Right so Tory depravity, thy name is Suella Braverman as once again our God awful Home Secretary has plumbed the depths of what passes for her sense of humanity by choosing to lecture a Holocaust survivor on asylum. Joan Salter was a child survivor of the Holocaust, fleeing persecution and death during WWII and now aged 83, a lifelong Holocaust educator, for which she had been awarded an MBE, she confronted Braverman over her treatment of refugees, her plans for deportations and especially her choice of language by describing people today fleeing persecution and war zones as an invasion.
She stood up to her MP, Salter is one of Braverman’s constituents, at a constituency meeting and this is what she said:
‘I am a child survivor of the Holocaust. In 1943 I was forced to flee my home in Belgium. I went across war torn Europe and dangerous seas until I was finally able to come to the UK in 1947.’ Sound familiar so far?
Salter continued addressing Braverman. ‘Now when I hear you using words against refugees like swarm and invasion I am reminded of the language used to dehumanise and justify the murder of my family and many others. Why do you find the need to use that kind of language?
I’ll come to Braverman’s response in a moment, but honestly if somebody came up to you and pulled you up on such a thing, how would that make you feel? At the very least you’d figure it would give you pause to think, examine your choices, maybe place yourself in their shoes and also be quietly horrified at your own actions. Some might be aware that Braverman’s own parents came here from Kenya and Mauritius and that her own anti migrant stance might make her think about that, think about what her parents might have been through, but then, her parents came here for economic reasons, rather than in a small boat, across a dangerous body of water as their one and only means of survival, having escaped goodness knows what potential atrocities. Perhaps the difference to a Tory like Braverman - and indeed her parents, her mother ran as a Tory Councillor - is economic migrants don’t turn up half drowned or worse? Another empty mouth to feed. Perhaps we should stop selling arms abroad if they’re going to displace people who might then come here? Just a thought. We are aware of what Joan Salter escaped, we have an appreciation of the horrors of the Holocaust, I won’t use the word’s ‘we know’, I’ve carefully avoided that because frankly I don’t think we can begin to fathom it, but the events are well documented. Equally though are the horrors of the here and now being documented too, so who are we to question people trying to escape that? Choosing to come here as is their right under international law, before their case is even heard and being called all manner of dismissive arrogant names, names with chilling historical precedents.
Braverman’s response then? Try and hold onto your last meal. She said: ‘I too share a huge amount of concern and sympathy and frustration out of the challenges that we are facing. Personally I too am, my parents are immigrants. My father was kicked out of Kenya, he found refuge and security and opportunity in the United Kingdom at a time when it was very difficult and my mother, wasn’t born in this country, she was recruited as a girl of 18 in Mauritius and she came to work here as a nurse for some 45 years for our health service. And my parents came here with nothing. They came here with nothing except gratitude and a desire to give themselves to Britain and they owe everything to this country and they have taught me a deep and profound love of Britain and British people. Their tolerance, their generosity, their decency, their fair play. And, that also means that we mustn’t shy away from saying there are problems and there is a huge problem that we have right now when it comes to migration, the scale of which we have not known before and I won’t apologise for language I use to demonstrate the scale of the problem. I see myself as being honest with British people and honest for British people. I’m not going to shy away from difficult truths, nor am I going to conceal what is the reality that we are all watching. I see myself as your voice in government, your voice around the cabinet table, your voice at the home office. And I listen and hear what people here in Fareham tell me and I won’t hide away from that. So, I will for not one minute say that our track record from taking in people from Ukraine, people from Hong Kong, Syria, Afghanistan, I am incredibly proud of what the UK has done in meeting here hundreds of thousands of people who have found security as refugees and friendships in the United Kingdom and long may that continue. I have benefitted from my parents coming here, millions of people have benefitted from a country like the United Kingdom, known around the world but I will not shy away from saying we have a problem with people exploiting that generosity, breaking our laws and undermining our system. We must accept the enormity of the problem if we’ve got any chance of solving it.’
She got applause for that. She got applause for not apologising for her language, she got applause despite not acknowledging at all Joan Salter’s question, her comparisons of the language and attitudes used by Braverman to those used against Jewish holocaust survivors, from the Hitler supporting Daily Mail of the day to politicians like Nancy Astor and her openly antisemitic attitudes to the likes of today’s politicians like David Cameron and his swarms of migrants, to Theresa May burning Windrush boarding cards proving the right to reside here for many of the Windrush generation, to basically anything Boris Johnson might huff and wheeze about on any given day, numerous examples, to the likes of Priti Patel, who’s parents were Ugandan economic migrants, to Rishi Sunak, the PM himself, who’s parents, again economic migrants, came from Kenya and Tanzania, to Braverman herself. All of their parents came here by choice, Holocaust survivors of the 1940’s, the refugees and asylum seekers of today, all of whom got here by small boat, came here out of desperation and for those people who bleat todays refugees could go to ‘other safe countries’ it’s not for us to judge that until their asylum claims are heard. Get in the bin.
I’m going to come back actually to what Braverman herself said about her parents in that exchange, because the way she told it, it seems like they were fleeing something too. Her mother took up an opportunity to come here as a nurse, sponsored to do so. Great, how about we do that again now then, because we need nurses don’t we? We still haven’t learned to train enough of our own, even since the 60’s. Her father, she claims was kicked out of Kenya, but he actually came here to work for a housing association. Braverman said so on her own website. We have in the Tory Party a list of people of colour gatekeeping the white cliffs of Dover it seems from anyone else of colour being able to come in. Braverman heralds the coming of the Ukrainian refugees as proof we are a tolerant country, but it’s been ordinary people opening up their own homes that allowed that. Hong Kong got a mention too and although some from there have sought asylum from the Chinese authorities, many have come for economic reasons too. The Afghans have found asylum here only if they got here themselves, since, despite promises of 5000 Afghan refugees to be taken in each year, following the end of the Afghanistan war, we’ve only achieved that so far because of Afghans getting here themselves having crossed by small boat. We just gave them leave to remain! Not one single Afghan ally who worked for British forces has been rescued by the UK and brought here. We aren’t a tolerant country, not when we use intolerant language, especially our leaders. We aren’t doing enough when we spend more money arming those creating more refugees than we do taking responsibility for the mess it makes of people’s lives afterwards. The video clip of this exchange is on social media, it’s being shared by Freedom from Torture, they’re on Twitter as @freefromtorture so give them a follow, especially since the Home Office is currently trying to force then to take down the footage claiming it contains coverage of a sensitive area of policy. It was being spoken of in a public arena, or is this another of those Leaky Sue moments? In other words it’s damaging the Home Office to hell that they have an unapologetic migrant basher who would lecture a Holocaust survivor on such things running their department. Braverman isn’t fit to run a tap, let along anything else.