History gives us the chance to see the wood from the trees. I often think that the best way to get a handle on what is going on at any particular time is to add on sixty years and see how things might look from the future. History can fall down when trying to get to the bottom of an individual event. You know, the whole who shot Kennedy thing. However when the world enters a whole new era, history can generally dig out the main underlying reasons.
A couple of examples. In the fifteenth century a few hitherto
inconsequential European countries suddenly got a handle
on how to use gunpowder to kill people. All of sudden they were able to punch
way above their weight. This kicked off the story of the next four hundred years as a
few small European countries were able to conquer the rest of the
world and rob anything that wasn’t nailed down. Gunpowder launched the Age of
Empire.
In the mid nineteenth century a few clever guys worked out
how to use steam engines to power ships. Bigger ships. Massive ships. The kind
of ships that were big enough to carry thousands and thousands of tonnes of cheap wheat
from the newly opened up prairies of the Mid West of America and Canada . All of a sudden there was
enough food to sustain millions more people in ever bigger cities. As in millions
more people to fill the shop floors of ever more massive factories. Steamships
provided the required amount of daily bread to send the Industrial Revolution
into overdrive.
So what trends might a historian looking back on us from
2076. Maybe they will see the beginning of the era
when water becomes three times more precious than oil. Or maybe they will see
this is the time when ever ageing populations finally sank the very same
countries who once upon a time harnessed the power of gunpowder to conquer the
world.
Or will they see beginning of the Age of Migration? Were I a betting man,
that is where I would put my ill begotten tenner. As water runs dry and soil
becomes dust, millions upon millions of people will see their already lousy
lives become impossible. This trend is already well established for millions of people unlucky enough to live and breathe in what was once called the Third World. No food. No
prospects. No chance to earn more than a dollar a day whilst a few uber corrupt
individuals up at the top of the tree fill their off shore accounts of bursting
point. In a frantic attempt to stay two steps ahead of getting lynched, those at the top of the pile hire on
ever more brutal secret policemen and life for the majority becomes a constant nightmare of
terror and grinding poverty.
And then the soil is all prepared and ready ISIS and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab and the
Taliban to sow their toxic seeds. And then it is over to the eerily prophetic words of WB Yeats.
‘Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world.’
This is nothing new of course. Torture, terror, starvation
and genocide have been part of human life since forever. So what is the
difference now? I think our 2076
historian will identify cheap mobile phones and widening internet access as the
equivalent to the gunpowder and the steam ships. Always before when millions of
people were consigned to lives of misery and fear, they felt they had all but no
choice in the matter. There was no escape from the Thirty Year War or Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China . Now it is different.
Really different.
A young man in Eritrea who has seen his young
sister raped by the secret police and his dad tortured and executed for getting
angry about it can turn to his phone and ask Google for a road to a better
life. And what will he find? Videos of Munich
railway station. A thousand images of countries where there are policemen who
don’t rape and torture and murder. Images of supermarkets piled high with
affordable food. Flats with constant electricity and no four o clock in the
morning hammering on the front door. No barrel bombs. No drought.
A life absolutely worth living instead of a life absolutely
not worth living. And more to the point, Google provides a full instruction
manual on how you can cash in a life of utter desperation for a life of hope.
The instruction manual cover all bases. How you make it
across the Sahara or Iran
or the Lebanese border. Where the boats sail from and who sails them and how
much it costs. And all the way along the line the message is loud and clear –
if you try this journey you might well die. So will people heed the warning? Be
put off by the massive danger? Sure. Many will. But many will see the dangers
of the road west as being no more than the dangers of their already desperate everyday
lives.
And so they will come. By the million. Guided by Google maps
every step of the way. In days gone by, the suffering multitudes had no real
picture of a better life and even if they had, they had no clue about how to try
and find it. Now cheap mobile phones have changed everything. People in
desperation can call up pictures of a life worth living care of a few taps at
the keypad.
More to the point they can find out how to escape. The Age
of Migration is unstoppable now. It is a vast fact.
Which brings us to those of us at journey’s end. We are the
chosen ones in a world where half of our fellow citizens eke out an existence on
a dollar a day. We are about to be split in two. Some of us will choose
humanity. Others will choose fear and hatred. Some of us will open our doors
Some of us will buy new locks and hide and dream of a new Hitler to arrive on the
scene to save the day. To clean the streets. To make it all go away.
For thirteen years now the doors of First Base have always
been open. If someone comes to us because their life has crashed and burned we do
our level best to help them out. It makes no odds to us where they come from or
what language they speak of what colour their skin is. Folk are folk. Simple as. For thirteen years we
have done our best to help out those who many in society would prefer not to
think about. The drug addicts and the alcoholics and the ex cons and the
mentally ill. The forgotten ones. The despised. The preferred fodder for just
about every prime time Channel 5 programme. More recently we have started to see more
and more of the working poor. Folk who graft for every hour god sands and yet
they still can’t fill a trolley at the supermarket.
And now we are starting to see more of those who have
completed epic journeys from their lives of grinding poverty and fear. And of
course if they are hungry we will make sure they have food to eat. And we don’t
give a damn what Theresa May has to say about any of it. They are here. They
are human beings. And everybody’s gotta eat, right?
Then what? Well we are in the process of starting up the
First Base Bridge Project. Hopefully it will achieve what it says on the tin.
We will try and be the bridge that will help those who choose our little town to
be their journey’s end to find a place to find their new lives. When these
weary travellers land up from destinations within the EU, offering some help is
reasonably straight forward. Their passports mean they have a few rights. The
State has a legal requirement to help them out. Not much, mind. But a bit.
For those from outside the EU, it is a very different story. They
are the hated ones. They are the ones Theresa May had in mind when she sent her
vans out and about to encourage us to do our patriotic thing and shop an
'illegal' to the authorities.
For the non EU citizens who choose our little town as their home, absolute
destitution is a very real possibility. These are the people who are not
entitled to a single penny of state aid and they are told in no uncertain terms
that this is the case. More to the point, they are absolutely not allowed to work
and if they are caught doing so much as half an hour’s work, they risk being
frog marched onto a plane and sent back to the hunger and the gangsters and the
torture rooms.
Basically they are expected to live on fresh air and as we
all know that isn’t any kind of realistic possibility. In January in Scotland every
human being needs the big three – some warmth, a roof over the head and some
food. The Government has make its point of view crystal clear. They will not
offer any help wjhatsoever. They don’t actually say that they are happy enough
to see thsese people freeze and starve, but they are doing absolutely nothing to
stop it.
So for these people the local community is the only show in
twon. There is nothing else. Many in the community will be absolutely unwilling
to lift a finger to help. They are the ones who will lock their doors and yearn
for the coming of a British Adolf to make all the strangers go away. But there are many
others who take a different view. They see the people who have completed the epic
journeys as fellow human beings. Fantastically, jaw droppingly brave human
beings. Fellow human beings who absolutely deserve our help.
We can choose to offer this help out of a sense of human
decency or we can offer this help out of calculating pragmatism. Let's make no
mistake here, these are absolutely pick of the litter human beings. Anyone with the
courage and wits to make the journeys these guys have made is going to be one
hell of a citizen. For three years we helped Yemesi and her three kids whilst
the Home Offcie made them wait. It was the community who made sure they had
somewhere to live and something to eat and some heat and light for at least
some of the time. Without the community, I hate to think what would have
happened to them.
And the family knows this. My God do they ever. Thankfully the Home
Office said ‘yes’ in the end and as a community we are all about to get a hell of a
return on our humane investment in Yemesi and her family. Once Yemesi was
issued with a Naytional Insurance number it took her less than six hours to
find a job in a care home. I am pretty sure she will be managing it in a few
years time. And in a few years time her son will be an engineer and her twin
daughters will be doctors. The kids are top of everything at school. And they
all love the community of Dumfries for giving
them the chance of a life away from the murderous threat of Boko Haram. Once
upon a time a country called America
opened up its doors to millions of people from all corners of the earth who
wanted to make a better life for themselves. It didn’t work out so badly for
them, right? Give a lost person a live worth living and they will become the
very best of citizens. It just ain’t rocket science.
So.
Over to you community of Dumfries .
Right now we are helping out a family from Ghana . A mum, her niece, and four
kids – 18 months, 4, 6 and 8. All lads. They have managed to pay the rent on
two rooms for the next couple of months but they have no cash for anything
else. No food, no power, no clothes for the kids, no nothing. We have been
making sure th family’s food cupboards are full for the last couple of months
and we will continue to do so for as long as it takes. Yesterday I was able to
drop round four big bags of winter clothes for the kids thanks to a collection
from Moxy and her brilliant people at DG Refugee Action. I also have my fingers
crossed that we are in the process of sorting out some child care and some cash
to keep the heaters and lights on.
I guess over the coming months and years we will be seeing
more and more families standing at the gates of absolute destitution. We hope we
can indeed provide them with a bridge to a better life. But a bridge has to
lead somewhere. On the other side of the bridge we need to find as many people
as possible who have decided to choose humanity over hate.
So. Here’s hoping. The family are still on their uppers. If
there is anyone out there willing to donate stuff like toys, cleaning products
or a few bob, please do so. I figure any of you living in and around Dumfries will know where we are. I can assure you that
all donations stimulated by this blog will find their way straight to the
family.
There will be a hideous and stark choice we will all be
expected to make over he coming years. Are we going to rub along with our
fellow human beings and help them when they need help? Or are we going to slam
and lock our doors and leave people out in the cold. The likes of the Daily Mail seem to think the
majority of us will be more than happy to take the same hate filled road that
eventually took the people of Germany
into the fires of hell eighty years ago. I’m not so sure. I reckon we are better
than that. Maybe by helping this lovely family from West
Africa we can start to prove it.
I choose to rub along with my fellow human beings.
ReplyDeleteI'll send you a cheque Mark.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Tris. You'r a star!
DeleteHi Tris. Many thanks for the donation. Christiana and Comfort have just been in for a food parcel and I was able to put £70 on their power meter. Heat and light for a cold, wet Scottish February. To say they were made up would be the understatement of the year. For once the right kind of tears in First Base. All the best.
DeleteMark
If you go back a couple of posts, First Bases details are there, for a bank transfer, we just sent a belated Christmas present. And will do so year on year.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jim,
DeleteT
Jim, I have just realised that I never said thanks for you hugely generous donation. Sorry for the inexcusable delay. Thanks and Happy New Year!
DeleteNo problem Mark, it was my Christmas and birthday present, form Arlene and my two children, Eoghan and Rhiannon.
DeleteHaving followed your blog for sometime now, as well as reading some of your books, I could not think of a better use for it, I will be making it an annual tradition.
We all have to do our bit, for our fellow travelers in life.
A Happy new year, to you and yours too.
You know, Jim. This blog rarely fails to make me cry. It's partly the quality of the writing, partly the incredibly sad stories that Mark tells.
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time it cheers me so much that there are people like Mark, his team... and the people, like you and Arlene, who donate to help the folk who've slipped through the ever larger holes in the social security system.
We must all continue to help where we can until such time as we are independent and then hopefully the need for this will be gone.
I oft have a tear in my eye, reading how other humans are being treated, too.
Delete