Recently, I’ve found it very easy to get angry about what I see going on around the world, and increasingly in my own country. At the same time, I’ve been finding it difficult to see how I’m channelling that anger into anything truly productive. I’ve been reading the news, signing the petitions, tweeting far more than usual, almost got into an argument talking to a leave voter about refugees (generally not the best way to try to express your opinion to someone who disagrees), and written to my MP only to receive unsatisfactory answers. I’ve been constantly trying to act, but feeling almost completely impotent.
I spent this past weekend in London with Tearfund, at a gathering for young activists. So when I had the opportunity to go into central London on Saturday to take part in a protest against the government cancelling the Dubs scheme, I jumped at the chance to stand up and do something to physically speak out.
If you don’t know what it is, in a nutshell the Dubs scheme was an amendment made to the Immigration Act which involved the Home Office committing to welcoming 3,000 of the 90,000 unaccompanied child refugees who had arrived in Europe as part of the biggest refugee crisis since WW2. Lord Dubs, who headed up the campaign, was one of the Jewish children who arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport. Last Friday, the government backtracked by announcing during a debate on Brexit that the number would be capped at 350, of which 200 have already arrived. As Dubs then observed, “Theresa May put Britain on the wrong side of history”.
Under a Prime Minister who claims to be so passionately committed to fighting modern slavery and human trafficking, this decision is hypocritical, infuriating, and heart-breaking when you consider its entirely real consequences. Lone child refugees are among the most vulnerable to human trafficking, and as the Archbishop of Canterbury rightly said:
“At some point the vulnerability of these children must be recognised, because the alternative is they will be trafficked – it’s not going to stop at being trafficked – and they will end up in brothels, they will end up in places where they are exploited, ill-treated, manipulated, and very often finally killed.”
One reason the government gave for their decision was the incapacity of local authorities to meet these children’s needs. Yet there are councils across the country standing up to say more can be done, and there were representatives of five London boroughs at the protest confirming this. Some of the population may well be opposed to the welcoming of refugees, and of course resources and commitment are needed, but there is enough momentum to do it and to claim otherwise is defeatist and frankly untruthful. Even if it were true, you would think that something as extreme and with such high stakes as a global refugee crisis would warrant some kind of sacrifice, some kind of acceptance that we can’t just refuse to help because it’s inconvenient. The only thing we’re really missing is sufficient political will in government.
Another reason given was the supposed incentivising of children to become refugees and make the perilous journey to the UK. At the protest, a testimony of a child refugee was read out. It started: “I crossed the Sahara and the Mediterranean alone”. Can we take a moment to really absorb what that means? A child, crossing the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea, alone? I’m sure I don’t need to list the countless horrendous stories and photos that have emerged of the consequences this crisis has for children. Claiming that children would choose, or their parents would choose for them, to leave everything they know and make such a deadly journey alone just for the sake of coming to the UK, is absurd.
Children were an important presence at the protest, a reminder of the significance of childhood, and further underlining the utter shame this decision brings on the UK. There were children standing holding banners; one read “Spend 7.5m on vulnerable children not on Trump visit”. A child started a chant: “Let the kids in!”. A few metres away, children could be heard playing, reminding me of a video I saw of children playing in bomb craters in Aleppo. At the end of the protest, children were part of the group who went to 10 Downing Street to deliver a petition and a list of children identified in Italy and Greece who are eligible to come to the UK. Two of them were asked how it was when they came back, and answered, typically honest: “It was cold and they didn’t let us in”. I wondered, is that what we want child refugees to say when they’re turned away from the UK?
As a Christian, I am explicitly instructed to love others. The story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46 is a perfect illustration in this context. You can read the whole thing here, but an excerpt is:
‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. […] Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
The alternative, not acting and turning my back on those made in God’s image, is essentially a rejection of God.
January, the month so many people see as the worst of the year, is long over. February is well underway, and suddenly people seem a little more optimistic. Spring is coming. The trees still look bare and decidedly wintery, but soon green shoots will be joining the snowdrops springing up in woodlands across the country. The call to action at the protest included this image of hope: we can be those green shoots. Things don’t have to stay the way they are, and we can alter the way things seem to be going.
I thought with this post I would go back to suggesting something practical you can do. There’s a helpful list of suggestions on Refugee Action’s website, just click here.
unchainedjourneys 
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