Bach’s cantata “Brich den Hungrigen dein Brot” got the nickname “the refugee cantata” in 1732 when Protestant refugees fleeing a clampdown in Salzburg arrived in Leipzig. The title translates as “Bring the hungry your bread”. It was to be taken literally. It’s a reminder of how much forced migration has shaped European history.
As an island, the UK has escaped the experiences of invasion and moving of borders which have shaped so much of the history of the European mainland — though I suspect that one of the things fuelling both pressure for Scottish independence and the Scottish affinity for the EU is their experience of domination from London.
My Scottish great grandfather who moved from Perthshire to Essex was an economic migrant. My surname is an old Huguenot name — brought by people fleeing genocide in France. Others of my forebears had the name “Woodward” — anglicised from an old Dutch name. I’m not sure if fleeing near-starvation made them “refugees” or “economic migrants”.
At the moment we are facing a huge migrant crisis because of people fleeing Syria. There’s a sense that the EU authorities should “do something”. A few months ago a similar pressure over Greece led me to think that the EU was being grumbled about aswe grumble about goverments, so it was now being treated as a federal government. The migrant crisis adds to this. There might be parallels betwen frustrations with Brussels and with Westminster, though I am concerned that this might lead people to vote “no” to the EU where they simply grumble about Westminster.
We are bound up with the situation on the ground in Syria. Part of the problem goes back to the way the European powers divided up the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War — where wiggly European borders reflect centuries of development, the the curiously-straight borders in that part of the Middle East reflect political expediency a century ago. Part of what is going on in the Middle East now reflects the problems that brought. Part of the Syria crisis seems to be about Russia and Western powers vying for influence. The fundamentalists of ISIL/Daesh are unsavoury, but at least part of their behaviour — and what is motivating people from the EU to go and join them — is a reaction against the Western tendency to equate “Muslim” and “terrorist” in a mis-placed fear of the “other”. The Syria problem is very much “ours”, even if the solution is a mix of aid to people in the refugee camps and accepting our fare share of refugees.
But this is just a fore-taste. The much bigger migration issue, where we are all involved, will come from global warming. In that context, I’m not sure of the difference between the “economic migrant” who reads the writing on the wall and leaves in search of a better live, the person who waits and becomes a “refugee” when their home becomes uninhabitable and the “asylum-seeker” who flees the repressive regime that comes to power when resources are scarce. It might be better if people migrate sooner rather than later, so they don’t arrive bearing the trauma of becoming “refugees” or “asylum-seekers”.
At our conference in Bournemouth Ed Davey was right to lament the present government’s attitude to global warming. We need to be working with our European partners to reduce our CO2 emissions: neither the problem nor the solution respects national borders.
In the face of climate change, “fortress Europe” (or “fortress Britain”) will never be impregnable. Our moral authority will be undermined if we have not worked together to combat the problem we have helped to create. Migration will need a constructive approach across the whole EU to share the benefits and burdens of migration. If the EU gets the balance right this will lead to more international connectedness, stability and trade. If we get it wrong, the result will be resentment, sometimes vented as terrorism.
The choice seems to be between working together in the EU in a way that delivers peace and stability, and a “Little Englander” isolationism that may be seductive but is more dangerous than people realise.
* Mark Argent was the Liberal Democrat candidate in Huntingdon Constituency in 2019 and blogs at markargent.com/blog.
6 Comments
Some good points on the blurred lines between economic migrants and refugees “I’m not sure of the difference between the “economic migrant” who reads the writing on the wall and leaves in search of a better live, the person who waits and becomes a “refugee” “.
I’m not comfortable with linking negative attitudes towards migration and multiculturalism with terrorism though. This seems to be the done thing at the moment, but I just think it risks creating excuses for people joining Daech and terrorism against the UK.
In 1955 diplomats negotiated the end of four power occupation of Austria on the basis that Austria had been invaded by Hitler’s Germany in the Anschluss. The Soviet Union therefore withdrew from eastern Austria, Austria declared itself neutral and Hungary had a border with the West. Hungary’s brutal communist regime faced a rebellion, which was supressed by tanks from the Soviet Union and their satellites. Large numbers of refugees poured over the border into Austria and dispersed around the world.
The Soviets were wary of another rebellion in Hungary.
In 1989 a Hungarian minister took press and media to the border with Austria and made holes in the Iron Curtain. East Germans poured through into Austria and continued into West Germany. Subsequently the Berlin Wall was demolished. and Germany’s long-stated ambition for re-unification was achieved. The entire government machine packed their bags and moved from Bonn to Berlin.
An independent contested a parliamentary by-election in Hungary and won.
Hungarians who know their history know about refugees, so it sad that the current Hungarian government is taking the attitude it does.
The Liberal Democrat News welcomed democratic progress in Hungary, but the editor noted arrogance among the Hungarians.
Mr Orban’s party, FIDESZ, had an age limit for membership of 35 years. until the members got a little older.
i actually knew the Hungarian who won the by-election. He stayed at my house once. We met again in Budapest at a congress. i was also country officer for Hungary pee CIPU.
‘As an island, the UK has escaped the experiences of invasion and moving of borders which have shaped so much of the history of the European mainland’. I couldn’t believe I was reading this. We were overrun by the Romans around 400AD, and suffered Celtic, Germanic and Viking invasions before 1066 which brought the Norman conquest. The hallmark of our civilisation is that we are made up of peoples from all over the world and if we could educate our children and grandchildren effectively we might get them to realise how ludicrously inappropriate it is for anyone to reject migrants because they are of a different race. More importantly of course we need to teach them Liberal values so that they don’t have such a limited and inhumane view of the world and its borders to start with.
“I couldn’t believe I was reading this. We were overrun by the Romans around 400AD, and suffered Celtic, Germanic and Viking invasions before 1066 which brought the Norman conquest.”
While that is quite dramatic, it pales into insignificance compared to the ever-shifting borders of our non-water-bound neighbours.
Just to modify my initial comment: I think it’s fine to link alienation to terrorism, but I think I see too much blaming of other things for terrorism besides the terrorist. The terrorist needs to take responsibility and we shouldn’t create a culture of excuses for them.
Obviously I don’t think this article is “creating a culture of excuses”, I just disagree with the emphasis a bit.