Statement of the Prosecution at the Trial of the Song London Bridge Is Falling Down

Honourable Justices of this Court, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like your permission to open my statement of accusation against the cursed so-called children’s song London Bridge Is Falling Down. While purporting to be a harmless ditty, this song, Your Honours, is, as I shall prove, actually an anti-civilisation, terrorist-supporting, racist, anti-social, pro-slavery, Maoist propaganda piece whose purpose is to brainwash our children and turn them into amoral monsters!

I realise that this will come as a shock to some of you, but please bear with me. As you will see, the lyrics of the song bear their own witness as to how utterly vile this piece of “harmless fun” is.

Before we go further, I would beg leave to remind the Court of the song’s actual lyrics:

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady!

Build it up with iron bars,
Iron bars, iron bars.
Build it up with iron bars,
My fair lady!

Iron bars will bend and break,
Bend and break, bend and break.
Iron bars will bend and break,
My fair lady!

Build it up with needles and pins,
Needles and pins, needles and pins.
Build it up with needles and pins,
My fair lady!

Pins and needles rust and bend,
Rust and bend, rust and bend.
Pins and needles rust and bend,
My fair lady!

Build it up with penny loaves,
Penny loaves, penny loaves.
Build it up with penny loaves,
My fair lady!

Penny loaves will tumble down,
Tumble down, tumble down.
Penny loaves will tumble down,
My fair lady!

Build it up with silver and gold,
Silver and gold, silver and gold.
Build it up with silver and gold,
My fair lady!

Gold and silver I've not got,
I've not got, I've not got.
Gold and silver I've not got,
My fair lady!

Here's a prisoner I have got,
I have got, I have got.
Here's a prisoner I have got,
My fair lady!

What's the prisoner done to you,
Done to you, done to you?
What's the prisoner done to you,
My fair lady!

Stole my watch and broke my chain,
Broke my chain, broke my chain.
Stole my watch and broke my chain,
My fair lady!

What'll you take to set him free,
Set him free, set him free?
What'll you take to set him free,
My fair lady!

One hundred pounds will set him free,
Set him free, set him free.
One hundred pounds will set him free,
My fair lady!

One hundred pounds we have not got,
Have not got, have not got.
One hundred pounds we have not got,
My fair lady!

Then off to prison he must go,
He must go, he must go.
Then off to prison he must go,
My fair lady!

The first thing that strikes us, of course, is the name of the song itself: London Bridge Is Falling Down. Let us set aside for the moment the detail that it is a bridge in London, though we shall return to it. The fact is that the song celebrates the collapse of this bridge, and uses it as its refrain.

Now, what is a bridge? Is it not the defining symbol of connection, the reaching out across barriers, which is the essence of civilisation? And by celebrating the destruction of this bridge, is not this song openly advocating the end of our modern interconnected world as we know it?

I ask you, what other interpretation can be put on this, ladies and gentlemen? If the bridges that bring us together are gone, what are we? Isn’t the inevitable consequence chaos and the disintegration of humanity into warring clans, endless violence, and the end of all we hold dear?

And this brings me to the second point: that this song, Your Honours, is blatantly in support of terrorists, in particular of ISIS and other jihadis who are out to destroy the world. We should now remember that this bridge, which is to be destroyed, is in London; a liberal, civilised, democratic Western city, steeped in civilisation and culture. Who would benefit by having the bridge in London destroyed? Who would want, more than anything else, for the structure of liberal democracy to weaken and fall?

ISIS, that’s who. That is whom this song is supporting here, Your Honours. And once London falls, how long before we are next?

Note that the song makes no attempt to dwell on the fates of those many, many people who presumably fall to their deaths along with the bridge; it is not concerned with them. They might as well be mere "collateral damage", sacrificed in the greater glory of the terrorist cause.

Today, these children are being told not to care about the death and destruction when a bridge "falls down". Tomorrow, they'll cut off heads without a qualm.

But is that all this song is guilty of, gentlemen and ladies of the Court? No! Who is the refrain of the song addressed to? Some “fair lady”. Why not to a “dark lady”? Isn’t the song perpetuating racial stereotypes, and teaching the children that fair is good?  I ask you!

All this, and we haven’t even got beyond the first stanza, Your Honours.

Let’s look at the second stanza now, and see what vile values it attempts to instil in our children. “Build it up with iron bars,” it says. Iron bars, it seems, are a reasonable enough suggestion – for our industry is built on iron, consumes enormous amounts of iron, and uses massive quantities of the metal to construct everything from cars to buildings to railways and ships, and in fact we could not exist a moment as a modern nation without iron. Yet what does the very next, third stanza, say? “Iron bars will bend and break.” Is this not an attempt to indoctrinate our children against iron, to make them mistrust it and abandon it? If not, what else is it?

Not satisfied with this transparent attempt to undermine the foundations of our industry, Your Honours, the song then says that the bridge ought to be built up with pins and needles. I can scarcely express how unscientific is the idea of constructing a bridge out of pins and needles – one would laugh it out of this Court if it was to be proposed here, Your Honours. But all the song can come up with in response is that the pins and needles will “rust and bend.” Rust and bend! Will they not have collapsed long before that? Is this not an attempt to lead our children away from modern scientific thought?

But the song makes no attempt to stop there. It then asks for the bridge to be built up with “penny loaves”. Pennies, of course, are not a coin of legal tender in this country, and one assumes that in Britain, where one can still speak of them, loaves of bread have not been available for a penny for many years, even decades, now. But that does not matter. What matters is that this song is suggesting the use of cheap food, food that would be readily available for the poorest of the poor, to build up the bridge! What kind of reprehensible moral attitude is this? And all the song can do to counter this evil, anti-people suggestion is to say that the loaves will come tumbling down! Not that they will be stolen from the mouths of the factory worker and the poor student, the shop assistant and the flower-girl; that isn’t of concern to this song. All that it is willing to concede is that the loaves will come tumbling down, something even a toddler can work out for himself!

Not content with insulting the poor, look what it wants us to do in the very next paragraph: to build the bridge back up with silver and gold. Silver and gold! The very basis of our economic security is to be poured into the construction of this miserable bridge, instead of raising funds by taxation of normal currency. And just who has silver and gold, Your Honours? Why, the noble capitalist class who are the backbone of our national economic resurgence, that’s who. This song wants us to take their wealth from them and put it into making this bridge, and in the very next stanza states that the only hurdle is that the protagonist has no silver or gold. Obviously, had he had any, it would have been perfectly in order to throw it away in bridge construction! Futile bridge construction, too, for how long do you suppose a bridge of silver and gold would last before the hoi polloi would strip it to the bone?

No wonder I said the song was evil, ladies and gentlemen of the court. But I still have more, much more, evidence to present.

Instead of providing any further suggestions for building materials, the song then pushes forward a hitherto unmentioned individual, a prisoner. One can only speculate on what fate awaits this poor, miserable man, but the song gives us good clues. Obviously, he cannot be used to form a living bridge with his body; but he can be compelled to work at the construction project, for which, being a prisoner, he will receive no pay at all and likely no such niceties as safety equipment either.

In other words, he will be a slave.

I can see you turning pale, ladies and gentlemen of the Court; but, rest assured, there is more to come. Just what crime has this poor prisoner committed, for which he is to be condemned to slave labour? He allegedly stole the protagonist’s watch and broke his chain. I would like to remind you that this poor man must have already, by this stage, lost his job when the iron industry collapsed, and then been deprived of his source of food when the penny loaves were put into this hideous effort to make the bridge out of bread. I ask you in the name of justice, what other option was open to him but to steal the watch? And all he did when he broke the chain was symbolically shatter the fetters that kept him from going free! Is that not quite clear?

Now we come to the next part of the song’s nefarious intent, its clear Maoist message. It states, in unmistakable terms, that justice is for sale, and that the poor slave can buy his freedom for a hundred pounds. Do not the Maoists keep claiming that the entire law system in this nation is for the rich? Who else but they will benefit if the children accept the fact that money will buy them justice, and those who lack it must go to prison and slavery?

In the name of the fight against ISIS and Maoists, in the name of defence of our nation and its democracy, its economic and social systems, I demand that this song be stopped at all costs!

Your Honours, we must act at once. There is simply no time to lose!

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