Refugees...the Conservative case for welcome

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This evening we're sitting in the pub retelling the old tales, things we've been told by folk in times past. And during this talk one of those post-WW2 stories was told. A story of a Pole or Ukrainian walking across Europe ahead of the Russian armies desperate to find a place of freedom. The detail doesn't matter just the remembering of the effort and sacrifice - leaving friends and family behind, hiding from Soviet troops, living off the land hoping for the occasional, unexpected act of kindness.

Scroll forward nearly 70 years and ask yourself how these young men (they were mostly young men) differ from the young men we see clutching the gunnels of a rickety boat or crowded into some railway station or other? I forget how many people were displaced by WW2 - 30, 50, perhaps 60 million? Poles, Ukrainians, Greeks, Germans, Italians and Jews. People who saw their homeland destroyed by war and then, seemingly arbitrarily, moved from Poland to the Soviet Union or from Germany to Poland.

Today we look - a blink of an eye later in terms of human history - and these people (or rather their descendants) are settled, content in the new places they found. Hence the stories. And the thousands of sturdy English men and women who, when asked, will tell you of their Polish mum, Ukrainian grandad or Latvian father. And everywhere across Europe the story is the same - the descendants of those refugees are part of the place they finally landed.

Here in Bradford we still remember the struggle of the captive nations, mark the Soviet genocide of holodomor, and recall the destruction of Srebenicia. We do this because it's right and, just as importantly, because the consequence of these struggles is part of the history and tradition of the City. Just as we mark Pakistan's creation and the independence of Jamaica.

So when we ask whether we should welcome a few Syrian refugees, we should recall these tales and say 'yes, we can help'. Not just because it's the right thing to do but because so much of our city's meaning comes from people who crossed the world to be in Bradford. Those few Syrians will, I'm sure, mark another group who found welcome here and who bring a new set of stories. My hope is that a future group of Bradfordians - in 50 years time - will be sat in the pub telling tales. And one of those tales will be about a Syrian who climbed fences, crossed boundaries and walked miles just to find peace and freedom.

To turn people away because "we're full" or worse "it's not our problem" is to deny our shared humanity. And - as a Conservative, more sadly - to deny the opportunity to share the history and tradition of our land. A place without that tale of effort and sacrifice in search of freedom, choice and a better life.

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