I HEARTILY endorse Barbara Lodge’s plea to City of York Council (Letters, September 1) to support the Government’s vulnerable person’s relocation scheme by offering settlement to a proportionate number of Syrian refugees.

Yvette Cooper MP has suggested that if every town were to accept 10 Syrian families, 10,000 persons could be given refuge. Some commentators suspect that this suggestion may be connected to the Labour leadership contest, but the Syrian crisis needs to be responded to by local authorities irrespective of political party control.

To its credit, a Conservative government accepted thousands of Asians who were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in the early 1970s. The UK was not swamped.

Those of us who remember air raids in the 1940s may perhaps be able to empathise with Syrian families more keenly than other York residents can. But we were not cut to ribbons or gassed by barrel bombs dropped by our own government. Our neighbourhoods were not starved into submission in sieges, nor were they destroyed in street fighting between rival militias.

Our government, with the support of local authorities, must agree that our country accepts its fair share of Syrian families, many of whom have English as a second language.

Mary Machen, Main Street, Fulford, York

 

HURRAH for Steve Galloway and his call for York to give sanctuary to refugees (York should lead by example on refugee crisis, says former council leader, September 2). It is too easy to adopt fancy slogans like “City of Sanctuary” which mean nothing unless backed up by actions.

A week earlier your newspaper printed a shocking photo of a terrified toddler in the arms of his distressed father; both cowering under the standing figure of an armed border guard.

If you can find that family they can come and live at my house. I have room for them.

Matthew Laverack, Lord Mayors Walk, York