Kindness to children: too much to ask?

“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” So the King James Bible tells us (Luke 17:2).

It seems that, in spite of the behaviour of certain of its priests at certain times, Christianity as a belief system feels children should be protected from harm. I suspect most of us, of any faith or none, would agree.

Some of the unhappier kids on the planet, or certainly Europe, have been living in dire conditions in improvised shelters in a makeshift camp called ‘The Jungle’, outside Calais in France. They have been waiting for the opportunity to cross the Channel, legally or illegally, to find refuge in Britain. Altogether, there are some 10,000 migrants in the camp, of whom about 1200 are children. They come predominantly to be from the horn of Africa, the war-torn areas of Syria or Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. So they are escaping war or desperate poverty.

The Calais Jungle: not the most salubrious of places

The French authorities are about to close down the camp, and have asked Britain to take some of the refugees, particularly the most vulnerable. That means, above all, the unaccompanied children. It seems that under the terms Britain has negotiated for accepting some of these children some 400 would eventually come in.

Net migration to the UK – the difference between immigration and emigration – is currently over 330,000 a year. It’s hard to see how 400 would make a huge difference. Even 500, if it came to that. But even so some are cavilling at the idea of letting them in.

This reminds me of the phenomenon of the Kindertransporte in the last nine months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. They brought 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children to Britain. ‘Unaccompanied’ because they often left the rest of their families behind. That meant that in most cases, they became the only members of their families to survive the war.

I’m not being churlish. It was an admirable, wonderful initiative. The churlish ones were those who spoke out even then against our taking these kids – and successfully spoke out against taking their parents. We know the results: 10,000 were saved but 6 million died. It seems shamefully ungenerous, a callous indifference to the fate of others, that condemned millions to die rather than suffer some discomfort ourselves.

Now we’re seeing the same arguments again, but for even more trivial numbers. We’re talking about a few hundred children, but there are people in Britain who feel they shouldn’t be taken. And those people maintain that if, grudgingly, the children are taken, then we must above all ensure that the ones who come are truly children.

In general, nothing special happens to us during the night before our eighteenth birthday. For the vast majority of people, the most significant aspect of that moment is the drink consumed. In our first day aged 18, we’re not particularly more resistant to suffering than we were on our last day aged 17. So if a few people aged 18, or even 19, make it, why should we care? I’d rather a few people who are technically adults sneaked in, than to leave a few real children behind.

That’s not the way it’s seen. There’s been a fuss about the refugees who look clearly over 18. Of course, the people making their case rather weakened it by pointing to one such person in particular, who was indeed well over 18, but turned out not to be a refugee but an interpreter. Ah, well. Who cares about accuracy when you’ve got a case to make against immigration?

The most remarkable claim of all, though, was made by a Tory MP. David Davies says we should carry out dental checks on all the refugees to establish their age. I’m glad to say the suggestion has been greeted with something of an uproar, not least from dentists who point out that the process is likely to be incorrect in 50% of cases. Davies replied on Twitter that he begs to differ with them, and who would you believe when it comes to examining teeth, a fully-fledged Tory MP or a mere dentist?

But what I liked most about Davies is that he is described – which I suspect means he describes himself – on Wikipedia as a Christian.

I’m inclined to say, “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he be allowed to look into the mouths of these little ones. Even if they’re not quite as little as they claim.”

Time to "rediscover what it is to be human."

It’s good to see religious leaders standing up to denounce immorality – especially when for once it isn’t sex they’re talking about.

It’s particularly welcome when it is a Christian leader revealing how deeply unchristian David Cameron is, despite his frequent professions of faith. In this instance, the speaker was the bishop of Dover, Trevor Willmott, commenting on the so-called crisis of migrants in Calais.

I say “so-called” because there are at most 3000 of them (compared to the 60,000 who turned up in Italy in the first six months of this year), and it isn’t even clear that all of them want to come to England. I heard one interviewed by the BBC, saying she hoped the world might hear them, and maybe someone in the world might find it in their heart to help them.

Even so, Cameron has decided to provide dogs and guards and better fences to Calais, to make sure that none of these immigrants make it to Britain. So for him the question is merely to be met with security measures, rather than to be treated as a social and political issue, that needs to be handled with compassion towards people who are fleeing some of the worst dangers on the face of the Earth.

What underlined the moral problem was Cameron’s description of the people in Calais as a “swarm of migrants.” It was that use of the word “swarm”, as though we were dealing not with humans but with locusts, that caused the worst shock.

The bishop, talking with the support of the Church of England, pointed out that “we’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.”

Not an infestation, not a swarm
Just humans facing desperate hardship

A salutary reminder. And here’s another – a reminder of a previous time when we in Britain closed ranks to resist swarms of immigrants.

“The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring into this country from every port is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest.”

Thus spake a magistrate in 1938, quoted with approval by the Daily Mail, the paper which supported the Nazis in Germany at that time, and the British Union of Fascists in its own country.

Recently, the Czech Republic honoured Sir Nicholas Winton who brought 669 children out in the “Kindertransporte”, to save their lives in Britain. This was felt to be only what he deserved, including by the right wing press. They’re correct, of course, but it’s worth remembering that we’re talking about under 700.

For the first six years of the Nazi regime, the only Jews affected were in Germany, Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. These were Jews that could have been helped, in a way that when it came to Poland, rescue was impossible: the Nazis appeared in their country so rapidly, and Britain in any case declared war on Germany. But something could have been done about German Jews.

There were a little over 500,000 of them when the Nazis came to power. By 1941, around 160,000 of them were still there. They were, almost without exception, murdered. Jews who left for other European countries, like France, which later fell under Nazi control, were also mostly killed.

Britain took about 40,000 of the Jews who got out. That’s about 10% of the total. Under 10% of the whole Jewish population of Germany. About a quarter as many as those who were killed. So while it’s wonderful to recognise men like Nicholas Winton, it would be unfortunate if we allowed sentimentalism about those 669 children to blind us to the fact that we left so many to face the horror of the gas chambers.

“We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters,” said the bishop of Dover. That was something we forgot in the 1930s, when powerful men decided that the arrival of German Jews in Britain was “becoming an outrage.”

Learn the bishop’s lesson and we might avoid behaving so shamefully this time round.