You could be there - on a dark October night Waiting for the moment to be swimming across the freezing river Holding a plastic bag of belongings just out of the water Climbing up the banks on the other side, hiding in the trees So cold that you hardly show as a target On the heat seeking gear of the Border Control But you made it, you're another one over Sleeping on a bench in a railway station in the heart of Europe Haven't eaten anything for two days straight But where theres a will, there's always going to be a way
And every door is guarded and every guard costs money So the women are bought and kept and raped and sold as slaves Because the family borrowed from The Man And The Man has always got to be repaid For the deals of the borders and the fake IDs And the stolen passports all locked away While the women are working and gagging down on their knees And somewhere in the back of Terminal Three In the clogged-up corridors of the Immigration Authorities Whole families with the wrong bits of paper Are waiting to be sent back to where they came from, Escorted by officials out across the tarmac With their wrists bound tight with cable-ties behind their backs
It's dawn and there's fog in Rotterdam harbour And the guard's on his break and the dogs are chained by the wire Three figures come out from behind the cranes And make it across the train tracks Clamber aboard a Panamanian freighter headed for the Isle of Grain Find a place to hide in a stack of containers - another payload of World Trade Because goods are free to move but not people Oil is free to move but not people Jobs are free to move but not people Money is free to move but not people And today they got a man hauled off a truck in the Port of Calais We watch them in silence as they lead him away clutching his battered suitcase But his face betrays him - lost and scared and defeated Sitting in the back of the white Port Authority van Well, where do any of us come from? It's pretty hard to say While high in the sky above us tonight The bombers are heading the other way - south and east Into the blood red crimson sunrise of another Imperial day