Page 15 - Quaker News & Views Nov 25 - Jan 26

Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, and with Vikki Slade, who represents Mid Dorset and

North Poole. We have been particularly encouraged by Vikki Slade’s response. In a recent
email, she gave details of everything she has achieved during her relatively brief time in
Parliament:

“I recently attended a parliamentary event on refugee employment, as an opportunity to learn about
some of the barriers the people that The Harbour Project and Swindon City of Sanctuary are working
with are facing when trying to secure meaningful employment in the UK. I also strongly support the Lift
the Ban campaign, and backed this while leader of BCP Council.

I believe that policy should not punish vulnerable people fleeing persecution and war, and that
alternative safe routes should be provided so that people are not forced to make unsafe crossings to
be able to claim asylum in the first place. Refusing these people citizenship does nothing but deny
them the security and safety that they so desperately need.
During the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill’s passage through the Commons, I supported
many amendments that would have implemented regulations specifying such additional safe and
legal routes, changed the guidance on citizenship to remove illegal entry as a factor in considering
granting British citizenship, and to allow unaccompanied child refugees to sponsor close adult family
members to join them in the UK. Unfortunately, many of these amendments were not selected for a
vote, and those that were, were voted down.

I also spoke in the Bill’s Third Reading on the topics of spousal visas, the right to work for asylum
seekers and human trafficking.”

On a personal level, as well as convening the group, I volunteer with Safe Passage, a
charity which aims to reunite unaccompanied child refugees with family members in the
UK, and I am a member of QARN, the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network. I am a retired

journalist, having specialised in education and worked mainly for the Times Educational
Supplement. I believe that being well and accurately informed is key to effecting change,
and I write a blog to keep people up to date with refugee news.

www.welcomingthestrangeruk.org

I am convinced that, as a country, we need to welcome refugees. My inspiration comes
from my godmother, Trudi Eulenburg, who was granted shelter in the UK from Nazi
Germany as a teenager in 1939. Her Jewish father had already suffered internment in a
concentration camp and the family’s music publishing business had been confiscated.

Trudi subsequently wrote about being rejected by her Lutheran church and her German
school friends, and seeing the windows of Jewish shops smashed on Kristallnacht. Her
accounts are now apparently used as source material for GCSE history students!

Trudi spent many years as deacon and church worker in London, at St.Botolph’s, Aldgate,
including supporting homeless people and those with addiction issues. She was always
ready to speak out about the dangers of intolerance, and she is often in my mind today.

Her life shows that welcoming refugees can enrich our society.

Courtesy of Susannah Kipling, Wimborne

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