Scapegoat

This is the text for this song that was ommitted from the North American version of the "Tubthumper" album:

At the height of apartheid there were more black men in British jails than there were in jails in South Africa. Britain's mucky colonial past lives on, in the mistrust of anybody who isn't a whiter shade of pale - the State still institutionalises racism knowing that when the 'black ghettos' explode then white society can tell itself that its fear of 'the other' is justified...

"There has always been racism. But it developed as a leading principle of thought and perception in the context of colonialism. That's understandable. When you have your boot on someone's neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity. It's very striking to see this in the case of people who aren't very different from one another. Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren't human. They weren't like us. We had to crush and destroy them. No. It has to do with conquest, with oppression. If you're robbing somebody, oppressing them, dictating their lives, it's a very rare person who can say: "Look, I'm a monster. I'm doing this for my own good." Even Himmler didn't say that. A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression, whether it's throwing them in gas chambers or charging them too much at a corner store, or anything in between. The standard reaction is to say: 'It's their depravity. That's why I'm doing it. Maybe I'm even doing them good.' If it's their depravity, there's got to be something about them that makes them different from me. What's different about them will be whatever you can find." --Noam Chomsky

"Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain." --Aubrey T. de Vere

"Detroit was almost as far north as we ever went, but it was still full of crackers and I was always uneasy. One night Chuck Peterson asked me to go with him to a little backstage bar on the corner and have a drink, but I didn't want to go for the same old reason. But he insisted, and so we did. In a matter of minutes some woman at the bar piped out that she wasn't going to drink in the place if that nigger stood there, making it clear she meant me. Chuck wanted to answer back, but I talked him out of it and we went on to finish our drink. The next thing we knew a man came over and stared after Chuck. 'What the hell's going on?' he said. 'A man can't bring his wife in a bar any more without you tramp white men bringing a nigger woman in.' Chuck wouldn't stand for that, but before he knew it, this guy and a couple more were on him, beating him and kicking him. While everyone else stood around with their mouths open, this guy kept kicking Chuck in the mouth and saying, 'I'll fix it so you don't play trumpet tonight.' Lady Sings The Blues, Billie Holiday (with William Duff)

"The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract." --Oliver Wendell Holmes

"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." --Clarence Darrow

"Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out." --Lord Jeffrey

"Scotland Yard's Immigration Unit burst into Joy Gardiner's London flat at 7 am on the 28th July, 1993. They had a deportation order. Joy Gardiner was bound and gagged by the officers. They wrapped 13 feet of surgical tape seven times round Mrs Gardiner's head. Unsurprisingly, she went into a coma from which she never recovered. The 'official' cause of death was suffocation. Mrs Gardiner had overstayed a six month visa and the Home Office wanted her deported back to Jamaica. She had no legal aid present when the immigration unit raided. The Home Office later admitted that the deportation order was timed so that it arrived at her solicitor's office on the morning of the deportation. They'd deliberately fixed things so that Mrs Gardiner would be caught unawares by the raid. The government refused to launch a public enquiry into Mrs Gardiner's death. Three officers were charged with 'unlawfully killing' Mrs Gardiner; during the trial the judge stressed that: "the case has no political or racial aspect." On July 12, 1995, almost two years after Mrs Gardiner's death, the Police Complaints Authority confirmed that the three Met Officers acquitted of 'Unlawful Killing' would NOT face disciplinary charges." --Northern Star, 1995

By the way, the dialogue at the end of the song is from the movie "Brassed Off" a movie that was popular in England.

The Dialogue is:

"Oh aye, they can knock out a bloody good tune, but what the fuck does that matter? And I'm going to take my boys out onto the town. Thank you."

--Thanks to the Internet Movie Database for the quote.

Almost my favorite from tubthumping.