Green Party leader Natalie Bennett today released her New Year’s video message, which focuses on a call to David Cameron to accept a UN request to provide asylum in Britain for a small number of the most vulnerable refugees from the Syrian civil war.
This would be around 600 individuals, including torture victims, women and girls at high risk and refugees with links with Britain.
Mr Cameron needed to do this, Bennett says, to prove that his call for military intervention there, which was rejected by parliament, was really based on humanitarian concerns.
She said: “In the build up to bombing, you told us Mr Cameron that you cared about the plight of vulnerable Syrians. Now’s the time to demonstrate that that wasn’t just rhetoric, a ploy to take us into war.
Sixteen nations, among them the US, France and Germany, have agreed to take their share of the most vulnerable refugees. Britain has not.
As one of the world’s richest nations, as a state with a long history of involvement in the Middle East, much of it disastrous, and often destructive involvement in the region, we must act on this issue.”
Bennett also reflected on the parliamentary vote against intervention in Syria, saying that it had a big global impact, and unusually, a big impact on US foreign policy. And it was a driving force in the legal, UN-led removal of Syria’s chemical weapons. “Not bombing really did make a difference.”
The video also identifies the rise of the food bank as the domestic story of 2013, a symbol of the impact of “heartless, inept” government social policies, Bennett said.
The video can be found here.
The text:
As I’ve travelled around Britain in 2013, I’ve seen at first hand the effects of heartless, inept, government policy and our failed economic model.
In Camden I heard from people who were being told they were “fit to work” when they very clearly weren’t. In Great Yarmouth I spoke to college students who face abandoning their studies because they can’t afford the bus fares, and in Kirklees I saw a food bank packed in the aisles and corridors with desperately needed supplies for people who can’t afford to feed themselves.
And that’s certainly the domestic story of 2013- the rise of the food bank. It’s a symbol of the fact that we politics working for the good of the few, not for the common good.
Internationally, the story of the year is undoubtedly the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientific debate is over. It is clear we need to change our ways now to avoid catastrophic climate change. Our common future depends on it.
Unfortunately here in Britain we have a government that’s refusing to take substantive action. They’re enthusiastic about fracking, and refusing to take seriously the need to provide warm, comfortable, affordable to heat homes.
But when historians look back at 2013, there was one event in Britain that really had positive international impact – that was the vote by parliament against unilateral military intervention in Syria. It had a big impact on US foreign policy. Future historians may well regard this as marking a final end to the disastrous policy of intervention that took us into Iraq and Afghanistan.
What’s more, we’ve seen in Syria the collection and disposal of chemical weapons under legal, UN, auspices. This marks a new point in global history. Not bombing really did make a difference.
Our hearts go out, however, to the millions of Syrians still suffering in the civil war. We can only hope that the peace talks next month in Geneva make progress.
We can have a great deal of impact on that but what we can do is have an impact on the humanitarian situation.
I welcome the fact that David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg came out together to support the £4 billion UN appeal for humanitarian assistance.
But that simply isn’t enough. The UN has also asked for further assistance, for Britain to take its share of the most vulnerable refugees.
The response has been silence, and that is a disgrace.
In the build up to bombing, you told us Mr Cameron that you cared about the plight of vulnerable Syrians. Now’s the time to demonstrate that that wasn’t just rhetoric, a ploy to take us into war.
Sixteen nations, among them the US, France and Germany, have agreed to take their share of the most vulnerable refugees. Britain has not.
As one of the world’s richest nations, as a state with a long history of involvement in the Middle East, much of it disastrous, and often destructive involvement in the region, we must act on this issue.
This New Year, I wish everyone in Britain a good 2014.
And I call on Mr Cameron to make this a great start to the year for Syrian refugees offered asylum in Britain.
And that could be the start of a reversal of our dangerous, toxic rhetoric around immigration.
Over to you, Mr Cameron…