I was privileged to represent Lewisham Deptford at Labour’s London Regional Conference where I moved our motion on Refugees and Asylum although it covers other issues of immigration. Below/overleaf are the words of the motion and the notes I used to speak. …
Afghanistan, and now?
Afghanistan is now dominated and controlled by the Taliban. This has happened a week after the US withdrawal. Joe Biden announces that the mission was never about “state building’; let’s hope the people of the NATO nations learn that NATO can never act as such a force, and that ‘liberal interventionism’ is recognised as the oxymoron it truly is.
The pictures of those seeking to leave Kabul are heart rending and I for one feel impotent and partly guilty at the same time.
We owe a duty to the people of Afghanistan that want a better life and the first thing to do is consider our national refugee policy and how we welcome them. First we need to let them in, and second to stop sending them back.
We need to welcome them, and ensure that they can live, love and learn. This will involve changing our approach to a number of immigration policy issues.
Priti Patel’s Borders Bill, which arguably breaks international law on the rights of refugees, must be suspended, and the Immigration Act 2014 needs, at the least, major revision. This isn’t a debate on quotas or points and the hostile environment makes it impossible for immigrants to live; we should be proud that refugees want to come here. I’d add that some of my immigrant members are shocked at the injustice they face at work and the lack of remedy. Britain was meant to be famous for fair play.
I’ll leave the foreign policy lessons for another time. …
Some thoughts about Assange and Asylum
Last week, the Ecuadorian Government granted Julian Assange, currently holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, diplomatic asylum. Mark Weisbrot wrote in the Guardian as to why someone had to stand up for human rights, and HMG, in the person of William Hague, states in a remarkably balanced statement why the UK government feels bound to complete the extradition to Sweden. …