SPEECH TO PEOPLE TAKING FOOD TO CALAIS REFUGEE CAMPS 17TH JUNE 2016

Can I start by saying thank you to everyone who has contributed to this convoy. You are setting an example to the world of generosity, humanity, resilience and solidarity. On behalf of the City Council I thank you. 

For the refugees in camps across the Middle East and in Europe the struggle to survive is exhausting, those that had savings are now penniless, many are separated from their loved ones, many where forced into fleeing with no forward planning.

Children living in refugee camps in northern France are being subjected to sexual exploitation, violence and forced labour on a daily basis.

UNICEF have reported cases of boys and girls being raped, and young women being subjected to sexual demands in the slums in exchange for a promise of passage to Britain.

Most camp traffickers charged an "entry fee" before children were allowed to stay. Those unable to pay were forced into laborious tasks, such as selling food at a night market in the so-called Calais Jungle.

Unicef estimates there were 500 unaccompanied children at camps in Calais and Dunkirk as of March. The average stay was estimated to be five months, but the charity said some children had stayed for nine months.

To honour its promise, Government must provide local authorities with the funding they need to care for refugee children properly and we must take in more unaccompanied children.

People become refugees not because they want to but because they are helpless to prevent it happening.

The number of refugees is now higher than the last time we had a World War. This is crisis not just for Europe but for all countries worldwide, the consequences of the refugee crisis seem to be outstripping our will and capacity to respond to it.
We have to focus on the absolute root causes, and that takes a certain amount of courage and leadership. And in my view, leadership in this situation is about doing more than simply protecting your borders or simply putting forward more aid, it means taking decisions to ensure we are not heading towards an even greater refugee crisis in the future. 

When we talk about refugees we are talking about people, when the right wing talk about immigrants, about the UK being flooded by Turkish immigration, about sealing our borders against the hordes of refugees on the French coast, they give the impression that these people are somehow different from us.

This rhetoric has consequences, if you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birth right has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is they’re not sufficiently angry, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. Then the outcome is what we witnessed yesterday in Birstall.

I think we can show today the spirit of solidarity that has come to represent Sheffield communities that demonstrates time and time again that no act can divide our desire to stand together at times of great turmoil. No one condones the taking of an innocent life and we stand with all our communities in Sheffield to say the act of one person does not define a whole country.

This horrific act will only strengthen our resolve to stand for justice, peace and equality for everyone.