Tagged with Refugees

Refugees deserve an organised and compassionate EU response to their needs

REFUGEES WELCOMEThe ongoing humanitarian crisis unfolding in Europe draws attention to Member States doing the very least in response to the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War. As the world looks on, we are seeing more efforts to seal off borders within the EU as opposed to upholding human dignity – we urgently need a pan European response. It is important that we on the left continue to apply pressure on Governments across the EU, including the UK, to take their share of responsibility.

A reported 10,000 have gone missing since last year, this is a truly shameful figure which will only increase if Member States continue to drag their feet with regard to implementing the necessary policies to address humanitarian challenges and provide more safe and legal routes to Europe.   Continue reading →

Labour must show its compassion in this refugee crisis

Calais refugee https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calais_refugee_camp_4.JPGWhen the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn visited the Calais and Grande-Synthe camps on the 23 January it was his first official trip abroad as Leader of the Opposition. That someone who I personally know to have been committed to the refugee and immigration issue all of his political life this should have been a source of pride for Labour and a signal that he was willing to take on one of the toughest and most persistent humanitarian and immigration issues of recent years on the UKs doorstep.

The most shocking thing about Calais – and there are many things that shock – is that it is an issue that is very solvable with the collective response of two of the world’s biggest economies within an EU which should be cooperating on these issues. At the UAF conference on Saturday 6 February, I will be saying very clearly that only one of the UK’s political leaders has had the courage to visit both camps, speak to the refugees and NGOs face-to-face then say clearly to the media that the humanitarian and refugee issue in Calais can and must be solved. Some of the refugees who approached Jeremy Corbyn to plead for his intervention were Kurdish. Jeremy has been a strong supporter of the Kurdish struggle for human rights and self-determination for many years. So it was clear that he understood both the origins and plight of the people he was speaking to in the camp. Continue reading →

Dithering Dave and the refugees

I detest the term “game-changing“, but the wide publication of the little body of Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach touched millions of hearts coarsened by decades of anti-immigrant racism and hysteria. Having obstinately set his face against taking more refugees, Dave and his pitiful government were shamed by the huge numbers taken in by Germany, and a rare united front by the press (excepting the Express, and the Daily Star for whom the latest Big Brother was more newsworthy) who turned on his unsympathetic response to the crisis. Matters weren’t helped either by Yvette Cooper exploiting the government’s difficulties – perhaps the only leadership candidate to do so during the contest. It is to be hoped then that if any good is to come out of this tragedy, and the nameless stories of suffering and loss that go untold, let it be a stake through the toxic attitudes to refugees and migrants once and for all. Continue reading →

Why bombing would not have averted the Syrian refugee crisis

31590193_sJust a few of points by way of counterfactual theorising in response to James Bloodworth’s piece in the International Business Times about Syria and the decision not to go to war.

James’s chief contention is that, had the Commons voted to bomb Assad and his regime this time two years ago, the appalling refugee crisis and the tidal wave of suffering it unleashed might well have been averted. Or it very might well have not have done so. As it happens, I think opposing the war was the right thing and adds to Ed Miliband’s credentials as one of the most effective opposition leaders never to have won an election. But that was no triumph. Not intervening against Assad didn’t mean endorsing his crimes and utter disregard for the devastation the regime is prepared to wreak to prevent its toppling, but one cannot simply sweep wash one’s hands of it. It was clear back then that ‘doing nothing’ had consequences, and those were likely to be many more tens of thousands of deaths. The heartrending scenes from the Mediterranean today were always foreseeable. Continue reading →

Labour should make inhumanity of Tories a key electoral issue

Tories laughing at Food bank BritainThe Tory government’s decision to withdraw from the search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean where tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing their war-savaged homelands is an act of pitiless inhumanity. Already this year alone some 25,000 people have arrived in Italy, and similar numbers from Eritrea, with thousands more from Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia. The numbers who never got there and drowned on the way are not known, but they certainly run into thousands.

To back out of this humanitarian mission is callous and despicable, especially when the motive is plainly to compete with Ukip in being hostile and harsh to migrants. It is made even worse when the Home Secretary hides behind the disingenuous pretext that saving lives only encourages more persons to risk this treacherous escape route. It is a shameful indictment to Britain’s reputation as a haven to the persecuted that the UK has resettled less than a tenth of the number of Syrians taken by Germany and Sweden and is now washing its hands of a fundamental humanitarian duty. Continue reading →