No retreat, No surrender - easy to say, harder to remember,

But we do: in these smoky terraces, which are my home town,

People from across the world

Now share my home:

Huguenots and Flemish weavers remembered in the names of pubs.

The Irish fleeing famine: the O'Donnells and O'Neills on the rub

Ashkenazi Jews escaping the Czarist pogroms: the Cohens and Rabinowitz.

 Afro-Carribeans, the Patels from India and Pakistan,

Hindus and Chinese restaurants: Chinatown, the curry mile

People's History Museum:Manchester Jewish Museum

Yoga and temples, meditation and dharma,

The open Gurdwaras

Sikhs who welcome all.

 

But now we're faced with a black, black wall

The world has brought us

The nuts and bolts of terror:

The slaughter of the innocents

An overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety.

Manchester remains: a Standard Bearer

Of tolerance and respect

While others seek protection from this miasama - this new black death -

By curtailing liberty, free speech:

 

There will be no war of each against each..

 

These smoky terraces have leached away so-many broken hearts:

Hearts broken by the mud of Passchendaele, the sands of the Western Desert

Jihadi - heaven is just a fucking decoy,

A lie bought by the broken bodies of girls and boys,

This blackest lie of the blackest of arts

Has no part in the heart of these smoky terraces.