Three Rivers

Look

Imagine a island where the party never ends

Where it's less about money and it's more about friends

Where the vibes can't done

It's less about funding and more about fun, tropical sun

That's life in the '60s coming from the Caribbean

You know Ian, Delroy, Vivian, Winston

Who got drafted to England

Windrush babies from Kingston go Brixton

To say they're the life of the party you are wrong

My Jamaicans the entire party

You can't see?

Big Notting Hill carni, you can't see?

And the rides fibreglass, G, you wan see?

Imagine a place where you raise your kids

The only place you live says you ain't a Brit

They're the deporting our people and it makes me sick

Cah they were broken by the country that they came to fix

It's like

(They came at the invitation of the British government

Their passports were stamped

Indefinite leave to remain

But for some who were children then

That was a false promise)

(Thirty-seven years of paying taxes

And I got a letter saying that I was an illegal immigrant

I came to England at the age of ten

And I've lived here all my life)

Look

Imagine a world that's flawed and full of evil

Where dictators and leaders are persecuting your people

The bodies of the innocents are piling to the steeples

The ironic part is they're preying on the feeble

That's life in the '90s, you're Eastern European

And you're seeing people dying 'cause they're fighting for their freedom

They show you violence for having a voice

You move out with your kids in hope of having a choice

Life throws you a spanner, you can't handle the pain

So you gamble and you're drink and then you gamble again

You argue with your wife and then you sleep on the couch

You hit your children and start freezing 'em out

You try and work things out but it's never the same

All the women in your household are living afraid

When you look into the mirror you're reminded again

That you've become the dictator you were fighting against

It's like

(We our fighting for our rights, for our motherland

We are fighting for our homes

Fighting for our, our families)

Look

Imagine a world that's fucked and untrue

Where the many pay a price for the few

And every day the sun rises a little later

That's how it is when your oppressor is your liberator

That's right now living in the Middle East

Praise Allah for the peace

Death from a sky littered with stars

You run away with your kids so you can give 'em a chance

But your asylum has got you in a different war

Becah the British wanna know what you're living here for

We rely on migration more than ever before

They're key workers, but they couldn't even get in the door

When you're at Heaven's gates what are you telling the Lord?

You wouldn't even let a kid into some steadier shores

That's a life they may never afford

Surely you would wanna give your people chances that were better than yours

No?

(In ten years of conflict

Nearly twelve thousand children have been killed or injured)

(The children here are just a tiny fraction of the estimated six billion

In need of emergency humanitarian assistance

It's thought perhaps as many as three million no longer live in their own homes

And up to two million children no longer attend school

The opportunities of this generation have been changed forever by this conflict)