Who was Martin Niemöller?
The story of the poem’s author is interesting. A German pastor, he at first was an anti-semite and even supported Adolf Hitler. Because he believed the propaganda lies and just ‘went along with the crowd’.
Later on when he realised the truth, he spoke out against the Nazis. And spent years in concentration camps. And always expressed deep regret that he had not done enough to help Jewish people.
So this is not a poem of looking down on others, but of asking others to learn from his mistakes. Martin spent the rest of his life as a pacifist and anti-war activist, and also campaigned for nuclear disarmament.
A bit like Bartolo Longo (a former satanist who became the Catholic saint responsible for the Luminous mysteries), sometimes it’s those that made the biggest mistakes – who have wisdom to teach us.
The danger of ‘It doesn’t affect me’
This is the main premise of this beautiful poem. Most of us with any empathy can see that if someone has a child, it should be hard to vote for bombs to kill other people’s children. That’s just one example.
Recently, a radio presenter lamented that children were being removed from baking hot old school classrooms, saying they should just ‘get on with it’, and stop worrying about climate change. As he sat in his expensive air-conditioned offices (this summer, nurses were literally fainting from the heat on shifts). Many more people were dying, and masses of wildlife killed in wildfires.
People vote to cut foreign aid bills – it’s not their children, so what does it matter? They vote to destroy the planet and all its creatures by drilling for oil – but they won’t be the whales and dolphins who die from oil pollution or shock from noise. So what does it matter to them?
Innocent Jewish people in Israel are not the same as a government responsible for over 70,000 people (including 20,000 children) killed in Gaza, many others left without limbs. Hamas has committed atrocities towards Jews. But the aftermath has no sympathy for victims either side.
A warning against indifference
The fascists excluded, it was not so long ago in England that all the main parties were run by pretty decent people. Whatever you agreed or didn’t:
- The Tory MP had a strong belief that he or she could help people to be a success without state interference.
- The Labour MP was sometimes from working men’s clubs or a former miner, who wanted to speak up for working class people.
- Lib Dems were a bit wishy-washy but still nice people, as were SNP and Plaid Cymru.
- Greens obviously wanted to save the planet, and campaigned for world peace (still do).
- Monster Raving Loony (and now Count Binface) were a laugh, but often with some good policies!
But what have we got now?
Conferences where peaceful protestors (yes she heckled but she wasn’t violent) are hit on the head and have their hair pulled. While the party elite say things like the assailant ‘should have got a medal’, and spectators look on in glee. And the party leader responds to a concerned young climate activist with his jolly (boring) song of ‘boring, boring, boring!’
We have a Tory leader who is trying to outdo Reform by u-turning on policies that would see our planet burn and people end up homeless. And disabled and other vulnerable people likely go without food.
We have a Labour party who is considering also burning the planet by drilling for oil and gas, when affordable free home insulation, walkable communities and plastic-free communities means we need no more wind turbines, nuclear reactors or fossil fuels.
And we have a massively biased media, who don’t call any of this out, preferring soundbites and newspaper sales over telling the truth.
Read the poem ‘First They Came’
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
