The Party's Over

They're closing camps and shipping people around, but not a whisper from the EU about where everyone will be going - eventually.

How long does it take to relocate 8,000 people who have been living under canvas for months? According to the spokesperson for Migration in the Greek Government,  the evacuation of the camp at Edomeni should be completed in a week. 

They have promised no violence but took the precaution of evicting all journalists and political activists before they started on the relocation process, just to make sure that no record would be made of any regrettable excesses of police enthusiasm. 

This also means that there will be no photos of grateful refugees smiling and thanking their rescuers, in the way that the ordinary people of France noisily welcomed the Allied troops into Northern France in 1945.

But such scenes would not have been taking place in Greece, anyway. 

Violence is far more likely.

When it comes to getting people to move, the violence is not always physical, but it is inhumane: like limiting the water supply to drinking water only, and turning off the water supply to sanitation and showers – as happened at Vial camp on the island of Chios. 

I find myself haunted by images of Jews being relocated in the film, Schindler’s List, with the persistent dehumanising of people through the assertion of authority.

" A modern welcome ! "

At a far less disturbing level, it’s like being back in the Security queue at Logan Airport in Boston. The officers of the laughingly-termed “Department of Homeland Security” are permanently stony-faced. 

When I have attempted any touch of normal sociable interaction I have been taken to one side and have gone through more searches and the ignominy of that awful full-body X-Ray scan. 

There is no connection, no interaction, and not the slightest hint of humanity. This is the way government employees treat the public. No wonder the phrase "Civil Servants" has more or less disappeared from modern English usage.

I should be grateful that I face the positive racial discrimination that comes with being white, and which still creates a degree of preferential treatment in many parts of the world. But I don't like it, and it made me very uncomfortable to come through Heathrow a couple of years back, and see the smartly-dressed black businessman off my flight, being pulled aside for further interrogation and a check on his hand-baggage.

But that’s nothing to what these heroic survivors in Greece have been through; these brave refugees of the horrific conditions in Afghanistan and Syria.

The normal behaviour of people interacting with refugees involves the automatic and involuntary assertion of a differential in status: I am a legitimate European: you are intruders, and if you expect us to help, you’ll have to behave yourselves. 

Stand in line. Don’t push. Wait your turn.

If you want to feel the full irony, look back at the videos of tearful families landing on the beaches of Samos and Lesvos and falling to their knees to give thanks to God for their rescue, their safe arrival, and the prospect of a secure and happy future. This is painful irony.

Syrian refugee praying his thanks for arriving safely in Greece

I could feel the false authority that the refugees invested in me, when I was handing out polystyrene beakers of hot food in Victoria Square. 

They formed an orderly queue, avoiding eye-contact, resisting excessive laughter and lowering their voices respectfully. 

They were like the infant class at a primary school, learning how to queue, learning how to behave, and learning how to respect authority.

But mostly, the refugees who waited in orderly queues weren’t children: they were a cross-section of humanity, some with far higher qualifications than mine, with far more money than I have ever seen, (on deposit in a bank somewhere,) fluent in two, three or more languages and just wanting to join their friends and relations in making a fresh start and creating a new life for their family. This link will take you to a short video of refugees being interviewed. https://vimeo.com/magnacartatv/refugetrailer

Demonstrations in London in March this year.

The latest UK survey published last week, showed that Britons are more willing than almost any other people in Europe to welcome and absorb refugees. So what is it that the UK government is afraid of? I am back to where I was a month ago: ashamed of my government and ashamed of the European Union.

But the bureaucracy lumbers on, and here in Athens a bizarre mix of volunteers, comprising idealists, anarchists, evangelicals, radicals, liberals, and New Age Hippies will eventually disband and disperse. These twenty-somethings with tattoos and dreadlocks put smiles on children’s faces, and bathe babies in the Piraeus caravan that serves as a temporary child-care facility. They are ingenious and street-wise, and keep one jump ahead of the police, so that when they were no longer allowed to cook in the port, they found a local Piraeus restaurateur, who opened up the flat roof over her premises to create a new kitchen for them to cook meals for refugees.

They are now on the hunt for a vacuum packing machine, so that they can create food with a longer shelf-life, packed in 20-portion sealed bags which can be transported easily to detention centres outside central Athens.

These are the same crowd who not only got English Language classes up and running at one of the Refugee hostels, they also found enough teachers from within the refugee community to ensure that this project will be self-sustaining almost from the start. Nobody told them to, and nobody pays them. 

They work for smiles.

Meanwhile all Europe is worried as to whether the EU really is such a good idea after all. For most of the volunteers, this is a no-brainer: Europe needs to reach common policies and common legislation in many areas of everyday life. But, at the same time, we don’t need straight bananas or straight cucumbers, and we certainly don’t need Health & Safety legislation that makes it illegal just to act sensibly without having constantly to check on legislation at every step of the way.

Keeping the children amused

Volunteers in Athens have consistently moved swiftly to meet new challenges in rapidly changing situations. Almost all the refugees who arrived on the beaches of Samos and Lesvos were greeted by volunteers who were in Greece at their own expense. They met them with love, compassion, dry clothes and blankets. At least a dozen names should be on the Honours List, in recognition of their dedication to humanitarian causes.

But dreadlocks and tattoos don’t generally go to Buckingham Palace to be acknowledged for their dedication to humanitarian causes, and dreadlocks and tattoos don’t generally go to the Palace of Westminster to decide how to resolve the humanitarian crisis.

Dreadlocks and tattoos get stuck in and make things happen, and Westminster is not run by dreadlocks and tattoos, so perhaps whatever needs to happen will go back to the Committee Stage and be bogged down for more months, while children miss another school term, and a pregnant mum hopes she'll have a home by the time baby arrives.

This week, the refugees might be sweltering in their tents pitched on tarmac; then the seasons will change and they’ll be soaked and shivering. Meanwhile the first million emigrés who were absorbed into Germany are earning, spending and paying taxes.

Would Jeremy Corbyn have handled things differently? I’m not sure, but I’ll guarantee that the dreadlocks and tattoos would have had it sorted out by now. How do we make the changes, how do we "Be the Change" without a revolution? Maybe, in the end, it will have to be revolution. I hope not: but I do hope and pray for radical change.