David Cameron�s refusal to act generously is not only morally wrong, it is politically idiotic when it comes to Britain�s place in Europe
The UK�s stance on the refugee crisis
Polly Toynbee
Shame on your country, thats something Germans have long lived with. The British tell only gallant tales about ourselves. Now David Cameron has shamed us all, his nasty party turning our reputation nasty.
There are times when leaders need to bring out the best in people, not cravenly bend towards the worst. We have taken a number he dared not say the number: 216.
That was only some weeks ago. Simply taking more and more refugees is no answer, he said, without blushing.
One politician, Yvette Cooper, had the nerve to stand for decency and defy public opinion. Then a picture shamed Cameron, the moment when the Sun columnists cockroaches became one dead little boy. Swarms and marauders on a tidal wave of migrants become one lifeless body in a soldiers arms.
Our history on refugees was never good: look back at our filthy press coverage of the Vietnamese boat people or the Ugandan Asians all now so easily absorbed into Britain as assets. Listen to historical self-congratulation on the Kindertransport and remember 10,000 children were taken in but torn from their parents arms because we didnt want adult Jews. The Daily Express, in 1938, resisted the powerful agitation here to admit all Jewish refugees as it would overload the basket and as the fresh tide of foreigners [are] almost all belonging to the extreme Left. Daily Mail, 1938: The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. Now heres the Mail editorial on last weeks birth figures: 27 per cent of babies born in the UK in the year to March had migrant parents, and we are experiencing an unprecedented upheaval in the make-up of a country once united by ties of language, history, creed and patriotism. No change.
When people take their children into leaking dinghies in the dark, theres nothing bogus about their desperation
Nicholas Winton and Trevor Chadwick, heroes who risked their lives getting Jewish children out of Prague to Britain, noted that requests from sponsors were often for blond-haired little girls. Perhaps it helped that the dead little boy in the sea looked so white. Baroness Warsi on the Today programme suggests we take only unaccompanied children and raped women. The sight of so many strong young men in Budapest or Calais stirs atavistic fears: we like visible victims.
It takes frighteningly little to reduce humans to trash, to turn them barely human: a day or two crammed together in the sun or a camp or a cattle truck without water or sanitation will do enough to make them disgustingly no longer like us. When they swarm over razor wire to ride trains where some will be crushed to death, they become inhuman and frightening. Dehumanising treatment makes jailers and torturers able to commit yet worse horrors, once victims no longer look like themselves. The sympathy shutter falls, keep these others out.
Empathy comes in fine gradations, as we listen to interviews with the fleeing people and separate out the worthy: the Mails report from Hungary picks on two cheery-looking young Africans who talk about wanting to see Chelsea play. Is that all they risked their lives for? Some naively offer a quote saying they want a better life, but we never hear the whole story.
When people take their children into leaking rubber dinghies in the dark to cross rough seas, knowing how many die every night, there is nothing bogus about their desperation. Once arrived, restored to dignity as the people they were, with stories and families, most with qualifications, we see them eye to eye and know them to be people
like us.
There is no political answer to this great movement of people, almost all from horrifying wars. Nations are built on an idea of exclusion us, and them outside. We pay taxes to share within our borders. But these refugees will work, contribute and become part of us. Nearly a fifth of our rapidly ageing population is now over 65: we need these people with the initiative, daring and most with the education and resources to make the terrible journey.
Shame will pursue Cameron across Europe as he negotiates a face-saving deal for his referendum. EU leaders already warn that his bland refusal to take new arrivals from hard-pressed Greece and Italy will rebound on him. That means on all of us. That takes us another dangerous step further towards the EU exit gate. And when we are no longer part of that community, why would the French, Dutch and Belgians still act as our border guards? Expect them to let anyone board boats and trains to Britain.
If shame doesnt touch Cameron, the shortsighted idiocy of his behaviour might.
The Guardian
