I read about the bombings of civilians in Iraq

In Yemen or in Syria or similar attack

The carnage and the horror that rained down from overhead

Because, though, they weren’t English they were only slightly dead.

 

I well recall those Chinese workers who picked shells that day

Toiling for their gangmasters by light on Morecambe Bay

Who’d underestimate too late how fast the tide had sped

Because, though, they weren’t English they were only slightly dead.

 

Then those ghastly images of children that we see

Particularly poignant shown at Christmas on TV

Polluted, dirty water, undernourished and ill-fed

Because, though, they weren’t English they were only slightly dead.

 

Unscrupulously traffickers would count their coin and cram

A lorry full of immigrants who came from Vietnam

Who found another way to die – to suffocate instead

Because, though, they weren’t English they were only slightly dead.

 

Unnumbered, nameless refugees whose kin have no remains

Who drowned in anonymity (just Allah knows their names)

While fleeing persecution in the Channel or the Med

But anyway they’re foreign so they’re only slightly dead.