How did I get here?
Snapping on a poppadom,
drinking Cobra beer.

Who set this in motion?
Dragging my father 3,000 miles across the ocean.
A head full of dreams he couldn’t abandon
ended on the night shift in Wolverhampton.

You formed this nation on mass immigration,
then blamed us for the lack of assimilation!
Who set the rules that made us the bait,
chased by skinheads on the housing estate?

Where do they hide these voices of reason?
“An Englishman’s home is his castle”—
to say otherwise is treason.

You built your Commonwealth on the backs of the poor,
from the East docks of Blackwall
to the West Bengali shore.

So don’t blame the migrants, the immigrants,
those poor refugees.
When the Empire is calling,
we all sail the seas.

For 500 years they’ve tried to divide us… it’s true.
But we’ll stand together—
for we are the many,
and they are the few!

Manjit Sahota