91Èȱ¬

Good morning. I’m in Germany as you’re hearing this, in Heilbronn, the town my mother came from as a refugee from the Nazis in 1937. She was 22 when she left, and she always said she had a better life in Britain than she would have had in Germany. But of course it’s hard to tell if that’s true. The story of her life has just been published, and was launched in the town’s archive last night by the Burgermeister and the author. There aren’t many people around here today who knew her. She’d be 100 if she were still alive. But there was a real celebration of her life yesterday and a commemoration of it, and she would have been so proud and pleased.

She was one amongst many people, Jews, left wingers and others, who were refugees in the 1930s. And now we’re witnessing huge movements of people again, the largest since 1945, from Syria and Afghanistan, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Libya……and the language we hear about migrants is often ugly and the understanding apparently severely limited of what it means to leave home and everything you know in total desperation. People do not risk terrible journeys lightly. They do not pack themselves and their children on to boats that are not seaworthy without thinking that going back would be even worse. They do not risk their lives for no reason. As we see starvation in Syria and desperate persecution of minorities around the world, let us resolve to do more to understand the heart of the stranger, and help those who do manage to reach our shores to have a decent life, so that they, like my mother, can achieve better things in this country, and serve it well, and play their part in its success. Amen