But those were not our empires
and those were not our wars,
dear middle class. That Tony Blair,
he wasn’t ours, but yours.
Those weren’t our plantations
and those were not our slaves,
but those were our grandfathers butchered
in their muddy graves.
So now you’ve seen the light
and want to cleanse your souls
by turning our communities
into medieval holes.
You want to choke your guilt
and build yourselves anew
and so you force the working class
to choke along with you.
Where once you used conscription
and factories to kill us,
now you use the bearded screams
of the zealously religious.
Now you turn the East End
into a Caliphate
so that you can stare in the mirror
and finally feel great.
And when working-class children
lie mangled in a spray
of blood and guts, you’ll shrug it’s just
“the price we have to pay”.
How about no? And how about
we settle an old score?
You’re asking for a bloody nose.
You’re asking for class war.
