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This plaque commemorates Anna Maria Vassa, the daughter of Olaudah Equiano, the anti-slavery campaigner.  For most of his lifetime, her father was known by the name inscribed here.  The wording on the plaque reads:

 

Near this Place lies Interred

ANNA MARIA VASSA

 

Daughter of GUSTAVUS VASSA, the African

She died July 21 1797

Aged 4 Years

Should simple village rhymes attract thine eye,

Stranger, as thoughtfully thou passest by,

Know that there lies beside this humble stone

A child of colour haply not thine own.

Her father born of Afric’s sun-burnt race,

Torn from his native field, ah foul disgrace:

Through various toils, at length to Britain came

Espoused, so Heaven ordain’d, an English dame,

And follow’d Christ; their hope two infants dear.

But one, a hapless orphan, slumbers here.

To bury her the village children came.

And dropp’d choice flowers, and lisp’d her early fame;

And some that lov’d her most, as if unblest,

Bedew’d with tears the white wreath on their breast;

But she is gone and dwells in that abode,

Where some of every clime shall joy in God.

 

 

Though set well back from the road, this building has a blue plaque.  The wording reads:

 

“From January 1938 to November 1939

twenty-nine Basque children, refugees

from the Spanish Civil War, were

cared for by local volunteers in

this house provided by 

Jesus College.”

 

Note that the house is private — best keep outside the wall.

 

 

The wording of the plaque reads:

“Dame Leah Manning

1886-1977

Campaigner for children’s welfare and women’s rights

Trained as a teacher at Homerton College

Taught here, formerly New Street Ragged School”

Leah Manning co-ordinated the evacuation of 4000 children from the Basque country in 1937. Twenty-nine of them were cared for by Cambridge volunteers at the house in Station Road that is site #2 on this trail.

 

 

The theme of this year’s Refugee Week is a quote from Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech of 1963, at a point where he recognizes the rightness of Blacks including White allies in the movement for equal rights.

 

Cambridge Welcome’s contribution this year is a trail that you can walk alone if you have to, and in part if you have to, or with others and in full if you can.  All sites on it have some link with the lives of refugees.  The Google Maps list of the sites is at https://bit.ly/3w3A4aq .   It’d be great if you could take photos of them.  If you’re a Twitter user, you can tweet these with the hashtag #CamRefWalk.  

 

Or you can email your pics to Cambridge Welcome on cambridgew074@gmail.com .  We’ll take that as meaning that you own the rights in them and that you’re happy for us to publish them — on this blog, and on our Facebook and Flickr pages.  If there are people in the images please make sure you have their permission to share the photo with us. 

 

Looking forward to meeting you!

Members of Global Justice Cambridge joined with Global Justice Youth Network Cambridge and other campaigners outside AstraZeneca’s Cambridge office, to call for a People’s Vaccine.  The line-up of speakers included Heidi Chow from Global Justice Senior Campaigns Manager, Prof. Priyamvada Gopal from Cambridge University, and Sanghanath from the Movement Against Racism.

Contributions to the day from Global Justice Cambridge members were a song and a flash presentation on the work of Jonas Salk.  His vaccine against polio worked all the better for not being patented.  That disease has now almost completely disappeared.

The protest had a great carnival atmosphere for most of its length, in rain and shine — see the account on Global Justice Now’s site — but towards the end there were provocations and arrests.  We (Aidan and Clare Baker) can’t claim to have been eyewitnesses of them.

 

In the previous post, Jacob Berkson was looking at routes some people take in desperation to get to Britain.  What’s it like for them once they’re here?  Challenging, says charity Migrants Organise.  For twenty years, MO has been working to make its motto “Power in organising.  Dignity in justice” a reality, breaking cycles of loneliness, destitution and hostile environment, celebrating the resilience, inventiveness and courage of migrant and refugee women leaders, training organisers to build common ground, promoting the migrant vote, standing in solidarity with people facing NHS charges, urging MPs to pledge that their surgeries should be safe places for all constituents.

Now Migrants Organise, along with other organisations, has launched the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, and a FIRM Charter to sum up its demands: for dignity, for justice, for welcome, and for action.  A demand for welcome  makes sense in the context of the government’s ‘Hostile Environment’.  In the words of the charter, the raft of policies and practices going by that name

“have created divisions and deeply damaged the fabric of our society. Once we bring the hostilities to an end, we will have to work to repair the damage it has inflicted on communities around the country. A serious change is needed in the Government’s approach to meaningful inclusion, anti-racism and equality in order to foster a culture of welcoming migrants, and to repair the extensive damage inflicted by its policies.”

MO’s chief executive Zrinka Bralo brought the charter to Cambridge last September for a pre-launch presentation to Cambridge Welcome .  She generously shared her time earlier this year, discussing aspects of the charter with CW members by Zoom.  Now the charter is launched, and members of Cambridge Welcome, and of Global Justice Cambridge, and all people who would like to see a more equal and open Britain, are urged to add their names to the hundreds who have already signed