Refugees and Migrants

Published in Solidarity 562:

To see the roots of poverty

the plight of the have-nots

Don't look at little dinghies

but at massive super-yachts

You have no skills – you’re just a carer,
a labourer, an apron-wearer,
You smear on cream and dish out pills –
you don’t have skills.

You have no skills, you just wipe arses,
the underside of the underclasses,
You wipe up drool, make tea and chat –
Where’s the skill in that?!

Edward lived in Hoxton
boxed in
Stitching boots
digging roots
Labouring his load
on the neighbouring road
to new arrivals
migrated for survival 
from Poland, from Russia
to the holy crush of London
Under the same sky
came together, made ties
meeting in the streets
Tars and bars and beats
tasting gifts and eats
More than metropolitan

Ian Townson reviews 'Minnie Lansbury: suffragette, socialist, rebel councillor' in Solidarity 491, 16 January 2019

Minnie Lansbury was one of the rebel Labour councillors of Poplar (East London) who in 1921 forced the Tory¬Liberal coalition government to start central government payments to equalise resources between councils in poor and in well¬off areas.

Janine Booth’s biography of Lansbury is rich in detail about her life; working¬class conditions at the time; and much more. It is a solid achievement given the scarcity of material available on Lansbury to work on.

In response to the news that the Pope wants to change the words of the Lord's Prayer ...

- after Edward Thomas' Adlestrop

Yes. I remember Little England -
The name, because one squally morn
Of rain, the liner drew up there
Unwonted, for a port in storm

Looks like this, does it, liberation?
Isolated from supplies, routes closed, blown from the skies
Barrel bombs bowled along alleys
Enclaved civilians tweet from their graves, farewells from beneath
Rubble, the stones where their homes used to be
Aleppo cries, crumbles, defeated, they see
Tyranny returning, triumphant, burning
Inhabitants gathered, culled, or running for their lives
Out of the city, fleeing as they wouldn't if they had actually been freed
No, this is not what liberation looks like.

The NHS is not another country
Going to clinic's not a trip abroad
Its purpose is for treating not for hunting
No frontiers from reception to the ward
I have to cross the town not cross the oceans
A hospital's no tourist trap now, is it?
Rather than the needles, stitches, lotions
So many other sites I'd rather visit
Not smuggling drugs nor medicines nor pills in
The staff are healers, they're not border guards
I've nothing to declare except my illness
I don't send postcards, I get Get Well cards
- They treat my sickness not my shade of skin
- Why should I need a passport to get in?