Helen Cochrane

Illustrator - Freelance. My opinions

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@Daractenus 1 apple = 100%, however 2 apples minus a banana is the same as a 600 dollar truck reduced by 10. Why don't people get this?????

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

NEWS: Bette Midler just released a new music video for her remake of "All You Fascists Bound to Lose"—featuring Barbara Hershey, other celebrities, and crowds from the No Kings protests in a joyful, powerful show of resistance.

You have to see this.

[Sam @SamCKx]

I can no longer hold my tongue seeing the utter lies being spread about Britain, our history of migration, and how this country was built into what it is today. For those so deeply buried in fake news, manufactured outrage and billionaire‑funded propaganda, I’m going to lay out the truth – and exactly why you’re being fed all this poison.

Britain was never a sealed white island. From Roman times there were African soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and living in British towns, people from across the empire walking these roads nearly 2,000 years ago. Through the Middle Ages and Tudor England you still find Black people in the records – sailors, craftsmen, servants, musicians – even Black musicians at the royal court and Africans being baptised, marrying and being buried in English parishes like anyone else. This isn’t some modern experiment; it’s older than half the castles people visit on their bank‑holiday tours.

As Britain went out into the world, the world came here. Sailors and traders from India, Yemen and beyond were arriving in British ports from the 1600s. Some of those men were practising a new faith to most Britons at the time, praying quietly in boarding houses near the docks while they worked brutal shifts in the engine rooms of British ships. Over the centuries, more people from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia passed through and settled, bringing their languages, foods and beliefs into port cities that were far more mixed than today’s nostalgia merchants like to admit.

After two world wars, the truth is simple: this country asked the Commonwealth to come and rebuild it. People from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia didn’t sneak in; they were recruited. They came to drive buses and trains, staff the NHS, work in mills and foundries, clean offices, run corner shops, open takeaways and small businesses, and yes, build prayer spaces and community centres alongside churches and temples in the neighbourhoods everyone now pretends were always “traditional” and “unchanged”. They did the work that kept Britain going while being told to go home, refused housing, and treated as permanent outsiders.

And what have they been paid back with? Scandals where people who’ve lived, worked and paid taxes here for decades get told they don’t belong. Policies designed to make life so hostile that some give up and leave. A media that uses their names, accents, clothes or places of worship as props in endless scare stories. The message is always the same: you might toil for this country, but you will never fully be of it.

So when you hear that “Britain was white until recently” or that the country has been “overrun”, understand that you don’t arrive at that belief by accident. You get there because your history has been deliberately ripped out and replaced with a comforting myth: that “real” Britain is white, homogenous, and constantly under siege from people who look, speak or pray differently.

Now look at when this myth has been turned up to max volume. Wages frozen. Housing a sick joke. Energy and food prices out of control. Public services hacked to pieces. At the same time, the number of people hoarding unimaginable wealth at the top has exploded. Funny, isn’t it, how every front page is about boats and “swarms” and “our culture”, and almost never about the landlords, hedge funds, private equity and offshore trusts quietly buying up your city and your future.

That’s because this isn’t just prejudice; it’s a strategy. If you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth, the last thing you want is ordinary people – of every colour and background – realising they have the same problems and the same enemy. Much safer if the factory worker is furious at the new family down the road. Much safer if the person who can’t see a doctor blames the nurse with an accent instead of the minister who cut the funding. Much safer if a man who can’t afford his rent spends his rage on the woman in a headscarf at the bus stop instead of the billionaire who owns half his city.

Racist rhetoric, religious dog‑whistling, all of it, exists to break solidarity. It turns neighbours into enemies and stops people seeing that Black, brown and white working‑class communities have far more in common with each other than any of them will ever have with the people flying in on private jets. It keeps you so busy policing skin colour, passports and prayer mats that you never get round to asking why your kids can’t afford a home, why your parents can’t get a hospital bed, why you’re working harder and standing still.

The real story of Britain is this: a crossroads, not a fortress. Africans on Hadrian’s Wall. Black people in Tudor courts and city streets. Sailors, traders and workers from South Asia, the Middle East and beyond in the ports. Caribbean, African and Asian workers rebuilding the country after the war, staffing surgeries and hospitals, driving cabs, running shops, cooking food, teaching kids. Today’s multi‑ethnic, multi‑faith working class is not a glitch; it is Britain. It built this place and it keeps it running.

If you’re genuinely angry about what’s happening to this country, good. You should be. But aim it where it belongs. Britain was never pure, never untouched, never “theirs” to take back. The people ruining your standard of living are not the ones risking their lives to get here, or the ones whose names you struggle to pronounce. They’re the ones buying politicians, owning media outlets, writing the story of this country so you never learn your own – and never realise who is standing beside you.

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@MattWalshBlog Next you'll be asking what they were wearing.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
— George Orwell, 1984

More irrefutable evidence that the MURDER of Renee Nicole Good by ICE Nazi Jonathon Ross was in cold blood. 😳👇https://t.co/RxJxVSkcmS

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

https://t.co/gepjUOTIdt

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

This video of Donald Trump singing “It wasn’t me” is now TRENDING.

Can we get #ItWasntMe trending to the top?

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@DefiantLs What in the critical thinking hell is happening here?

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@sciencegirl I can tell you what's NOT missing..beige.

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@CalltoActivism

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@karolineleavitt He marvelled at the marble.
He gleamed at all the gold
He huffed and puffed till he looked stuffed
Yet did what Putin told
He praises those who do not care
He targets those who do
You think that he's the one in charge
But soon they'll come for you

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@channel5_tv I watched all series with my aunty. She passed in Nov. She lived across the road. A beautiful wee human. I watched the new episode laughing & crying & remembering. Thankyou.

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

It's getting hotter.

[TheRealNetTechNerd @RealNetTechNerd]

Over 700,000 children in Gaza face catastrophic hunger. 1 in 3 under 5 is acutely malnourished. Infants are dying from thirst. This isn’t a famine—it’s engineered starvation. The world is watching. And doing nothing.#StarvingGaza

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

@MMcCombie Wishing you and family all the best for when it comes. Lang may yer lum reek 😘

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

A photo we took in the Trump tower NY in 2018 (we needed the toilet).

[Helen Cochrane @HCochraneArtist]

#PortfolioDay

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

A whale shark moving through bioluminescent algae appears to be flying through the vastness of space

[Hamza Yusuf @Hamza_a96]

Israeli forces sent Jamal, a detainee, to a hospital in Gaza to relay evacuation orders. Snipers then shot him and killed him in front of his mother.

When his body was retrieved, the evidence of torture and assault was apparent on Jamal’s body.

War crime after war crime.