Thread by @MattCarr55

Today I went walking in the hills and got so wet and cold I could hardly move my fingers and my hands were like raw meat. On returning to my house I put the heating on, changed into warm clothes and thought of the 27 men,women, and children who drowned in the Channel. That was

just over a week ago, but already the crocodile tears have dried on the faces of politicians. Already the ‘tragedy’ is slipping down the memory hole. So far there has been no investigation into allegations that the French and British ignored their calls for help and left them

floating in freezing waters, buffeted by waters that Channel swimmers smear themselves in grease to swim in even in the summer, clinging onto their deflated dinghy for hours till, one by one, they let go and abandoned themselves to death. Now

they are already being forgotten by the countries whose borders they dared to cross ‘without permission.’ Here are some of them, the men, women and children we call ‘migrants’, ‘illegals’ and ‘invaders’. When I look at these pictures I see the love, hope and laughter

in their faces, and I wonder what they would have given to the world and what they had already given, and what lives they might have lived here. But they weren’t allowed to, because men & women who have never know war or persecution, who have never known houses without heating,

who have never had to sleep out in the cold, who only cross the Channel to buy cheap wine or enjoy the pleasures of La Belle France, were afraid of them, or believed that these people had come to take ‘our’ benefits. I thought of these people in their warm homes

angrily shaking their heads when politicians like Farage brag about their prescience in drawing attention to the ‘migrant crisis.’ I thought of the politicians using false security rhetoric about ‘people traffickers’ and pretending to care about the people who

undertake these journeys. I thought how small they are, these greedy, opportunist politicians who peddle fear and hatred to distract from their own egregious misgovernance; the red faced fascists trying to stop lifeboats from saving people and calling their crew ‘traitors’

because they save people from drowning. I thought what a disgrace it is that a powerful advanced capitalist democracy that never stops talking about ‘values’, that uses these ‘values’ as a justification for waging war and then refuses to accept more than the bare minimum

of refugees from these wars. I thought how unbelievable it is that people can be persuaded to behave with such routine inhumanity and yet how easy it is to manipulate them with false narratives about invasion and sovereignty, till they cling to the illusion of ‘strong borders’

and ‘controlling’ our borders, regardless of the consequences. But more than anything, I felt an overwhelming sadness at these lives that were lost and all I could do about it was come on Twitter, and say, enough. No more deaths. Safe routes now. For their sake. And ours.