THE Second World War brought hardship, pain and human loss across Europe on a level that caused many to pause at its end and solemnly determine that it should never be repeated. From a collection of individual nations which had fought and battered each other over centuries came the will to find a better way of living together. A way built on respect and not prejudice, on equality not national illusions of superiority. The building blocks of the European Union were laid.
I remember my dad, who had fought in that war in the RAF, telling me that working-class lads like him were determined that the country they would come back to would be a fairer one than the one they had fought and seen their friends die for. And that the same determination also lay in their hearts that leaders across Europe must find a better way to lead. Not one who called for the sacrifice of so many of their young men and women. From that came the 1945 Government and the building blocks of a fairer Britain.
But just as the Tories now and over many years before want to tear down those foundations and deceive us into thinking they were laid on sand, many leaders of European nations suffer memory loss about the essential drivers of what we now know as the EU. Our own Prime Minister is, without doubt, one of the leaders of that pack. And he shames us.
There is a major humanitarian crisis in Europe. Despite the swift turnaround of much of our mainstream media from the language of migrants and hoards to the soft words of compassion, this crisis is not new. For months, desperate people have parted with what little money they have to board rickety, dangerous boats in numbers that surely guarantee the journey will not end safely. For a while, rescue missions were portrayed as foolhardy because they only “encourage” these acts of “madness”. Bodies have been washed up on European shores in numbers. And all the while, Cameron said Britain was meeting its “responsibilities” and that we had to be careful not to increase the “pull” to Europe. European leaders wrung their hands and were merely thankful those men, women and children had not yet reached their own borders. Well, now they have and on the back of a photograph of a child’s sad and lonely death, European citizens have woken up and demanded compassionate words turn into action and the wringing hands are put to work.
So, finally, the European Commission has put forward a package of proposals that demands collective action from each member state. And in Westminster, Cameron is shamed into making concessions on numbers.
But none of us must take our eye off the ball. We mustn’t be soothed into thinking that “phew, that was close but the chaps are getting it sorted”.
Cameron’s concessions, such as they are, are paltry. Smoke and mirrors. They do not offer help to the hundreds of thousands of refugees now on mainland Europe. And the parentless children without family that he will allow to come to our shores will be swiftly deported as soon as they reach 18. None of this is new, as George Kerevan reminded us in this newspaper on Monday.
The number of children fleeing torture and death who reached our shores through Kinder Transport was hard won against the determination of the British state to allow no such thing.
And it mustn’t escape our collective notice that it didn’t take our European leaders as long to unite and come up with a plan of action to impose hardship and economic misery on Greece. When banks and the power of international finance are at stake, too many politicians seem able to act remarkably quickly. And the great irony not to be forgotten is that it is indeed Greece, that economic “basket case” that, together with other Mediterranean countries, has struggled all the while to shoulder a responsibility others have shirked.
Cameron hasn’t fallen into a pool of compassion. There has been no epiphany. He is simply calculating the minimum he can do to be seen to do the maximum.
But it was the power of ordinary voices that has forced this much. So it has to be the continued power of those ordinary voices that force him to do much more. Our collective cry of horror and anger forced the change. Our power lay behind the almost unprecedented sight in Westminster of seven political parties uniting behind a clear, simple message that the UK must do more to aid the humanitarian crisis. To honour the noble sentiments that founded the European Union.
We won’t take our eye off the ball or be soothed by warm words designed to spin and obscure.
And when Cameron tells us we must “use our head and our heart”, we’ll answer that we are perfectly capable of doing both and we demand that he hears us. And shames us no more.
Thousands will display solidarity on refugees
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