And then there was August (and some of September) part 1

Once again, August threw up a very mixed bag of experiences and emotions. There have been opportunities to rest and reset and some truly joyous shared moments filled with light and laughter ... but there has also been frustration, anger and tears. September looks like it is following a similar pattern.

The more comfortable parts to write about might be the joyful bits, of which there have been plenty, and I will do that too some point soon. But the more necessary things to write about are definitely all the other stuff. All the stuff that is sapping my energy and making it that little bit harder to keep seeking out hope and light in a world that feels increasingly dark. All the stuff that feels incredibly hard to to put into words, but incredibly important to try. So here I am, trying.

Last summer threw up some exceptionally challenging moments: the depths of hate and violence we saw on our streets was terrifying, leaving many of my friends afraid to leave their homes. A year has passed. A lid was gently placed over some of that boiling fury, but, as predicted at the time when there was a failure to really unpack and deal with what was going on, instead of being dampened down, it has been fermenting. Fermenting and ripe for exploitation by those whose agenda is founded on fear, division and hate.

Overall, while we may not (yet) have seen quite the same extremes of violence as last summer, I think there are many signs that we are in a much darker place as a society, and the pace at which we have got here genuinely worries me. There are several things I feel have been more difficult to stomach this year. I have been trying (and failing) for some time to wrestle this post into coherence, so I might just leave it as snippets which don't necessarily entirely slot together in to a cohesive, well-ordered whole but which capture at least some of what I think I want to say. I know it's too long. There's a lot to say.

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It may only have been lip-service but in summer 2024, my sense was that there was at least some attempt to condemn the behaviour of those spreading hate and fear about people who have arrived on our shores seeking safety. There were calls for calm, there were arrests and convictions. This year there has been a stark lack of public opposition from people in power, or indeed anyone who has been given much media coverage. Violence and hatred has been met with the suggestion that these are "legitimate concerns". Protesting outside people homes (if hotels can really be called such a thing) has been completely normalised and seemingly justified. Members of mainstream parties have joined them. Language which was the preserve of the far-right has slipped into everyday political discourse and everyday conversation.   

I remember when I first noticed that the BBC had started using the term "illegal migrants" (but without the inverted commas) for people in the asylum system (quick fact check: if you live in a hotel which is being used as asylum accommodation you are, by definition, in a legal process, and not, therefore, by any reasonable definition, "illegal") and that is just one example among many.

The first campaign I was involved in after starting to volunteer at St Chad's Sanctuary was to ask for those seeking asylum to be allowed to start college without having to wait six months. At the time, it felt like an entirely reasonable and potentially achievable ask. Now it feels like cloud cuckoo land thinking.

I was going to write something about the gradual shift of what has come to be seen as acceptable, but sadly, it doesn't feel so "gradual" anymore. The Overton window has not so much drifted towards anti-migrant sentiment as hurtled there. What once felt well within the range of reasonable now seems to be considered outlandishly radical while what once felt consigned to the history books is making its way into policy. I am not sure how we slow its pace. I'm not sure how we shift it back the other way. I am not sure how we make "woke" into the compliment it ought to be. 

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I am not going to deny that there are people within the asylum system who are not particularly nice. I am not even going to attempt to justify it all away by trauma and circumstances, although that is often a contributory factor. The reality is there will be some asylum seekers who will commit crimes and some who are playing the system. People seeking sanctuary are no more perfect than the rest of us. They are not all heroes any more than they are all villains: they are simply humans who should be treated as such.

The same is true of people of every race and nation. Sarah Everard's murderer was a Met police officer, but no-one is standing outside police stations implying everyone on the inside is dangerous. Harold Shipman is the most prolific serial killer in British history but we don't use that as a reason to spread hate and fear of all GPs. We don't think everyone from Yorkshire should be sent back there because of the Yorkshire Ripper ... 

No crime by any individual, whatever their ethnicity or immigration status should be allowed to justify the demonisation of an entire (tiny) segment of the population. Aside from that, there is zero statistical evidence to bear out the idea that increased migration has caused increased crime. On the contrary, while migration has increased in recent years, serious crime has, whatever the public perception from media coverage may be, been decreasing. 

There is a reason why we have moved away from "stranger danger" messaging: and it is that it has consistently been proven that it just isn't true. If this is really about protecting women and children we need to name the fact that as a woman, you are far more likely to be killed by your partner that someone who has just arrived in our country looking for safety, as a child, you are far more likely to be harmed by a family member than someone who happens to have been made to live in a hotel in your town. We are at far greater risk from those we know and trust. Statistically, if we want someone to demonise, it should be our family and friends. 

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Another aspect of the summer which has felt particularly difficult has been the targeting of the Schools of Sanctuary movement, the movement, and some schools, including of schools we have worked alongside have experienced vicious threats and abuse. Beginning with a Telegraph article and picked up by the far right keyboard warriors and others who have weighed in online. When we left X / twitter, our decision to do so was based on safeguarding as well as ethical concerns. I would like to have been proven wrong but fear we have been proven very right. While neither of the charities I work for have been directly targeted it did leave me deeply conscious of how vulnerable to attack we could be. I know we are not alone within the sector in having to be realistic about the increased risks we face. 

The crux of the criticism was around a valentine's day campaign to write cards of welcome for refugees, but it drew in wider issues, seeking to sew seeds of doubt about whether it is right to educate children about the lives of people seeking sanctuary, whether it is ok to create cultures of welcome, tolerance and acceptance of all. This education, and the specific bit of it I am involved in, facilitating encounters between people seeking sanctuary and the children in our communities feels more important than ever, but also more vulnerable. It is still early in the school year: it remains to be seen whether this campaign will make schools more apprehensive of engaging with the work we do, or make the people seeking sanctuary I work with feel less safe to contribute, less able to voice their stories aloud.

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You have to hand it to the far right: their marketing strategy and ability to mobilise has been spectacularly successful. It has helped of course, that they are backed by very significant resource, but their messaging has also been very cleverly designed. They have been exceptionally adept at playing on fears and discontent and choosing images that draw people in and mobilising them. 

The co-opting of the flag as a symbol to rally behind has been particularly clever. If swastikas had appeared on lampposts across the country, or big signs saying migrants out, they'd have undoubtedly been called out and hurriedly removed. It is much harder to challenge someone for flying the national flag, even if you know the reasons for raising it are not entirely innocent and are aware of the discomfort it is causing. It comes with an easy to parrot defence, which seems to have successfully taken in many 'good' people. It requires a more nuanced response which can't be captured in a social-media friendly three-word slogan.

I have heard people who I respect, even people who I have campaigned alongside on social justice issues, repeat the line that this is purely a show of patriotism and that communities should be allowed to take pride in their British identity. I have heard many people who see it as no cause for concern. I wish it was true. Don't get me wrong, I am sure there are individuals who are making less consciously informed choices, and don't fully understand the agenda behind "raising the colours", but I think we dismiss or justify it as just that at our peril. Michael Rosen's description of fascism has never felt more real, more chilling, more immediate: "I sometimes fear that people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress worn by grotesques and monsters as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you... It doesn't walk in saying, 'Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.' "

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One of the things that saddens me about all of this, is that it is serving as a very effective distraction from the very real issues people in many of our communities (both those with migration in their recent histories and those without) are facing. Because I am not denying that many in our society are really struggling and feel genuinely disenfranchised and unheard. 

I am drawing something of a distinction here, clearly, between those who, caught up in lives that are potentially far from the ideal ones they'd like to be living lack the energy and the political education to really understand what is going on here, and those who are pulling the strings behind the scenes who know exactly what they are doing and why.

The wealth of our country is being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands with the richest in our country hoarding staggering amounts of wealth, accounted for in numbers most of us can't really get our heads around. Technological change is happening at a pace none of us can keep up with or really understand, and the accompanying societal and relational changes leave many of us feeling destabilised. Housing and employment feel less secure while prices of the things we have come to see as essentials continue to rise. With climate change gaining pace, we can't even trust the weather to be its usual unpredictable self.  

When everything feels like it is shifting beneath our feet, it is no surprise people want to find solid ground on which they can come to rest. When everything looks like it has become a grey area, sharp black and white is very attractive. I have spoken often of the need for all of us to find a community, a place were we feel we belong. Looking for easy solutions to complex problems isn't new. Nor is, in the face of things going wrong, looking for scapegoats and someone to blame. Nor is uniting around a common enemy: defining who is 'out' has long been a way to also define that we are 'in'.

But for as long as people are convinced that migration is the cause, they are less likely to fight for the real solutions to the real problems. And for as long as the politicians think that's what will make people vote for them, they will continue to introduce policies that will demonise people who have migrated to our country but that will make no material difference to the quality of people' lives.  

People seeking sanctuary make up a tiny proportion of the UK population. The same can be said of the trans community, another group being consistently demonised. They are among the most vulnerable and powerless. They are a very easy target. 

None of this has, in my opinion, happened by accident. There are people who this agenda suits exceptionally well. They are not, mostly, the people whose own lives have been pushed to the margins, who are, in some ways, as much victims of this ideology as anybody else.

This isn't about letting anyone involved in all this off the hook, but I do think that somehow the solution is in discourse not demonisation. I don't know how we facilitate that. There are a whole lot of people who aren't currently ready to for rational debate, but just angry dismissal, tempting though it is, probably isn't the solution. 

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If the summer has been difficult for people seeking sanctuary it isn't only because of the rhetoric out on the streets and in our social media feeds. It is also because that rhetoric is driving policy decisions in Westminster. There have been so many, one after another, that almost every day I have checked the news in trepidation wondering what hideous new policy or procedure is going to be announced today. Most feel like they are simply performative cruelty which will have no demonstrable benefits but will cause untold harm to the wellbeing of some of our most vulnerable neighbours.  

Don't get me wrong: I don't want people to have to get into small boats across the channel either. Nor do I want people to be forced to live in "hotels". I want policies that genuinely challenge both of those things. I want to be able to campaign against them because we are in search of better options not worse ones. I want climate change to be taken seriously and an end to an arms trade that makes war and repression a valuable business model forcing more and more people to flee their homes. I want safe routes that stop people resorting to ever more dangerous methods to reach our shores. I want decent, community-based accommodation models and faster and fairer decision making processes to allow people to integrate. How do we get there? 

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One of the things I have always said to reassure friends, and perhaps myself, about the anti-migrant agenda is that while it is very real, it doesn't represent the wider British public: that overall we stand for tolerance and welcome. As the summer has worn on, I no longer feel able to be quite so confident in those assertions. I still maintain that there are plenty of people for whom this is the very antithesis of what it really means to be British, what they want the union flag to represent. 

But with more and more people caught up in either participating in or justifying actions which are clearly being orchestrated (and funded) by the far right, with views once the preserve of said far right being increasingly deemed acceptable within mainstream political discourse, with people I thought of as reasonable espousing views which to my mind definitely aren't, and with the very real threat of a Reform government after our next general election, I feel less able to state confidently that these are only the views of a tiny minority. 

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I probably also need to acknowledge that there is a cumulative affect of the ongoing awfulness that I have watched the people I support be subjected to over the past few years. That things feel heavier now not only because, objectively, they are, but because they come not in isolation but in addition to all the stuff that has come before.

The fact that I am 'finalising' this post a couple of days after the biggest far-right anti-migration / anti-migrant march I can remember is not lost on me. The fact that even that has not been met with solid condemnation from all sides speaks, I fear, of where we are. 

But this is not the end of the story, mine, or ours. Part 2 to follow ... I am not giving up.

An examen of the moment

As a student at university I was introduced to St Ignatius of Loyola's 'examen' prayer. It is an exercise which invites you to reflect on things that have brought you 'consolation' and 'desolation' and use both to try and understand what God might be trying to say to you. It is an exercise we shared sometimes at chaplaincy morning prayer, and I often used to struggle to have anything at all to put in the 'desolation' column. I was young and naively idealistic, but it was true: even in things that weren't perfect, I could see enough light, life, learning to hesitate to describe them as 'desolation'.

I would still describe myself as an incorrigible optimist, but I have long since ceased struggling with this. As for this summer, there have been times when the balance has felt very different. Don't get me wrong, I still consistently have plenty to put in the consolation column. But there have been days when the desolation side has weighed far heavier.

I find this hard to admit, to myself or out loud, and I think there are a number of distinct but interrelated reasons why...

By almost every set of criteria, I am incredibly privileged. I am, I like to think, deeply conscious of my privilege, and I aspire for that to drive me to use it well, but that doesn't change the fact of it. I am white, British, well-educated, neurotypical, cis-gendered, middle-class. I have never experienced any significant trauma. I have had amazing opportunities to travel and to learn and to have many beautiful different experiences. I have a comfortable home, am financially stable and get paid to do what I love. I have good physical and mental health. I have a supportive family and an incredible community of friends around me.

The same cannot be said for many, perhaps even the majority, of those I share my life with, many have whom have experienced, and continue to experience, multiple forms of disadvantage. 

Over the summer I have been deeply affected by the hostility towards people seeking asylum and other people who have migration as part of their story. But I have also carried a nagging sense of guilt that I *shouldn't* be finding it so hard. I am not the target of any of this hostility in the way that many of my friends are. I am not being targeted by the flag-waving or the hate-filled rants which mis-represent entire communities, nor will I be personally impacted by the endless stream of hostile policies being spewed out of Westminster. When all of this leaves me feeling, to stick to the theme, 'desolate', a voice in my head nags me that, from my position of privilege, I have no right to feel less motivated, to have less energy, to want to just curl up in a corner. That instead I have more responsibility than ever to be a source of light and hope and support for others. And while the guilt may be unhelpful, it also carries truth within it: in many of the situations and relationships in which I exist, I do have a greater capacity and therefore greater responsibility to be the carrier rather than the carried. If I lack the energy, or motivation to do the thing, whatever the thing may be, that almost invariably impacts on someone in a far more difficult situation than I am. 

I guess this links to my other main about this, which is my realisation of just how much my role and my very identity feels tied up in my boundless positivity. As I said further up, I describe myself as an incorrigible optimist and I think that is how most other people think of me too: as someone who is full of joy and recklessly hopeful. I picked up the nickname Tigger at university and the image of irrepressible energy, if not the nickname, have followed me ever since. A fellow English teacher at St Chad's Sanctuary once used me as an illustration / definition to explain the word 'enthusiastic' to language learners. This is who I am, and it is who I want to be. I am, for the most part, honoured that it is what others see in me ... but there is a certain pressure here too. If this is who I am, then what is my role or my identity or even my worth in the moments when those things desert me? Of course I do know, rationally, that my inherent value is not tied up in this, but what we know rationally and what we experience don't always correlate!   

Plus let's face it there's probably just some plain old pride and ego mixed in there too. Maybe none of us like to admit to the things we perceive as weakness or failure.

But while I may not like the fact, and may not like admitting the fact, the reality is my desolation column is overflowing at the moment. I have had days when it has been much harder than usual to identify signs of hope. I have had days when I have felt sapped of energy. I have had days when I have cried. Being as I'm in my forties, I could probably blame it all on hormones and the perimenopause, but frankly, objectively, I think it is all an entirely rational response to the state of the world. I don't think this is the place to go into why (I have another partially written post dealing with that which may or may not see the light of day some point soon if I can wrestle it into some sort of coherent text from the swirl of random snippets of words it is currently!). This is simply about acknowledging the struggle and accepting the vulnerability implicit in doing so. 

I could end there. 

But the wisdom of the examen is that there are always two columns. In a way that I perhaps didn't in the naivety of my youth, I do now understand the value in identifying and naming the desolation. But that certainly hasn't replaced seeking out the consolation. It might take a bit more effort right now, but it is still there, so much of it is still there (a more upbeat post outlining some of this will come soon too, I promise!). 

The general principle of the examen is to aim to do less of the stuff that brings desolation, and more of that which brings consolation, because God wants us to find our joy and to have fullness of life. That isn't always possible. We, I, can't always avoid the stuff which is causing desolation; nor is doing more of anything, even that which brings consolation, always quite the right answer either. But there is definitely a place for making space to intentionally recognise and appreciate more the signs of love and light and life and for cultivating hope and gratitude wherever I can. 

I have recently started using the Carrs Lane Community morning prayer book again. For many years it was the anchor of my days and I am grateful to still be able to return to it periodically. The opening prayer each day is borrowed / stolen from Br Roger of Taize. A couple of mornings ago it started with words which felt very apt:   

God of consolation, even when we feel nothing of your presence, still you are here. Your presence is invisible but your Holy Spirit is always within us. Amen

There is always consolation. I will keep seeking it out. May you be able to do the same.