{"id":78268,"date":"2024-10-19T08:14:01","date_gmt":"2024-10-19T07:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=78268"},"modified":"2024-10-19T08:14:01","modified_gmt":"2024-10-19T07:14:01","slug":"first-they-came","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/10\/19\/first-they-came\/","title":{"rendered":"First they came"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Pottinger is a poet whose work I have admired and bought for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>The poem of his that is reproduced below was written this week. As Steve said of it in an email:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div class=\"gmail_quote\">\n<div data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"16\">\n<p>Early this week \u2013 on Monday, to be precise \u2013 I fond myself writing another poem. The starting point for this one was the horrific footage of a young Palestinian man, Sha'aban Al-Dalou, burning alive in his hospital bed after an Israeli airstike. It led me to consider the failure of so many politicians and so much of our media to take any kind of stance in opposition to an ongoing genocide, and that \u2013\u00a0in turn \u2013 led me to write.<\/p>\n<p>My thanks to both CultureMatters and Yorkshire Bylines for publishing the poem. Platforms for political poetry are few and far between, and I'm very grateful for what they do. If you've the time to click on the links to their respective webpages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div class=\"gmail_quote\">\n<div data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"16\">\n<p>Steve\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/stevepottinger.co.uk\/poems\/first-they-came\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">own site is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div class=\"gmail_quote\">\n<div data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"16\">\n<p>This is the poem:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div class=\"gmail_quote\">\n<div data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"16\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">First they came for the hospitals<br \/>\nand you did not speak out<br \/>\nexcept to say they wouldn\u2019t, and anyway, tunnels.<br \/>\nThen they came for five-year-old Hind<br \/>\nand you did not speak out<br \/>\nexcept to say, regrettable, but anyway, hostages.<br \/>\nThen they came for journalists, professors, poets<br \/>\nand you did not speak out<br \/>\nexcept to say, awful, but right to self-defence.<br \/>\nThey came for schools, mosques, aid workers,<br \/>\nanyone in the sights of a sniper<br \/>\nand you did not speak out<br \/>\nexcept to say, yeah, but most moral army.<br \/>\nNow they come for starving people in tents<br \/>\nand burn them, and you do not speak out<br \/>\nyou do not speak out<br \/>\nyou never speak out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">When they come for you<br \/>\nexpect nothing but silence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div class=\"gmail_quote\">\n<div data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"16\">\n<p>\u00a9 <em>Steve Pottinger 14 October 2024<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div class=\"gmail_quote\">\n<p>I did, of course, get Steve\u2019s permission \u00a0to reproduce it here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Pottinger is a poet whose work I have admired and bought for a long time. The poem of his that is reproduced below was<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/10\/19\/first-they-came\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78273,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78268\/revisions\/78273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}