I make no apologies for the picture that heads this blog. Remember little Alan Kurdi, the two-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on 2nd September 2015, along with his mother and his brother? The family were desperate refugees, escaping a war zone in an attempt to reach Vancouver, Canada where members of their family lived. Alan’s lifeless body shocked the world, an image of what a refugee and asylum seeker looked like. A tiny human being, bereft of life. For a short while, we wondered whether attitudes to migrants might change, given the lengths desperate people would travel in order to escape tyrannical regimes, lawlessness, poverty and all the other things that drive people into the arms of people smugglers in search of a better life. A brief look at the front pages of today’s newspapers, not to mention reports on TV and radio, proves that the media, including so-called mainstream organisations like the BBC and Sky have tumbled into the gutter.
Pretty well every national newspaper’s front page leads with an attack on the government over the latest figures of people arriving on our shores in small boats, some 4% of the total of migrants. The i paper and The Times effectively call for protests at the numbers of asylum seekers in hotels, the rest attack Keir Starmer and some, like The Sun and The Mail (obviously) lead with gushing stories about Lucy Connolly who was sent to prison after calling for people to kill asylum seekers in their hotel, a victim of “two tier justice’ lies The Sun. Given that hardly anyone buys and reads newspapers these days, it is surprising indeed that they have so much influence but you can thank the likes of the BBC for that, seemingly promoting their views and helping them to sell papers.
I was not around when Adolf Hitler’s armed forces were invading the rest of Europe, but I have read enough about World War Two to recognise the language being used by the media and right wing politicians. For Jews, insert migrants/refugees/asylum seekers. It is true that more people arrived by small boats in the UK than before, but it is not reported that migration to the UK is slowing down and the vast backlog of asylum claims is being cleared. Strangely, the gutter press is not reporting on how the current mess began. Under the last Conservative government.
It was the Conservative government under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak which didn’t just start commandeering hotels to which asylum seekers would be held, they were actively boasting about it. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who is currently campaigning in plain sight to unseat the current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is the most prominent attack dog, blaming the new Labour government for the numbers staying in hotels. He even turned up in Epping in support of so-called protesters outside an hotel in which asylum seekers were being put up. But let’s go back to 2022 and see what he said when he was in government:
“More hotels have been coming online almost every month throughout the whole of this year.
“So, Suella Braverman and her predecessor, Priti Patel, were procuring more hotels. What I have done in my short tenure is ramp that up and procure even more because November, historically, has been one of the highest months of the year for migrants illegally crossing the Channel.”
Yes, that’s right. Jenrick was boasting about how many hotels had been procured by the last Conservative government and for good measure adding that he made the decision to “ramp that up and procure even more”. All this while making vast cuts to the Home Office and Justice Department, dramatically increasing the hotel procurement process. What good luck that Jenrick was there at the time to procure even more hotels to keep them in. The hypocrisy of these people clearly holds no bounds.
The far right, and their pals in the gutter press, have been stirring the pot in order to generate so-called protests. They have described Britain as a “tinderbox”, just waiting to explode, which I do not believe it was, but their campaign, if the papers are anything to go by, is beginning to work.
The new Labour government is beginning to fix the migration mess left by the last Conservative government. It is the political equivalent of turning round a large container ship, only slower. Steps have been taken to stop the gangs of people smugglers, to speed up asylum applications and to end the use of hotels to keep asylum seekers. For some people, it will never happen quickly enough, hence the hysterical front pages today and the crass and irresponsible reporting of Sky News and, sadly, the BBC.
And at the heart of everything are human beings who have left their homes for a better life. People like Alan Kurdi and his family. When people gather at hotels, calling for the people inside to be burned to death, they are referring to people like Alan Kurdi. Just another human being, like you and I. Can’t we just be a bit kinder and gentler to each other?
The migration crisis around the world is extremely complex and, given there is so much global instability especially in poorer countries, things are likely to get even worse. Add climate change and the movement of people will grow greater.
When we gather outside hotels to chant Tommy Robinson’s name or to point out that “Keir Starmer is a cunt”, can we not just stop, reflect on the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, or do we think he is just another freeloading migrant? If we think the latter, we have surely lost the plot. Ten years after Alan Kurdi’s death and we have learned nothing.
