You call it the law, we call it apartheid, internment, conscription, partition and silence.

It's the law that they make to keep you and me where they think we belong.

They hide behind steel and bullet-proof glass, machine guns and spies,

And tell us who suffer the tear gas and the torture that we're in the wrong.

 [bad word]  

No time for love if [bad word] in the morning,

No time to show tears or for fears in the morning,

No time for goodbye, no time to ask why,

And the sound of the siren's the cry of the morning.

 

They suffered the torture they rotted in cells, went crazy, wrote letters and died.

The limits of pain they endured - the loneliness got them instead.

And the courts gave them justice as justice is given by well-mannered thugs.

Sometimes they fought for the will to survive but more times they just wished they were dead.

 

They took away Sacco, Vanzetti, Connolly and Pearce in their time.

They came for Newton and Seal, Bobby Sands and some of his friends.

In Boston, Chicago, Saigon, Santiago, Warsaw and Belfast,

And places that never make headlines, the list never ends.

  

The boys in blue are only a few of the everyday cops on the beat,

The C.I.D., Branchmen, informers and spies do their jobs just as well;

Behind them the men who tap phones, take photos, [bad word] and files,

And the man who tells them when [bad word] and take you to your cell.

 

All of you people who give to your sisters and brothers the will to fight on,

They say you can get used to a war, that doesn't mean that the war isn't on.

The fish need the sea to survive, just like your people need you.

And the death squad can only get through to them if first they can get through to you