live as possible - and Camille Hinds on bass.
  
  I think 'Walls' is the only thing that Helen Turner recorded with us - she was very important to the live band because a great deal of our records have more than one keyboard on, and she was very good at quickly picking up the groove of a part I'd done. I'll decide whether I wanted to play piano or organ on a song live, and she was very good at picking the other part up."
• Director Tim Pope shot the video in Warsaw, Poland. Weller thinks the unlikely location was the result of the producer, Gordon Lewis, having some free tickets or travel vouchers to go to Poland. "Because… I've no idea," he added to Uncut. "It's not like the song is about the Eastern Bloc or anything."
• They filmed the video in a Warsaw jazz club. "We did a few takes, miming to the backing tracks, and that was it," Weller recalled. "But some punters turned up and I felt really bad. I thought, maybe they think there's going to be a gig and we're just doing this soppy video. It was mental."
• "Walls" was the third single released from Our Favourite Shop, Style Council's most commercially successful album. It topped the UK charts for one week, displacing Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms.