By Paul Gander
For all who fought for this country’s freedoms, and all
who continue to campaign peacefully for them
Time won’t be kind to them, but silently condemn.
We will remember them.
*
Seeing them their first day,
those fresh-elected faces,
so different from most grey
Members of both Houses,
you’d nod your naïve head
at their polite, meaningless words,
where what was said meant less
than what needed to be heard.
These four have much in common;
though three once studied law,
not one had any worries
how an ally fought its war,
trashing every rule of war,
piling crimes against humanity.
None voiced more than polite,
meaningless banalities.
They make the law a playground
for those who need it least.
Lawyers may be costly but
some lives are cheap as beasts’.
So put on your sternest face,
growl how a line’s been crossed,
then cross that line yourself
snatching back rights to protest.
Incentivised by greed
or sensitised to fear,
they sacrifice their souls
to their fast-track careers.
What a genocide demands,
it seems, a genocide gets –
making peaceful acts illegal:
an ugly precedent is set.
When does that penny drop,
roll on from simple perks
to pomp? Can that one cog
become the whole damn works?
An array of drugs can help
navigate moments of stress,
but of all drugs, raw power
must be the very best.
When democracy’s long vanished,
these names will still be heard:
there’s Starmer and there’s Lammy,
there’s Cooper and Mahmood.
Ambition without compassion
can make a stone of the heart,
make it change, change shamefully:
a terrible precedent is set.
*
After all our freedoms are gone, after all the warnings,
we will remember them.
[All due acknowledgement and respect to Laurence Binyon and WB Yeats for the inspiration of their respective 1914 and 1916 poems.]
