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Deportation

by 'Les Paul's' (The Paul's)

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Deportation from Is It Reggae? an album by ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) at www.paullyrics.com/album/is-it-reggae.
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In the 60’s and 70’s the black community in London, who had been invited by the British government to work on London’s transport system and health service were subjected to open institutionalized racial discrimination that even extended to so-called TV comedy shows such as Love Thy Neighbour where the black neighbour was referred to as a “nig-nog” or “Sambo”. This is the back drop to our ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) new Reggae song Deportation. I should add that one of my Mother’s black neighbours in North London was recently deported after living 40 years in London as she came as a child of parents invited by the British government to work in London, she worked for the National Health Service (The N.H.S.0 and they all had British passports but the British government decided that when she was 16 she should have asked to remain in the UK. No-one told her this at the time and so she was subject to deportation and she was deported with Canada being the only country that would agree to take her, and this is happening to this day in the UK.

lyrics

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Deportation lyrics
4,000 miles on the banana boat my dad he came
To work on London’s buses and trains
From his sunny home in the Caribbean
To cold grey wet lands of the European

All of his bosses they were white
He had no equal employment rights
He’d often work 14 hour days
He never got promoted nor got praise

He did the jobs the whites wouldn’t do
The harder he worked the more their discrimination grew
They housed him in a dirty slum
Paid for by half of his income

Enoch Powell wanted a Ministry of Repatriation
Maggie Thatcher said ‘We live in an Alien Nation’
Racial discrimination from governmental organizations
What they wanted was deportation
Deportation, deportation, deportation

He never complained, never cursed
His wife was an NHS nurse
She wasn’t white nor a Christian
She was a hard working black woman
But was selected too for deportation
Deportation, deportation, deportation

They helped build London Transport and the N.H.S.
They were deported with the rest
No one helped them fight their deportation
They never received compensation
For their deportation, deportation, deportation

After 30 years they kicked them out
They didn’t understand what it was all about
Government
said ‘You got no right to appeal’
It wasn’t a bad dream it was real
Deportation, deportation, deportation

Now they sit on their porch in Spanish Town
Watching the Caribbean sun go down
Still believe when told it was a new regulation
That’s why they were the subject of deportation

They were the subject of racial discriminations
Practiced by a sovereign nation
Used and abused then thrown away
Has anything changed, who can say, who can say?

Deportation, deportation, deportation

Music composed and performed by Paul Odiase BMI No. 1252265 (Switzerland)
Song lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas PRS No. 497904008 (London)

credits

released April 8, 2022
Music composed and performed by Paul Odiase BMI No. 1252265 (Switzerland)
Song lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas PRS No. 497904008 (London)

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'Les Paul's' (The Paul's) London, UK

'Les Paul's' (The Paul's) are a prolific dynamic song writing duo of ex-Londoners, singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and actor Paul Odiase and song lyricist Paul Robert Thomas. Check them out at www.facebook.com/LesPaulsThePauls and their new interview at realmusichype.com/interview-with-les-pauls-the-pauls

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