[Intro]

The world's war

1884

History

[Chorus]

History is written by the winners, true

Sometimes though heroes are of another hue

Another religion, another point of view

Are they remembered at all? By who?

[Verse 1]

The world's war, 1884

Scramble for Africa, height of imperial force

European armies go and conquer the globe

With a gentleman's agreement to not kill off their own

So, massacres in the Congo

All the dead are Amritsar, ain't nothing wrong though

Some are less dead than others, you know why?

It's the same in the grave as it is in this life

The lower grade races, subject people

Have a different heaven and hell, there's less people

In the same way, we choose to remember

Who to lionise and who to forget all together

Not based upon the sacrifice that they made

But upon the prejudices of the time and the place

So, Chinese workers on the Western Front

That dug trenches and then filled in the graves

And made their way

Carving engravings on shell casings

Fade from the story as we tell it today

And gas, made its way across the battlefield

Choking North Africans fighting for France

They were French enough to die for the flag

But reconcile with history, it seems that we can't

The process of forgetting started at the beginning

Cos of the discomfort of who it was that was winning

[Chorus]

History is written by the winners, true

Sometimes though heroes are of another hue

Another religion, another point of view

Are they remembered at all? By who?

History is written by the winners, true

Sometimes though heroes are of another hue

Another religion, another point of view

Are they remembered at all? By who?

[Verse 2]

When you have an empire of inferior creatures

What happens when you need them to die like real people?

Through the training, and the sacrifice

Might end up believing they are equal

Go back to the land of the savages, unwilling

For subordination for people that they were killing

Quickly they erased them

Unmarked graved them

Disavowed them of any idea that things were changing

The wrong people that fought for the British flag

Were not invited to the victory parade

Did the same work, fought in the same war

Never got the same bonus when Armistice Day came

Black Americans, in segregated units

With German POWs treated better than them

Go back to America, Jim Crow and lynching

That would greet them when the war ends

Red Summer, Red Summer

Domestic terrorism put them back in their place

Vigilante mobs, Klan and the police

Collaborate while the state look the other way

Liverpool and Cardiff, Barry, London and Glasgow

After the war, similar terrorism

War broke hierarchy, supposed to be eternal

And for that, it could never be forgiven

[Chorus]

History is written by the winners, true

Sometimes though heroes are of another hue

Another religion, another point of view

Are they remembered at all? By who?

History is written by the winners, true

Sometimes though heroes are of another hue

Another religion, another point of view

Are they remembered at all? By who?