Hadleigh folk, for one more time

Let me address you all in rhyme

'Tis I, Wat Tyler, once a local

Though long dead, still somehow vocal

Peasants I led, back in the day

A revolting bunch I'm proud to say

But that was then, the tides have swelled

A million times since I rebelled

Now I can only watch you strive

Yet I don't envy those alive

For many, little warmth or food

How come God's favour's still so skewed?

"Alright", you say, "you've said all this

Before and, Wat, we get the gist.

Has something else now got you vexed?

If not, let us say 'thank you – next'.

We have enough upon our plates

A plague, a war, high interest rates

No more advice please, dead wiseacre

You fourteenth century troublemaker."

My Hadleigh crew please hear me out

Another villainy's about

Two hundred years I thought it gone

From the fields of Albion

The lowest form of knavery:

The curse of legal slavery

I hear the slogan 'Stop the Boats'

A desperate ploy for desperate votes

And with it hiding in plain sight:

The extinction of our rights

Slave owners will not be pursued

The slaves are free to be abused

What has become of this great isle

That folk so eagerly defile

Have you forgotten how we fought,

Is history no longer taught?

My name alongside many more

Like Wilberforce and Hannah More

And Granville Sharp and Sir John Holt

Whose words, I pray, give you a jolt:

"As soon as someone sets his foot

On English ground he's free" – well put!

Have you forgot a man's a man

From Hadleigh or Afghanistan

Or white or brown or sky-blue pink

Is slavery deserved, you think?

And women and, God, children too

Should they be slaves, in England's view?

You think me low, a ne'er-do-well

And yet I know of which I tell

I was a slave of sorts - a serf

But this new law? By Christ, it's worse