In the shadow of Belmarsh
where political prisoners breathe through concrete
IRA veterans counting decades in their cells,
Julian Assange's ghost still bleeding through the walls,
they chose this courthouse like a surgeon chooses scalpels,
psychological theatre staged where dissent goes to die.
This was never about flags.
This was about the children—always the children
their small hands reaching through rubble
that our taxes bought,
whilst Starmer's fountain pen
signs death certificates
in diplomatic blue.
They moved court dates like chess pieces,
chose Belmarsh's shadow for maximum intimidation,
but empires make the same mistake:
they think fear travels in straight lines.
Coffee steam rising from paper cups like prayers,
voices weaving Gaeilge through Arabic,
Kneecap Hill called to us
not just any hill, but this hill,
London clay soft with centuries of rain
and the bones of the conquered.
I gripped the tricolour's wooden spine,
felt my great grandmother's hands inside mine,
felt every famine, every clearance,
every stolen acre pulsing through the pole
as we climbed towards the courthouse windows
that reflected nothing but our own faces.
The earth gave way like a confession
London clay opening to receive
A green, white, orange declaration,
and when the fabric snapped taut
in Thames wind,
it sounded like a bone breaking,
like a chain snapping,
like the first word
of a language
they thought they'd killed.
Police radios crackled panic:
"Subjects have... planted... requesting guidance on..."
Whilst we stood on Kneecap Hill
born in one defiant thrust,
named in the moment of its making,
sovereign for as long as we could hold it.
An elderly Palestinian woman
climbed our liberated slope,
touched the Irish flag with fingers
that remembered olive groves,
whispered "Ahlan wa sahlan"
welcome home
in a voice that made the Thames
sound like the Jordan,
made London clay feel like Hebron stone.
A Belfast activist learnt to say
"Min al-nahr ila al-bahr"
whilst Mo Chara's freedom
hung on legal technicalities
and Starmer's political computation
how many Palestinian children
equal one British arms contract?
The courthouse windows became mirrors,
our colours blazing back
at the building where they cage
anyone who dares to count the dead out loud.
Victory came like lightning splitting bone
time limits failed their prosecution,
but sweeter still:
every attempt to silence Palestine
through Irish throats
multiplies into movements
Starmer cannot calculate,
cannot contain, cannot control.
We march through London's arteries,
Palestinian flags snapping like synapses,
accidentally united by their own violence,
the taste of tear gas and hope
mixing on our tongues,
whilst behind us Kneecap Hill
holds our tricolour against the sky
proof that some ground,
once claimed,
becomes the seed
of every future uprising,
the coordinates
for revolutions
not yet born.
This is not beginning.
This is continuation
the same song our grandmothers sang
in different keys,
the same flag our children will plant
in different soil,
whilst Starmer's fountain pen
runs dry
and his miscalculations
bloom into the very future
he was never taught
to fear.
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