Lorries (and maybe a mention of boats)

I started writing this blogpost about a year ago. I know that, because it was just after 39 people were found, suffocated to death, in the back of a refrigerated lorry in Essex. Despite several attempts, it never got beyond the bullet point stage. As the anniversary and the trial has meant that particular tragedy has hit the headlines again recently, I thought it was time I tried again to extract it from my drafts folder.

One of the things which I intended to include was a link to a short film on Youtube, "Oksijan", about another near-tragedy in the back of a lorry. It is not an easy watch. I highly recommend it. 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNnBJRRL5c)

In the early hours of the story breaking, the victims were given the wrong nationality, let alone any hope that their individual names and stories would be known. I think that was one of the first things that really struck me about this story. I thought of families who would perhaps never know the whereabouts of their loved ones who had left so full of hope for a better life. Of stories which would never be known, let alone heard. The names did start to be found, the nationality corrected, the stories uncovered; but between occasional glimpses at their individual humanity, in most of the articles on the subject they are just "39 migrants". 

I know so many people who could have counted among those 39. So many who felt they had no choice but to risk hiding in the back of a lorry. So many who knew they might die but believed the alternative was worse. 

Those 39 people, and countless others who have died en route to and through "Fortress Europe" will never have the chance to tell their story. But some stories, of those who survived, can be told. And they need to be heard. I guess this all links to my deep passion about sharing the stories of my very dear friends who made it out of the back of a lorry (literally, in many cases; or metaphorically). Not just sharing their stories for them, but more importantly, finding ways to give them the space and the opportunity to do so for themselves. 

  

It is about honouring their lives, as individuals, as human beings. Perhaps it is also, in some way, about also honouring those who didn't make it to the end of the journey to find the safety and freedom they dreamed of. 

Trafficking and smuggling (two different, but often confused, things) are complicated evils. I am sure far too much money changes hand from treating people as commodities and from exploiting vulnerability and hope. But, to my mind, there is a far deeper sin which underlies that one. It is the sin which allows countless victims, unnamed and unknown to die on the borders of Europe; it is the sin which leads to building higher walls and more complicated procedures to lock people out and send then searching for more and more desperate routes to safety; it is the sin which allows British politicians to question whether the rule of law needs to be applied to "these people".

It is the sin of believing, explicitly or subconsciously, that some people, by virtue simply of an accident of birth, are somehow more valuable, more worthy than others. It is a sin the outworking of which, as a British citizen, I admit to being sadly complicit but one against which I also seek to strive with every part of my being.

Maybe it's a sin which is so much easier to commit when they are just "39 migrants" or victims of yet another ship wreck of the Libyan coast that barely even hits the headlines anymore, or those whose desperation is dismissed in media headlines and party conference speeches about small boats on the channel. Maybe it is a sin which shifts, almost imperceptibly, when they instead become individuals with stories to tell, when they become those with whom we have shared good food and conversation, those with whom we have shared laughter and tears: those who we encounter, those who are friends.

I will keep helping people to tell stories. Because it matters.

Asylum destitution and a call to action

Last Sunday was homelessness Sunday and I was asked to contribute something to the Carrs Lane Service about homelessness in the asylum system. I said this. 

Homelessness is an immensely complicated reality, and neither the causes nor the solutions are straightforward.

And then there is asylum destitution. What marks it out as distinct from other forms of homelessness is that it is not caused by people falling through the gaps in a system that hasn’t successfully supported them. Asylum destitution is the system. Whatever the government’s rhetoric on wanting to end homelessness, deliberately making people homeless is written into asylum policy.

I have met people who are victims of this system. 

I have had hundreds of conversations with asylum seekers. Some will always stay with me. I want to tell you one such story.

Being an English teacher at St Chad’s Sanctuary was never just about language teaching. I very quickly learned that it was much more about building and holding human relationships. For whatever reasons, some stories always affect you more deeply than others. M, who I first met, I think, in 2016, was one such person. I remember one time him telling me the story of being in Calais, and of “looking at England’s sky”.

I also vividly remember the day he arrived with his eviction letter from his Home Office accommodation, asking for help, believing I would be able to do something. And I remember having to explain to him that no, there was nothing I could do to enable him to stay there. I guess most of what I did at St Chad’s was about helping people. Any time when you had to say sorry, no, I can’t help at all, was always difficult. When the consequence of not being able to help was street homelessness, even more so.

He was luckier than some. He sofa-surfed briefly, and was then offered accommodation and support by Hope Projects. He prepared, with better legal advice, to navigate the notoriously complicated asylum process once more.

At the end of last year, M was finally granted asylum. Recognised by the state to be a genuine refugee. Four years of needless suffering and anxiety came to a close. I remember that conversation too.

Having said that the causes and solutions of homelessness are incredibly complex, that’s not true for this. Asylum destitution does have both a simple cause: government policy; and a simple solution: change it!

After not doing so for several months during the pandemic, as of the 15^th September, the Home Office have once again started sending eviction notices to people who will have nowhere else to turn. Into the second wave of the pandemic, into approaching winter. Into a context where staying with friends is less possible, where charities have reduced capacity, where night shelters remain closed.

There is a long-term demand to stop asylum destitution completely: but there’s also a short term one to say no-one should be left deliberately homeless by our government during a pandemic. If you wish to add your voice to this campaign, you might want to join the NACCOM campaign to draw a house, and on it write a message to send to the Home Secretary asking for an immediate halt to evictions from asylum accommodation.

For the attention of the Home Secretary

Rt Hon Priti Patel
Home Office
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

www.naccom.org.uk for more information

Twenty Years (Or: How on earth did that happen?!)

Almost exactly twenty years ago I started university.

As I say ... how on earth did that happen?! Not the starting university. That was probably a relatively normal thing to do as a nineteen year old. But that it was twenty years, more than half my life ago, seems hard to believe somehow.

And yet in other ways, life now feels world's away from life then. Of course, I can identify parts of the nineteen year old me in the person I still am ... but I can also look back and recognise how far I have travelled (literally, but mostly metaphorically) since those days. I have, in parts at least, matured in the intervening years. I have been enriched by so many different encounters and experiences. 

I really loved my time at university. I have so many very, very happy memories of those days. Looking back with such fond nostalgia on my own early days in Lancaster; I really feel for those starting out on their higher education journeys in this year's very different, very challenging circumstances.

I met some truly wonderful people, a number of whom I am still privileged to call my friends: I still refer to those I lived with in my first and second year collectively "my housemates" much to the amusement of those around me who know it is a very long time since we lived together. 

Lancaster is a beautiful place (something I possibly didn't appreciate as much as I should have done at the time) and the university campus was a wonderful environment in which to spread my wings as I approached something vaguely resembling adulthood.

So much of what I learned there: both inside the lecture theatres and, undoubtedly more significantly, outside them; has played an important part in creating the person I am today.

And yet, despite the very genuine fondness with which I look back on those highly formative years and the people and experiences there which shaped me ... I wouldn't choose to go back. I know it is a privilege not to hark back to richer, happier times. It is not in any way an indication of anything lacking in those amazing experiences: rather it is a reflection that life has continued to improve, that life now is richer and fuller than ever. 

The last few months aside, which I'm still hoping is a temporary aberration, my life continues to be filled with many amazing people who deeply enrich my life. 

Birmingham, in its own unique way is also a beautiful place and a wonderful environment in which to spread my wings still further. 

So much of what I am still learning continues to help me to grow into the person I am still in the process of becoming.

So this week I am looking back: I am remembering and celebrating four amazing, formative years years and giving thanks for all those I shared them with. But I am doing so in the context of looking forward, trusting that there is much more that is amazing and formative still to come.