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
Jacob Berkson writes:
The ‘illegal Channel crossers’ story is all over the news at the same time that the government is in trouble. It is a classic rallying cry to the core Boris Johnson constituency. Populist racism is beginning to look a bit like a bad move with the breakthrough of the Black Lives Matter movement.
We are in a strong position to respond to the latest provocation. “What a surprise that just when the government is losing its grip, we suddenly have to make another defence of refugee rights”.
Campaigns like ‘Europe must act’ need amplifying. Give the lie to the idea that Britain First is mainstream. People say things like “build bridges not walls”. They are quite right. They also need to do the building.
Refugee conventions are a bare minimum standard. We must not let the powers that be get away with redefining refugee protection as a cellar to hide in while the shooting goes on. That is the general drift of asylum policy across Europe:
Refugee conventions do not require you to claim asylum in the first safe third country. Legally speaking, you could well be a refugee and still be trying to get cross the Channel. Some of the people at the Home Office know that.
When they claim that people crossing the Channel in boats can’t possibly be refugees, they mean that the only person whom I have any obligation towards is somebody in immediate danger. It is such a nasty position and it needs calling out.
Let’s not insist that everybody getting in a boat crossing the Channel is a refugee. Anybody getting in one of those boats is desperate, but not every one of them has a fear of persecution. Let’s defend people’s right to the pursuit of “happiness” — “the well lived life”). There is a link with the Black Lives Matter movement. People have been made desperate by 400 years of European exploitation. The wealth that exists in this country, albeit badly distributed, is also a direct consequence of those policies. Having lost land, mineral resources, and access to social goods because of colonialism and its legacy, you might be desperate enough to try your luck over here. Good luck to you.
We need an expansion of search and rescue operations. International maritime conventions require the rescue of any person in distress. The UK should do more than the bare minimum to fulfil those obligations. The obligation of rescue exists even when the person in need of rescue is not a European. To treat distress in the Channel as an issue of border security is to say black lives don’t matter. RNLI have been very clear that they would not be border guards. Anybody in distress needs rescue and that’s what they would do. That message needs amplifying.
And it’s not just about upholding maritime conventions. If people in distress are going to be rescued and brought to the nearest port of safety, that would be an insanely risky back route into the UK. People move. They have every right to do that. They will do it regardless of the barriers that Europe or the UK puts up. The choice is between supporting life and supporting death. What else can you choose but life?
A hundred groups are demanding safe routes now. It’s not a bad demand, but safe routes exist. There are ferries. I think that we should be saying let people get on the boat. Visa free travel for all. You can come and claim asylum in the UK if that is what you want to do. It is not a radical demand. It’s easier to administer than resettlement schemes or screenings in Calais or any of the other suggestions. It also would mean that the UK was actively promoting the provision of sanctuary. #FerriesNotNavies is my proposed hash tag.
