JAMAICAN poet Claude McKay and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would have been unlikely allies. However it was Mackay's If we must die that Churchill turned to during the Second World War to help inspire the British and persuade the Americans to enter the war.
Except that he never credited the Jamaican.
Given Churchill's pro-colonial stance his use of the poem is viewed as more than a little ironic. Written in 1919 it was McKay's response to racist violence across America and his words took on wider meaning to symbolise resistance elswhere in the world, including of course, against Nazi Germany.
Contemporary Jamaican poet, Lorna Goodison, has been campaigning to get McKay his credit. Click here to listen to an interview with Goodison about the issue, broadcast on the BBC today:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
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