Greece Solidarty Campaign delegation visit March 2016: Day One "Refugees Welcome to Piraeus".

This is a  late post on a 3 day delegation visit I went in March to Athens with the Greece Solidarity Campaign (GSC). The GSC is an independent campaign and non-party political organisation, established in response to an appeal by Tony Benn in February 2012 for solidarity with the people resisting ‘austerity’ in Greece. It is supported by the TUC and has a number of affiliated organisations and individual members. The GSC have run various delegation visits to Greece in recent years but the theme of this visit was about "Local Government". I was interested in this as both a local Councillor and also a public service trade union activist.

All members of the delegation arranged independent travel and accommodation and we met for the first time on the Sunday in a hotel in the centre of Athens. The delegation included trade unionists, Councillors, supporters and Jon Lansman, the National secretary for Momentum. David Lammy MP arrived the following day.

Our first visit and tour was to a Solidarity Centre, which was set up for and run by unemployed Greeks. It began in 2012 and now supported 200 families. It helps with food, legal advice, chemists, education and training. It is not a "charity" and all members have to volunteer for at least 4 hours and have to attend monthly meetings. Focus is on the out of work. 60% are unemployed. 30% have inadequate pensions and the remaining 10% inadequate income for other reasons.

As well as supporting Greeks hit by austerity they are also now collecting food for  refugees. "Solidarity for all" is their slogan. Their motto is the best way to show solidarity - is to do it. 

The kitchen in the back feeds refugees. But the refugees do not want to stay in Greece and tend to head out for "Macedonia and Germany".  Due to the border restrictions more people are staying longer (the restrictions have since become far worse). Greece is in danger of becoming a "deposit of lost souls". 75% of Greeks are supportive of refugees and show solidarity but this could change very quickly. See the rise of the fascist and racist Party "Golden Dawn".

Next we went to the Commercial Port and the E1 passenger terminal.  The terminal was a make shift refugee camp. Despite the efforts of volunteers the conditions were pretty shocking. Families and young children were sleeping on blankets over concrete floors. The children were making the best of it and playing games while their parents looked desperate and exhausted. Some of us also visited a former warehouse across the road which was also being used to house refugees. The conditions were even more appalling here being overcrowded, dark and dank. Many of our delegation were openly upset at what they witnessed. I for one never thought that I would ever see scenes like this in modern day Europe.

We met some of the young volunteers who included refugees themselves from Syria and Yemen and a British student helping out during her gap year. The volunteers worked 6am to 6pm shifts, 2 days on and 1 day off. Other volunteers handed out clothing and food while off duty Greek hospital doctors and nurses ran an emergency medical clinic.

The refugees wanted to tell us their stories. Horrific tales about suicide bombings and killings, the fear of drowning when crossing the sea, the uncertainty and worry about their future.

One of our guides explained that despite the poverty and economic hardship in Greece, ordinary Greeks still supported the refugees because so many of them were once refugees themselves because of past war and conflicts. He asked the British people to think that who knows, one day they might well be refugees and need help and support.

I will post on the other 2 days later.

On Sunday 17 July I will be attempting to complete a Olympic distance triathlon to raise funds for the GSC and for UNISON Charity "there for you".

You can donate to the GSC here (drop me an email to let me know) and/or to There For You on the "Just Giving" page I have set up.

Newham Compass debate: Refugees and the EU - Wednesday 18 May

This looks like a really interesting debate tomorrow evening but I have a clash so I don't think I will be able to make it.

"What I learned when I visited a refugee camp in Greece"

Last week I went on a (self funded) delegation visit organised by the Greece Solidarity Campaign to Athens. David Lammy MP was a member of the delegation.

I will post on the visit but yesterday David wrote a powerful (and angry) article in the NewStatesman which I have copied below:-

"Unless Europe’s leaders summon the political will to act on behalf of the voiceless and vulnerable this untold suffering will only get worse, and I fear that Greece, perpetually teetering on the brink of oblivion, may well collapse as well.

Last week, while European leaders met in Brussels to discuss their response to the worst refugee crisis Europe has seen since World War Two, I visited a dilapidated shipping warehouse in Piraeus, the port area of Athens that has become home to thousands of stranded refugees.

What I saw was absolutely harrowing. Hundreds of refugees are living in inhumane conditions in a dark, damp and filthy old shipping warehouse, lacking supplies or even basic levels of sanitation.

I spoke to a group of Afghan teenagers who told me that a young child had tragically passed away in the camp over the weekend preceding my visit, and there will be more deaths to follow if Europe does not act urgently to address the situation.

It has become clear that this situation can only be tackled if European nations reopen their borders and work to reach a collective, and lasting, political agreement.

35,000 refugees are currently stranded in the Greece, and according to the UN up to 2,000 more are arriving daily. Macedonia closing its border has blocked the Balkan route out of the country, leaving 13,000 migrants stranded in camps on the border, and the situation will become increasingly dire day by day with Croatia and Slovenia following suit.

Greece finds itself in the depths of a double crisis. In addition to being on the front line of Europe’s refugee emergency, it is hard to imagine an economy in a worse state. Official figures show that unemployment is around 25 per cent, but the Mayor of Piraeus told me that in areas of Athens the true figure is at least 50 per cent.

Public spending has also been cut to the bone and last year’s third memorandum imposed further spending cuts worth seven per cent of Greece’s GDP, which itself has been in freefall since 2010. Over half of young Greeks are unemployed, leaving entire families reliant on pensions and charity. The head of the Greek local government union told me that public sector pensions have been cut in half, before taking into account further cuts of almost €2 billion announced in the most recent budget.

It is a source of shame to European nations that Greece’s government is being hung out to dry in this way, handed the impossible task of rescuing an economy that is on the verge of collapse together with managing a humanitarian crisis that is without parallel in Europe this century. Meeting with Syriza ministers made clear that the Greek authorities are completely overwhelmed, like King Canute trying to hold back an unstoppable tide.

The scale of this disaster overwhelmed me in its all of its inhumanity, cruelty and brutality. Turning our back on the great crisis of our time won’t make the problem go away.

A “one in one out” deal with Turkey simply does not come close to providing the answer. A quick fix deal is likely to break down in the future and, as the UN Refugee Agency has warned, the deal is unlikely to stem the flow of refugees trying to reach Europe. A collective political agreement is not only the right thing to do in a moral sense, it is the only real available option that matches the scale and severity of this catastrophe.

Unless Europe’s leaders summon the political will to act on behalf of the voiceless and vulnerable this untold suffering will only get worse, and I fear that Greece, perpetually teetering on the brink of oblivion, may well collapse as well".

We are all migrants

Yesterday the first official refugees from Syria arrived in the UK at Glasgow airport. Some random thoughts.

Firstly, I am reminded of this fascinating research about the generic make up of many Brits. The Romans, Vikings and Normans had apparently little influence on our DNA, it was the Anglo-Saxons invasion in 400-500 AD which substantially altered the generic make up. 30% of most English White DNA is German and 40% is French

Interesting that only the Welsh appear to have DNA similar to the original inhabitants of Britain after the last Ice Age. Of course, even they were "migrants" at some stage as well.

However, the "Celts" in  Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall have surprisingly no central gene source and are genetically the most different in the UK.

I remember once encountering a blond blue eyed idiot who was spouting racist rubbish that "all these foreigners should go home" by saying that surely this means he will have to go back to the German Forests that his family came from?

In Italian the word "foreigner" means someone from the next city or village.

I used to work in Brick Lane in the East End of London which has a Muslim mosque that used to be a Jewish synagogue and before that was a Protestant French Huguenot Church. 

British born members of my family regularly work abroad and send home their income.

I was forced to leave my family in Wales to seek work since at the time local male unemployment was 33%.

Nearly the whole of the UK was once totally uninhabited during the last Ice Age. This was only around 11,000 years ago.

I am proud that Newham Council is welcoming and supporting 10 Syrian Refugees families. 

So in one way or the other, we are all foreigners, we are all migrants.

Hat tip picture Edinburgh, Scotland

"If she drowns she's a refugee, if she floats she's an economic migrant".

This is the "Katie Hopkins" immigration test that the Tories are thinking of introducing to appease The Sun and Daily Mail readers.

Hat tip Becky Tye.