This famous poem by the German priest Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) came into my mind because of the orgy of hate that is being whipped up in Britain against asylum seekers. I’m currently on a large, well-equipped boat crossing the English Channel. I look in to the cold waves and think how terrifying it must be to cross this sea in an overcrowded rubber boat. Anybody who does so must be desperate.

Martin Niemöller published his confession in 1946. Before the war he was a supporter of Hitler but objected to him making religion subservient to the state. He led a group of priests opposed to Hitler. Arrested in 1937, he was in concentration camps until 1945.

The original poem speaks of socialists, trade unionists, and Jews. I have followed a long tradition in adapting the poem to the UK in 2025, but we should think as well of Nazi Germany, Russia, China, and other authoritarian regimes as well as of what is happening now in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan. I think as well of the many journalists killed in Gaza. We might like to think that we in Britain are somehow very different, but history shows that collapse into totalitarian government can happen fast.

“I did not speak out” by Martin Niemöller 

First they came for the asylum seekers
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an asylum seeker

Then they came for the Muslims
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Muslim 

Then they came for the elite
And I did not speak out
Because I was not elite

Then they came for the journalists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a journalist

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me