Just as the first wave of Corbyn hysteria has settled down in the British press, the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi has - extraordinarily - stepped into domestic British politics to lambast those who voted in Corbyn as Labour leader in an all too obvious attempt to boost his own fight with the Italian Trade Union movement as he attempts to move Italy firmly into the current neo-liberal orthodoxy of austerity and privatisation. Just think how many times a British PM could have stepped in to condemn the Italian electorate for voting in Berlusconi. What next? All those voting for Corbyn to be denied entry to the USA on grounds of harbouring unAmerican ideas?
The refugee crisis, however, continues to shame the European Union as it reveals itself to be utterly incapable of rising to the humanitarian disaster growing outside and within its borders. The full refugee death toll is not really known, since there has been no desire to fully understand what is happening on the part of the EU, but the total deaths since 2013 is, as a minimum, in excess of 6000 men, women and children (UNHCR figures). Some 600,000 people  have so far undertaken the unimaginably terrifying journey to find a safer place to live and there is little sign of this stopping. 1.2 million are predicted by the end of the year. This mass movement of people has simply overwhelmed the European Union's capacity to act in any kind of coordinated or remotely effective manner. The colossal failure of government or  effective organisation by the EU in this continuing disaster is only outdone by the British government's own woeful efforts to respond to the still developing situation as it desperately seeks to avoid doing anything that might actually involve accepting a meaningful number of living, breathing, frightened and desperate fellow human beings.

It's worth remembering the Cameron government's responses to the developing catastrophe so far. Initially - leave it to the Italians and Greeks to sort out. It serves them right for being in the nicest part of the Mediterranean rather than the bleak Atlantic where we are. Greece may be bankrupt and Italy in dire economic straits, but we'll leave it to them to shoulder the entire responsibility. Oh dear, the Italians and Greeks are saving the wretches from drowning. This will only encourage them to come. We should not be rescuing people from the water, it's an open invitation. Ah,this policy doesn't seem to be going very well at home. Look, we'll send a boat, to show willing, but it can stay out of the way for the most part. Not good to get involved. Hmmm, people seem strangely moved by the image of a small child's body washed up on the shore. Maybe we need to do something pro-active. Okay we'll take 4000 a year for five years. That's, let me see, 0.03% of the population - should do it. I know Germany has agreed to take 800,000 now (1.00% of their population), but we're really  showing kindness. I'm sure they don't really want to cross water again. The proper thing to do is to keep them in camps in Lebanon and Jordan so that they don't have to make that awful journey. It's true that this denies them any hope of a better life, but, hey, I've been camping myself. It's not so bad. 
The government might consider what consigning hundreds of thousands of people to refugee camps in the Middle East actually means: after all, there is a huge amount of experience to draw upon. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 led to the forced dispersal of some 8-900,000 Palestinians (the most authoritative account of this can be found in the Israeli historian IIlan Pappe's book 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine') to camps in Lebanon and Jordan and to the West Bank, Syria and Gaza (now itself a vast camp with its 1.2 million citizens imprisoned by Israeli forces). In 1967, after the Arab / Israeli war, another 300,000 were displaced to Jordan. Many are still in these camps sixty-five years later - In 2010 UNRWA recorded 1,400,000 Palestinians living in these camps. Lebanon is a tiny country (about the size of Cornwall) with weak infrastructure having been devastated by civil war itself and then dominated by Syrian forces when Assad was still in power and desperately short of funding. It has already received 1,760,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war - about 20% of its population. (Remember, - we are agreeing 20,000 over five years). Jordan has taken around 700,000 - about 13% of its population. Over 7 million Syrians have been displaced by the violence and around 4 million are, effectively, refugees. If all 4 million were to come, it would amount to 0.8% of the EU population. And Cameron's brilliant response is to consign desperate people to the wretched life they will endure in refugee camps in perpetuity. Leave it to the weakest to deal with and forget all about both our humanitarian and political responsibilities.Our colonial history in this part of the world, from the mandate in Palestine, to Suez and British 'interventions' in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have all played a part in the current disaster. Our huge arms sales to despotic regimes, some now involved in the Syrian conflict and thus armed partly by us, means we are deeply implicated in what is happening. But we will walk away with a small financial contribution to those actually trying to grapple with a conflict not of their making, to  salve whatever part of a UK government conscience remains.

Back in the late 50's at my primary school, the profound effects of post-war migration to Britain had made no impact at all. Although around 2.3 million non-UK immigrants came to Britain between 1945 and 1960, the majority of these were Irish and European. Commonwealth citizens, who, for the most part had a legal right to residence, initially mainly from the West Indies and the Asian sub-continent, did not exceed the million mark until the late 60's. Britain desperately needed these migrants to fulfil the labour needs of post-war reconstruction and the expanding economy. Not for nothing could Prime Minister Harold MacMillan crow "You've never had it so good" to the British people as he was re-elected with an increased majority in 1959. In my school, on the fringes of greater London, there was not a black face to be seen. My best friends, Bruce, and two Colins, did what kids of a certain class and age used to do. We built camps in the woods and lit fires for no real reason other than fires were fun; we made unroadworthy bikes from scrap parts found at local dumps and we cycled into Bromley on these to try to shoplift sweets from the enticingly open counters at Woolworths. Bruce was the expert here. He wore brightly coloured knitted jumpers that the female shop assistants would always admire, and while he engaged them in conversation about his mother's knitting techniques, he would snaffle Mars bars from right under their noses.
 The bikes were terrifying affairs with no brakes and fixed wheels, thus the only way to stop them was to try to peddle backwards - difficult at any speed. My brother found this to his cost as we descended Chislehurst hill and, back-pedalling as best he could to slow down, his chain caught on the pedal stopping the bike instantly and sending him flying over the handlebars into a brick wall. Blood poured from his head and he expressed a rather self-regarding concern that he might die. This panicked me into trying to gain assistance from houses on the road, but all were empty of occupants.I tried waving at passing traffic for help, but all I got were cheerful waves back. Eventually I found a garage, and the owner, taking a look at my brother's condition, kindly drove us both to the local A&E where he was stitched up. This also meant that my grandfather was phoned to come and collect us in his pre-war van, much to his obvious annoyance. It was in hospital on another occasion when I encountered my first black person. A doctor, of course. I had been butchered by the local school dentist, who removed four teeth at one go. When I was still pouring blood at midnight from the open wound of my gums, an ambulance had to be called to take me to hospital where, now, I was stitched up. The doctor, from the West Indies, was scathing about the levels of dentistry in this country and I have a vivid memory of looking up at his strikingly handsome face as he stitched up my gum and watching the knot he tied in the thread gradually slide down the silky line emanating from my mouth and disappearing into it.

The main activity that Bruce, Colin, Colin and I would indulge in was playing football at the nearby 'rec'. I will freely admit that I was always hopeless at the game and was usually placed in goal. At school, in games sessions, I was always among the last to be picked for a team, but, then as now, all us boys wanted to play and to be good. I went along to the after-school sessions, hoping I might get a call to join the school team. Never a chance. In my defence, I would call as chief witness, my football boots. All the other kids had the neat, new, soft leather boots, black with plastic soles and plastic studs. They looked slick and seemed to make you a great player simply by putting them on. My mother could not, of course, afford such things. My boots were retrieved - I can't believe bought - from a jumble sale. They were simply enormous, at least three sizes too large. My friends could lace their boots together and transport them to school around their necks. Had I tried this with mine, my neck would have been thrust downwards forcing my face to the ground. If I'd swung round there would have been the very real danger of actually knocking someone out. They were probably manufactured some time in the 1930's from something like elephant hide. They were certainly a dull greyish colour. Where my friends boots came to a slick pointed end, my boots ended with a separately welded enormous leather shell, rather similar in style to the air raid shelters that could still be found in back gardens. They were completely unyielding. No part of them would flex. I might as well have been playing in hand-carved wooden clogs. Slick, they weren't. Hob-nailed boots they were. Indeed, the studs, made of wood - yes wood - were nailed into the soles, but were now so old and worn down that all the nails came through into my feet, leaving me crippled after each game. These boots alone destroyed my otherwise undoubtedly great career as a professional footballer. 

My four years in Junior school were perhaps the best years of my school days, though I never grew to actually like any part of it. But it was endurable. I would often gaze out of the classroom window to the green playing field and the freedom beyond the wire fencing and wish I was anywhere but where I was - struggling with sums and escaping into the world of my own imagination. These years were lightened by the fact of having, of the four teachers I had, two who were kind and enlightened. Mr Stephens encouraged me in English and seemed to see that if I had any talent at all it was for writing stories and he let me do this as often as possible. Mr Shepherd ( yes, amazingly, of the four teachers I had in the junior years, three were male ) was also kind, with a quiet and gentle manner. He never lost his temper and also praised my reading and writing skills. I should add that praise was not considered good for children at this time, so it was a rare quality. He used to get the same bus as my sister and myself on occasion and he would walk with us to our grandparents house which was in the same direction as his house. He took a genuine interest in our childish world, spoke to us as equals and I remember his kindness to this day. These two teachers were in marked contrast to the headteacher who was a pompous and autocratic figure. I remember him storming into our classroom once, angry that some of us boys had been doing something against the rules in the playground - I can't remember exactly what, but undoubtedly some trivial infringement. At that time a murder had been in the news concerning some youths -the feared 'teddy boys', the defining youth cult of the period -  who had got in a fight and had punched and kicked another to death on a towpath along a canal. The crime was reported as 'The Towpath Murder.' Our headteacher worked himself up into a fury at whatever indiscretions we had been perpetrating and finished his belicose rant by waving his forefinger at us all and shouting "You'll all end up towpath murderers if you carry on like this!" With that, he stormed out. Even at the age of ten, this seemed a little over the top and I noticed that our teacher, Mr Hoddy, was gazing at the closing door open-mouthed. The silence afterwards seemed interminable.


to be continued.......