A disaster long in the making
HEARTBREAKING as the recent tragedy in the Channel undoubtedly is, with many families grieving the deaths of close relatives and friends – call them what you will, “migrants”, “asylum seekers” or “economic migrants”, the latter the favoured terminology for hard-hearted hawks in Westminster – this was an accident waiting to happen, a humanitarian disaster long in the making.
Governments either side of the Channel have long played political ping-pong with sorry souls who have absolutely nothing, bar an ephemeral hope of a better, safer life.
Weasel words – “hearts go out”, “thoughts and prayers” – emanating from the soulless mouths of a Prime Minister born in New York and a Home Secretary whose family was fortunate to wriggle into the UK before the drawbridge was pulled up, are as hollow and shameful as they are contemptuous.
But no mention that the selfsame UK and those chisellers in Whitehall who claim to be protecting it are bang to rights in both cause and effect.
Post-brexit, the UK lost its legal right to return asylum seekers, who, for the avoidance of doubt, have a legal right to seek safe passage to and refuge in the UK. Is that “taking back control”?
Second, while Johnson, Patel et al deflect and dissemble, decrying “evil people-traffickers” who undoubtedly exploit desperate folk, British political leaders have, courtesy of short-sighted, malign foreign-policy blunders, helped create the very market they now cannot stem.
Cutting foreign aid budgets was guaranteed to cast even more people into poverty and fear, while misguided militaristic misadventures in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan – the main sources of people fleeing persecution and poverty – are evidence that, for every action, there’s inevitably a reaction.
In the UK’S case, fiddling in volatile, complicated parts of the world never has – and never will – work out well. While other postcolonial powers like France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Holland keep their noses out of powder-kegs they helped create, Britain is simply reaping what it sowed.
With net migration falling, and close to half a million vacancies across key economic areas – the Nhs/care sector, HGV drivers, hospitality and agriculture, to name a few – a more enlightened approach would surely be for the
UK to demonstrate a scintilla of remorse, compassion and common sense by accepting – and trusting – these destitute people, giving them a chance. This would disrupt the migrant impasse and alleviate the nation’s recruitment crisis, and fast, before another migrant catastrophe happens.
Mike Wilson, Longniddry.
■ HAVE France and the UK considered implementing aircraft patrols to deter migrant smugglers?
I have heard reports from politicians suggesting that the French coast is too vast for surveillance.
I’m aware that the Canadian west coast, which is at least as extensive as France’s coast, is routinely aircraft-patrolled to identify illegal drug activities and for search and rescue missions.
Alice Laing, Bearsden.
■ HOW many more luckless souls will perish in the freezing waters of the Channel before politicians on both sides of that stretch of water get their act together and come up with a humane and workable solution?
Both countries have the funds and the apparatus available to address this issue, which has been allowed to fester for too long.
Despite the admitted complexities involved it is a source of deep shame that the UK and France should continue to pass the buck. The loss of these 27 poor people will, perhaps, act as a wake-up call.
One hopes that the joint patrols now offered by Priti Patel will actually come into being.
D Maxwell, Glasgow.