HER MAJESTY’S MURDERERS (WEEKLY POEM)

HER MAJESTY’S MURDERERS

A compensation action has been launched in the High Court on

behalf of 44,000 Kenyans with claims that British officials used

torture and murder to suppress the 1950’s Mau Mau rebellion.

Our Government’s colonial past

Will haunt them all and how!

Malayan, Aden, ‘Terrorists’,

EOKA and Mau-Mau.

The torture and the killing that,

Their people tried to hide; (1)

Of ‘Freedom Fighters’, who’d be that,

If they were on our side.

CHORUS

Thank God for British values then,

And the stiff upper lip;

The murder of those Kenyan chaps,

Was just another blip.

The government will also claim,

It wasn’t their own fault;

And when they lose their last appeal,

Will settle out of court.

In an attempt to thus prevent

The details coming out;

Of what their old colonial rule,

Was really all about.

CHORUS

Let’s pray for Britain’s Empire and,

Ask God to give us thanks;

For being so much better than,

The Commies or the Yanks!

It wasn’t just to bring them Christ,

Or dirt roads or tin schools;

To civilise them like ourselves,

Or some such load of balls.

The reason for our Empire was,

To rape in every way;

Colonial people and their land, (2)

And now we’re going to pay.

(1) HM Government covered-up the murders and torture. 12,000 Kenyans died

and 1000 were hung. A policeman who resigned had his letter suppressed.

EOKA (AY-OH-KA) were the ‘terrorists’ in British colonial Cyprus in the 1950s.

(2) 1.5 million Kikuyu owned 5,200 sq km of land—30,000 white settlers owned 31,000 sq km.

© Richard Layton