With events across the pond, this seems an appropriate time to raise a little cry of defiance over the state of my own nation, and to remind myself that there's still some fight left in us...

Why I Will Not Keep Calm and Carry On

When I was young, the golden rule
of how to get along at school
was Keep your head down. Don’t make waves.
Don’t stand apart – you’re not that brave.
Sadistic teacher, playground yob
would make damn sure you shut your gob
and didn’t disagree or whine
but always toed the party line.

It seemed one vast conspiracy
to shore up every tyranny
that could be foisted on the meek
and those the bullies saw as weak:
where independent thought, sedition,
personality, ambition,
vision and artistic bent
were sneered at, scorned – not worth a cent.

I grew up, joined the daily grind
and hoped I’d left those days behind –
but then a taint of something sinister
started rising from Westminster.
Health and welfare face the axe;
multinationals pay no tax.
Right-wing papers curse the jobless,
smear the immigrant, the homeless,
leave them feeling worse than worthless
while parades of suited, mirthless
millionaires pass dubious laws
to privatise what’s mine and yours.
They’re even cutting Legal Aid.
If you don’t think you’ve been betrayed
then bear in mind this stark prediction –
we’re all three pay cheques from eviction.

What can be done? What’s the solution?
A worker’s socialist revolution?
Rallies, protest marches, camps
outside Whitehall? Outside the banks?
A tidal wave of 60s chants –
We’ll overcome? Give peace a chance?
Ideals fade. Too soon they’re gone.
Now it’s keep calm and carry on.

The posters are up everywhere:
in shops, on walls, Trafalgar Square.
A reassuring, stoic font – it’s
just what Churchill would have wanted.
Steady words to get us through
hard times, recession. Déjà vu?
I’ve heard this rule of life before:
don’t struggle, while you’re on the floor.

You see, it’s a convenient story
that suits the power-greedy Tory:
keep the little people quiet,
crush dissent and quell the riot.
Scorn and jeer those who protest;
put up or shut up, all the rest.
The schoolboy bully’s playground law
now rules. OK? You know the score.

The propaganda’s all around.
But don’t be fooled or be confounded.
There are fights that can be fought:
at the ballot box, in court,
in pubs, in schools, in church, online
and on the streets – and there’s still time
to raise our voices ever louder,
raise our banners higher, prouder.
We’re all equal – it’s our right to
take back Cameron’s Big Society,
build a better, fairer Britain.
On every wall let’s see it written:
this is our heritage, our song –
we won’t keep calm and carry on!
 

(Andy Humphrey, July 2014)

(first published in my collection Satires (Stairwell Books, 2015)).