Refugees welcome here

'The plight of refugees in Calais and Dunkirk is an affront to our common humanity which demands action by both France and the UK.'

‘The plight of refugees in Calais and Dunkirk is an affront to our common humanity which demands action by both France and the UK.’

Left Unity Principal Speaker Felicity Dowling poses solutions to the refugee crisis.

More than a million migrants have come to Europe. But 742.5 million people live in the European Union so this is little more than a tenth of 1% of the EU population. Far smaller countries host far bigger refugee populations. Lebanon with just over 4 million people hosts 1,172,388 refugees Turkey has a refugee population of 1,838,848, Pakistan 1,540,000. The European Union can certainly manage its refugee crisis if its huge wealth is deployed to do so. Its economy generates a GDP of over 14 trillion euros, making it either the largest or second largest economy in the world.
What is needed is the political will. The ‘threat to Europe’ is a mirage. When Valls, the French prime minister, says “Migration could kill off the European Union” we know he is using it as an excuse, an opportunity to inflict more right wing policies, more threats to the life and wellbeing of migrants and settled people alike. Naomi Klein named this use of an event as ‘Shock Doctrine’; the deluge in New Orleans was used as an excuse for imposing neo liberal education policies and stripping out the wealth of poor and black areas, the tsunami in 2000 the excuse to steal the coast from fisher folk and give it to luxury hotels, the banking crisis of 2008 to impose entirely unrelated austerity projects.

Diane Abbott MP showing solidarity with refugees in Calais

Diane Abbott MP showing solidarity in Calais

Valls, like Blair before him, becomes a mouthpiece for brutal neo liberal policies despite his election as a socialist. What we need are political voices like that of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, visiting Calais and Dunkirk, stating ‘The plight of refugees in Calais and Dunkirk is an affront to our common humanity which demands action by both France and the UK.’ Those in Europe who still espouse austerity cannot see their lie is dead. A new and possibly worse economic crisis of capitalism is threatening. Using the refugee crisis as a threat to the project of European solidarity is dicing with death. Reaction is already primed and growing in many of the countries of Europe through the hardship and helplessness of earlier policies. Further reactionary policies could see the far right really take off as a movement. Once such a movement is under way, those who built it cannot control it any more than those who funded Hitler could control him.
Europe is hugely wealthy yet many millions are unemployed, under employed or not employed in their own professions or trades. What is needed is to provide housing for people already in Europe and for the refugees. Housing is one of the best generators of wealth and economic growth. Build the houses, put people to work, all the people with the skills required, including the migrants. What is needed is health care. Provide the health care; put all the people to work who have the skills, including the refugees. The press says at least one female emergency medicine consultant has been a refugee in the Calais jungle.
What is needed is education. Put all the teachers to work, including the refugees. Offer work to retired teachers. What is needed is immediate shelter. Put every house to use, including those left vacant for speculation. Let the refugees with families already in Europe join the families who yearn for them.

Let the people build. The jungle at Calais was approaching habitability by the work of the migrants and volunteers, until the bulldozers moved in. Use the skills of the migrants and the volunteers.
Build the prefab shelters now, not just for migrants but for any in housing shortage. The streets of London provide cruel cold and dangerous beds for the capital’s growing numbers of homeless
What is needed is respect for human rights and human dignity. Let’s challenge the segregation of the migrants by red doors or by camps. Rich people moving to the UK or other parts of the EU are not subject to such indignities; neither should those displaced by war and catastrophe. The rich choose where they live. The poor and the migrant often are allowed no such freedom.

Turkey must be challenged to stop the people smugglers and to open a land route to Greece. Don’t let reactionary governments go unchallenged. Turkey is as guilty as the EU in this political game which uses migrants as pawns.

Greece must be fully funded by the EU to support their work with migrants. The cruel austerity which makes many Greeks homeless and poverty stricken must be addressed. All humans have the right to shelter and the right to decent lives. Let’s remember, Europe – and even Greece – is rich. That wealth though is not in the hands of the elected government of Greece. It is only austerity and politics that prevents Greece managing this human crisis with dignity and competence.

Each country in the EU must play their role.

The UK must take in the Calais and Dunkirk refugees, many of whom will go to supportive families.
The left in the UK must continue to press for both the end to austerity and for the displaced to be welcomed. It’s time to mobilise the resources and political will of the richest society on the planet to manage the refugee crisis.
We cannot ignore the roots in war of this crisis. As well as standing up to the appalling political manipulation of the right wing religious fanatics of ISIS and co, we call for an end to the war in Syria, we demand peace talks now. We call for an end to the wars in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq. We support huge EU investment in these countries once democratic peace is established.
We recognise that austerity and war are two sides of the same coin, of neo liberalism. Both need to be rejected to build the type of society that benefits all its citizens, irrespective of race and country of origin.
What is needed is a mass movement of the left across Europe, challenging the accepted wisdom of the neo liberals, challenging the rights of capital over people’s lives and the environment, challenging war as an accepted tactic of European governments. We must challenge and offer a real and tangible alternative. Such a movement heard in every country of the EU could change Europe and change the world.

Another Europe is possible #ChangeEurope now! A better world is possible!



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