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Some months I struggle for inspiration as to what to write about in my monthly windbag. This month I've been spoilt for choice.  David Cameron bringing new meaning to the phrase 'honorable member' over the last couple of days being particularly tempting.

However I have felt the urge to write about something a bit more serious this month.

The last few months have been full of various stories around migration and refugees both in the UK itself but increasingly in the rest of Europe and maybe even further a field.
 
The whole situation bought to mind a poem from my English Literature O Level days. Written by WH Auden its called 'Refugee Blues'. And I'd like to share it here.

**

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread';
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die';
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

**

Its not the most subtle poem that Auden ever wrote but it is pretty evocative. Back in 1939 when Auden wrote the poem German Jewish Refugees were probably not looked on kindly by a lot of people in Europe. Its easy to look back with hindsight and think that we would have acted differently . But at the time people's knowledge of what was going on in Germany was probably not disimilar to our current knowledge of events in Syria, Libya & Iraq.

I don't want to draw too many parallels because the situation was very different to that time and I don't believe the plight of today's refugee's is the same as that of the German Jews.
But hopefully you take my point.

I don't think its a bad thing that people are concerned and worried about migration and large numbers of refugees. Very few people like change and its impact on our lives. Its a natural reaction really to be fearful. What concerns me more is the way that this fear is played upon by those who seek to use this situation to their own ends. The press and certain politicians who want to make capital from this situation. Not to mention the reactive mainstream politicians who are keen to be seen as tougher than what they perceive to be popular extremists.

I do believe in the good nature of the majority of people and that on an individual level most are likely to act with great kindness and empathy. The problem is that sometimes a kind of group mentality takes over people and it isn't always a benign phenonemon.

Its easy to de-humanise people and talk about swarms and Islamification. To read dark intent and the worst into everything.

All I know is that if civil war broke out and bombs and missiles were raining onto Wakefield I would want to go elsewhere (I'll let you put your own punchline in about Wakefield at this point).

I have seen some suggestions that able men should stay and fight rather than leave Syria. Personally I would rather run than fight. Besides which this shows a lack of understanding of the situation in Syria. The idea that there is a wrong and right side in the Syrian civil war is far too simplistic. Don't worry though the US government and UK government are equally ignorant.

Back in 2013 Cameron was only stopped from turning Libya into his own Iraq by a welcome outbreak of democracy. In fact his proposed bombing would have given aid to IS (or whatever we are supposed to call them this week). Sometimes it feels like we are living through Orwell's 1984 (At the start of the book Oceania were allied with Eastasia in a war with Eurasia. By the end Oceania were allied with Eurasia in a war with Eastasia). Especially when you find out that the 'allies' in the Iraq invasion ended up siding with the remainder of Saddam Hussain's ruling elite.

I also see a lot of comments that the poor people in this country should be given priority. This to me is unambitious. I don't see why this country can't help native poor and refugees at the same time.

Taking a wider look at politics in this country I still can't get my head around how quickly we went from ashen faced bankers swearing they'd learnt their lesson as they took huge bailouts from the government to a situation where all the ills of the economy are suddenly blamed on the poor, the ill and the unemployed. Are people's memories that short? - obviously yes.

The rich meanwhile have their cake and eat it - simultaneously using cheap global labour forces to keep costs down whilst demonising foreigners as the root of all evil.

Still if you think about it too much you are likely to go mad or get extremely cynical. All we can concentrate on is what we can do and I think the first thing we need to do is to take a more positive attitude. Concentrate more on how we can help and worry less about stuff we can't control anyway.

I remember the panic over the so called 'Vietnamese boat people' back in the early 80's. Hundreds of thousands of people fled Vietnam and were re-settled all over the world. I seem to recall we had a family in Ossett (of course I could be just getting confused and they had really just moved from Horbury). My point here is that similar panics no doubt took place at the time. But here we are 30 years on and we all seem to have survived. Of course we didn't have twitter and facebook in those days to amplify everything.

**

The other night I attended Sofar Leeds and caught an act called Esperi. He's one of those annoyingly talented people that can play a whole host of instruments. He also does that thing of performing with a loop station and building up songs. Its a tricky act which can become a bit of a novelty act. It was a bit strangely samey over 3 songs. But having listened to more of his work I have been won over. Take a look at this track here.

He reminds me a little of some of the Fence Collective artists with his mixture of acoustic instruments with a little gentle electronica.

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