Another Imperial Day

You could be there on a dark October night

Waiting for the moment to be swimming

'Cross the freezing river

Holding a plastic bag of belongings just out of the water

Climbing up the banks on the other side

Hiding in the trees so cold

That you hardly show as a target

On the heat seeking gear of the border patrol

But you made it, you're another one over

Sleeping on a bench in a railway station

In the heart of Europe

Haven't eaten anything for two days straight

But where there is a will there's always gonna be a way

And every door is guarded and every guard costs money

So the women are bought and kept

And raped and sold as slaves

Because the family borrowed from the man

And the man has always got to be repaid

For the deals of the borders and the fake IDs

And the stolen passports all locked away

While the women are working and gagging down on their knees

And somewhere in the back of terminal 3

In the clogged-up corridors of the imigration authorities

Whole families with the wrong bits of paper

Are waiting to be sent back to where they came from

Escorted by officials out across the tarmac

With their wrist bound tight with cable ties behind their backs

It's dawn and there's fog in Rotterdam harbour

And the guard's on his break and the dogs are chained by the wire

Three figures come out from behind the cranes

Make across the train tracks

Climb aboard a Panamanian freighter headed for the Isle of Grain

Find a place to hide in a stack of containers

Another payload of world trade because

Goods are free to move but not people

Oil is free to move but not people

Jobs are free to move but not people

Money is free to move but not people

And today they got a man hauled off a truck in the port of calais

We watch him in silence as they lead him away

Clutching his battered suitcase

But his face betrays him, lost and scared and defeated

Sitting in the back of the white port authority van

Well, where do any of us come from, it's pretty hard to say

While high in the sky above us tonight

The bombers are heading the other way, south and east

Into the blood red crimson sunrise of another imperial day