Brent Council willing to take in at least 50 Syrian families 'if necessary'

Leader of Brent Council Muhammed Butt has told the Kilburn Times that the Council is willing to take at least 50 Syrian families into the borough LINK

However his comments were short on detail of how this would be done.

He told the Times:

It’s incumbent upon us to make sure that we do help the people who are in need.
I’m looking to take in 50 families if necessary, I have no problem with that and if we need to increase it we’ll wait for the announcement from the government about the resources open to us.

He said it was too early to say how the refugees would be settled in and housed.

What we need to do first is make a plan, we need to get our partners on board and that the council and the departments are working together so that we can identify the areas of need.

I‘ve had conversations with officers about starting to take the appropriate measures to support people coming in.

He went on to say that there was some time as “people will not be coming in tomorrow.”

At the time of writing 351 residents had signed an on-line petition calling for Brent to admit 50 families LINK

The petition was publicised on Wembley Matters and social media over the weekend. LINK

Petitioners call on Brent to home 50 refugee families

A petition has been set up asking Brent Council to home 50 refugee families in Brent. The justification for the request states:

Why is this important?

Aylan, the toddler who drowned fleeing Syria, was just three years old. His town was under attack by Isis. His five year old brother and his mum also died trying to reach safety.

Yet our prime minister has just said ‘we won't take any more refugees’. He thinks that most of us don't care. But 38 Degrees members do care. We don't want Britain to be the kind of country that turns its back as people drown in their desperation to flee places like Syria.

So let's stand up for Britain's long tradition of helping refugees fleeing war. Let's show the Prime Minister that we, the people of the UK, are proud to do our part and provide refuge to people in their hour of need.

The petition can be found HERE

50 families is a comparatively modest request compared with the thosands of Ugandan Asians admitted in 1972 as Iain Roxburgh reminded us in Friday's Guardian (and Ken Livingstone on BBCR4 'Any Questions?'):

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We don’t have to look as far back as the kindertransport to find an example where we have done it before and welcomed large numbers of refugees in a short space of time and on a far greater scale. I was a councillor in the London borough of Brent and vice-chair of the housing committee when the borough received over 10,000 Ugandan Asian refugees in under six weeks in 1972. Similar numbers went to Leicester, also with a settled East African community. With the settled East African Asian community and local voluntary organisations, Brent council worked up a plan for coping with the influx, including a shopping list of demands, which we presented to the Heath government. After a meeting with ministers, chaired by the home secretary, all these demands were met, including houses in multiple occupation and immediate funding for new schools, local health, social services and local advice and community support services.

Perhaps most challenging, then and now, is handling the politics of migration and harnessing the generosity and human empathy of our settled communities. After consultation and with the cooperation of the local media, we took an openly welcoming approach to the borough’s new citizens, who have gone on to contribute so much to the economy, culture and vibrancy of the borough over the last four decades.

Shahrar Ali: UK must not add to suffering of those fleeing war

Shahrar Ali, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, is to speak at the Stop the War Coalition’s Conference ‘Confronting a World at War’ this afternoon. He will speak on the subject of war and migration

The conference brings together writers, activists and politicians from around the world to analyse recent conflicts and current foreign policy approaches.

Shahrar Ali said:

The Green Party will contribute to this important debate about conflict resolution with an analysis of unjust war as a major cause of displacement of peoples. Too often governments fail to recognise the long-term impact of foreign policy disasters on the lives of untold families, forced to flee from persecution or from the destructive power of arms these governments have sold abroad or used themselves.

The UK must not add to the suffering of those fleeing from war with the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on movement, which often have inhumane consequences. We must hold to our collective obligations as a common humanity and take joint responsibility for instability we have directly caused or are implicated in.

We have clear policies on dialogue, peace, diplomacy and international cooperation which aim to tackle forced migration at source, to grant communities both the capability to live in peace and also the right of return.

The Green Party has opposed recent UK interventions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, and holds that the UK needs to rethink its current defence policy. In particular, the Green Party advocates the abolition of Trident.

Natalie Bennett's New Year video message

Lorries promoting government racism in Brent condemned

Brent has been chosen as one of six borough for the dubious honour of hosting a campaign that panders to the racists of the EDL and echoes the 'Blacks Go Home' slogans of the National Front in the 70s.

In the 70s I was one of many in anti-racist groups who organised weekend actions removing  or painting over the slogans from the walls and doors of London. The slogans, often aimed at individual homes. as below, were designed to intimidate.

Now it is a government that is funding a campaign with exactly the same aims. It shows, contrary to the multi-racial bliss promoted by the government over the Olympics, that racism is now acceptable.

As a teacher I was very aware of the impact racist and anti-refugee campaigns had on children in our schools, making them anxious and insecure and sometimes ashamed of their status. This campaign will have a similar impact and seems designed to reassure the racsits that the government is taking action but will have the effect of stirring up resentment, suspicion and fear.

The choosing of Brent for such a campaign, when there was that notorious YouTube video about Wembley by a far-right racist group not so long ago is deeply offensive.

Sarah Teather MP spoke out against the campaign saying:

This is the latest in a string of Home Office announcements that are designed to make the government look tough on immigration. But I fear that the only impact of this deeply divisive form of politics will be to create tension and mistrust to anyone who looks and sounds foreign. These adverts are nothing less than straightforward intimidation and … can only have bad consequences for communities like those I represent in Brent, where people from all faiths and races have mixed for decades. We will all be much poorer for it.

Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council said yesterday:

Placing these posters in the most diverse borough in the UK is inflammatory and divisive. I have people in my surgeries every week who have been wrongly processed by the home office or who have come from places they simply can't return to and are now going to feel publicly threatened as a result of these posters. It's disgraceful and frankly unwelcome in our diverse and united borough.

I welcome their statements and am keen to discuss what we can do as a community once these lorries of hate are on out streets.

The perils facing separated young asylum seekers

This report  by Nicky Road of a recent conference has been forwarded by the Institute for Race Relations and should be of interest to teachers, social workers, lawyers and refugee groups in Brent.

The  conference, organised by the Royal Holloway and the Tavistock and Portman NHS on 19 September, brought together lawyers, teachers, mental health workers, social workers, refugee organisations and young asylum seekers to share their knowledge and experiences and to establish a network to collate information and track the outcomes for separated young people seeking asylum.

The excellent contributors detailed both the legal minefield of seeking justice for these young people and the emotional and psychological impact of displacement and a very uncertain and potentially life-threatening future. Young people from Afghanistan also participated in the day and spoke about their experiences of living in the UK, gaining education and qualifications, making friends and a life here only to be met with a very uncertain future as they reach 18.

There were speakers, films taken by young people speaking about their lives, a performance of Mazloom, a play based on words and experiences of young asylum seekers, and a film called Hamedullah. This is the true story of Hamedullah who fled Afghanistan as a teenager and lived safely in Canterbury until Border Agency officials came to his house in the middle of the night, arrested him and removed him to Kabul on a charter flight. Sue Clayton, a film director working in the Media Department at the Royal Holloway, filmed the day he was led to his flight and gave him a tiny video camera which he has since used to capture his experience of returning and his daily struggle to survive. This film is a very powerful testament to the dangers that these young people face when they are forcibly removed and gives the lie to the official statement that it is safe for these young men to return.

The greatest sense of injustice voiced by those young people present was the inequality in the way they are treated in the UK. The different standards of the legal representation they receive was also voiced by many, lawyers included. Supporters of these young people have started to show extracts of Hamedullah to judges, highlighting what they can expect on their return, and this is proving an increasingly effective way of influencing the decisions taken by courts.

The film Hamedullah costs £10 with all the proceeds going to this young man to support him whilst he tries to make a new life for himself. He has been unable to get work, has no family left and his village is in one of the most dangerous areas. He is viewed with great suspicion as belonging to neither country.