Unfinished Sympathy

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I was listening to photographer Giles Duley talking on Radio 4's Soul Music this morning. Retelling his return to photographic reporting in conflict zones after being seriously injured in Afghanistan - losing both his legs and an arm to a landmine - and his subsequent work on the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe, and the thought struck me that perhaps the only way to change the appalling attitude of the UK Home Office and our Home Secretary in particular to the plight of these people would be to force Patel and Johnson - in fact the whole damned Cabinet - to spend time on the ground in the places that these poor souls are trying to escape - real time: no guided tours, no political showmanship, no flim-flam. Preferably with no hotel rooms and preferably for at least a month or two - I think we can spare them for a few weeks - just to give them a flavour of exactly what it's like to be a human being trapped in a situation over which they have no control, in a land where they have no future; and to get even an inkling of just what motivates them to want to escape to lands that promise a future, free of violence and persecution. Just the action Priti Patel's parents took in fleeing Uganda to settle - justifiably - in the UK. The track in question on Soul Music today? Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy. Irony of ironies...


Comments

  1. Steve28 November 2021 at 13:23

    Long been of the opinion that those who are in government, and particularly the treasury, should be made to live in social housing for a couple of months and live off what they laughingly believe to be sufficient benefit to support a family for food, rent & heating etc.
    Perhaps include this with a spell in Syria or Afghanistan, as you suggest. Maybe then we might achieve the level of change needed to improve the lot of all those people who really need it.
    Dream on my friend 'cause it ain't going to happen!

    ReplyDelete
  2. sideways28 November 2021 at 17:19

    I'm sad that I have to agree with you - the last time any one of the buggers on the Tory side of the divide experienced anything like, was in the eighties when a young Matthew Parris tried to live on the dole for a fortnight - one payment - and ran out of money after a few days, saying that he thought the benefits 'perfectly adequate' and that he had simply 'mismanaged' his resources. Naturally, the experiment ended at that point. Nuff said.

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