Fourteen Years

Fourteen years have torn the nation’s soul,
Ripped it apart & warped it with hate,
History will recount the Tory toll.

Austerity, Brexit, Windrush, Grenfell,
Atos, Partygate, Do Not Resuscitate—
Fourteen years have torn the nation’s soul.

Social murder of 300,000 souls
Defenestrated from the welfare state—
History will recount the Tory toll:

Duncan-Smith, Miller, Coffey, Stride: roll
Of dishonour scratched on a suicide slate—
Fourteen years have torn the nation’s soul.

Foodbanks, homeless spikes, poor doors: portals
To Osborne’s Brutannia, May’s hostile template,
History will recount the Tory toll.

The fourteen-year trauma in rhetorical scroll:
FIT FOR WORK. MAKE WORK PAY. STOP THE BOATS. HATE
MARCHES. SICKNOTE CULTURE—score the nation’s soul.
History will recount the Tory toll.

The Spanish Plume (¡No Pasarán!)
On the far right anti-immigrant riots of 30 July-5 August 2024

¡No Pasarán!
¡No Pasarán!
To those who want their country back
All over again
Who want to stop the boats
The immigrant Armadas

Post-Southport
Colophon
¡No Pasarán!
¡No Pasarán!
White riots & arsons of hostels
Giving refuge to refugees
The pearl-before-swine white
& gammon red
Of the St George Cross
The florid grimace
The shaven head

(The Butcher’s Aprons
That prop up a principleless prime minister
Patriotic optics
Of this empty suit
Who puts “country” before “party”
In his Government of “Service”
At the travestied altar
Of failed austerity)

Race riots
What was it Enoch Powell once said…?
Now frog-faced Farage
Nazi-cut Tommy Robinson
(Stephen Yaxley-Lennon)
With his Agincourt haircut
& his EDL Lads
Of Dale & Fell
Come to tramp our standards down

¡No Pasarán!
To these tinpot fascists
& Greggs-sated racists
Temperatures creeping up
As the Spanish Plume turns England’s rump
Boiling crimson
To a gammon shank,
A piglet on a spit.

[Note: Spanish Plume: a plume of warm air that we experienced in August 2024
¡No Pasarán!: They Shall Not Pass! Anti-fascist slogan of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)]

He Never Promised Us a Rose Garden

It started there fourteen years ago
The rosettes were blue & yellow then,
Now the rose is red—though fast-fading
To compromising pink, almost purpling—
But the rhetoric is as thorny as before,
Pricked with hackneyed tropes once deployed
To precipitate austerity;
Now, the government, under the banner
Of Labour (but Labour In Name Only:
LINO), even lack the imagination
To use their own idiolect to announce
A recursion of cuts, trot out exactly
The same prickly phrases:
“Difficult decisions”, “tough choices”,
“All in it together" (haven't we all heard
That one before? & taken the punchline
Straight on the chin), & what we all
Desperately hope (though hope is not something
He promised) is actually meant this time—
That: “The biggest burdens” will fall
On “the broadest shoulders”—will they,
This time? Or is this code once again
For not-very-covert evisceration
Of the tattered remnants of the welfare state?
Too terrible to contemplate—
October bodes ominous: another butcher’s
Budget, Reeves taking a fiscal cleaver
To everything... The latest Starmerite
Betrayal as he straps himself into his
Blue-&-white-striped apron... “Country
Before party”... everything, seemingly,
Before party, until he forgets which party
He’s supposed to be leading...
But would it be betrayal? He might
Have sloganeered on a ticket of “Change”
But he otherwise made few promises,
Offered caution & stability,
I.e. more traditional Conservatism,
Less chaotic (emptily patriotic,
Cue ubiquitous Union Jacks that flank him
Wherever his flushed poker face surfaces),
But he never promised us a rose garden.

Culture Matters is proud to commemorate Black History Month 2023 and mark National Poetry Day with the first of four new poems by the award-winning writer Jenny Mitchell, under the heading British History is Black. This work examines the legacies of British transatlantic enslavement, looking at the impact on shared identities, ambition, personal safety and home.

Why four poems? Because Black History Month can often seem like a tick box exercise, and Culture Matters is committed to publishing work all year round that aims to challenge outmoded notions of ‘race’ and equity.

These poems have been written to stimulate new thoughts and lead to new questions. Culture Matters will post one poem a week during October; feedback from readers is welcome on Twitter/X at #Culturematters and on Facebook at Culturematters2019.

Great British Voice

by Jenny Mitchell

When mother sails to England – 1958 –
chin higher than a ship’s carved figurehead –
she’s followed by a huddled mob, white

faces coming close as if a dozen moons have
dropped, fists clenched, breath thick with beer,
each spit-stained curse shadowing the hospital

where she works at night, sun rising like a coin,
earning measly pay to be sent home, as she called
Jamaica then – aging mouths to feed. The mob

tears at her clothes, grabbing for the pay, coins
spinning on the road, but she stands her ground.
I is a British citizen. Me passport have a stamp.

You want to see me cry eye water? Never.
Not for you. Me farder fight in World War One.
Two bruder fight in World War Two. What medals

do you have? Men kick her to the ground, shout
above her screams, Listen to the monkey grunt!
They cough up phlegm, shower her with thick

contempt, running as she stands, limping to the
small bedsit shared with all those mice, crying
as she bathes the wounds, thinking it’s her voice

that has to change as skin cannot be white.
She puts Jamaica in a box, accent jailed for life,
no more haitches dropped. Adding them

to oranges doesn’t really help, still a victim
of attack walking down the streets, even when
she cries for help, using her Queen’s English.