The pyramid of power
By Jim Aitken
We were the slaves and then the serfs,
we were the peasants, no better than the serfs.
Later we were indentured slaves, not much
better than the real ones who were black. We
were told we were better than them, of course.
We were the convicts, some of us mere children,
sent to colonise lands that were far away,
forced to labour under the sun, beaten, abused
by other masters back home given power over us.
We were told we were better than the natives.
We were the industrial workers of the world,
leaving the countryside for the dank, dark cities.
We worked underground for coal, above ground
in factories and mills, fiery furnaces, shipyards.
And we were fed the myths about the glorious Empire.
We lived in squalor while those in power lived
in stately homes with green spaces and fresh air.
We came together to form trade unions so that
we could win better wages and better conditions.
And our unions were vilified, victimised and hated
By those in stately homes. And our great Empire
was in competition with those foreigners who ran other
Empires, and the stately home brigades of those nations
took us to war, again and again. And it was never our fault.
And we were taught to hate these other foreign nations.
Then they took all our jobs away in the mines, the mills,
the factories and shipyards, in fiery furnaces too.
Our trade unions simply had to be disciplined but we
still had to love our nation, our wonderful monarch,
and be proud of our great role within the world.
And it seems exactly the same today with our latest jobs
that still remain. They will be gone just as before
by the latest technologies designed to do away with us,
with our labour, demean us as lazy, idle scroungers
while making even greater profits maximised by our absence.
They always needed our labour to make their vast profits,
they extracted it from us, expropriated it from us.
And now they have found a new way to achieve this
without our labour, by using the latest technology
to get rid of us for good, for the time that’s left. But we must
hate others as before, like the Muslims and the migrants
who threaten our wonderful way of life, our flag-waving home.
For we must still love this country, our monarchy, our class divisions,
may they long reign over us, coerce us, fool us and degrade us
until maybe we realise that we have all had enough of them.
