The UNISON South East International Relations Committee is asking for your help. As you may be aware the number of refugees in the South East is growing in number. As you may also be aware many men are housed at Napier Barracks which is an old MOD barracks where they live in poor conditions, under difficult and upsetting circumstances.
The home office has recently begun talks about another ‘temporary arrival facility’ in Kent at the old Manston airport site. This government is continuing to create a hostile environment around the refugees crisis and failing to tackle the issue, all the while we are seeing desperate people lose their lives in the channel trying to reach the UK. The refugee crisis is continuing to build and now is the time for us to show our union’s support of the refugees.
Locally in Hastings, community aid organisations have rallied to take supplies to arrivals on the beaches, but we have also seen the far right stirring up racism to the point that they even attempted to block the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) launching to rescue people in the sea . As the largest trade union in the region in which the majority of this is happening, we must act in solidarity over these issues. Now, as ever it was, an injury to one is an injury to all.
There are groups helping refugees with practical and legal assistance and trying to stop the dehumanisation of people fleeing war and famine. People who simply by the fate of where and when they were born have been put into an impossible situation.
Work has been undertaken by one of our UNISON South East International Relations committee members with the Whitstable Calais support group, fundraising and getting supplies into the barracks. They are working with a group in Dover – Samphire – who have recently called for donations of men’s toiletries and warm winter clothing and shoes (ideally new or nearly new).
The committee believes supporting groups like these is an easy and practical thing our branches can do to show our support while also challenging the rhetoric of the right with their racist, xenophobic and hostile attitudes.
The International Relations Committee encourages all branches in the region to lend support to the various organisations who are working hard to ensure that refugees are treated with dignity and respect and are warm during the cold winter months.
Some of these organisations are asking for monetary donations and others are asking for collections of shoes and clothes. Any help your branch can give really does make a difference.
The committee thanks branches for your support with this literally life and death matter for many people.
Yve White
Chair | UNISON South East International Relations Committee
