Anthony Bernard: 'Rwanda, world migration and British value'

Highlighting the needy with Anthony Bernard.

Rwanda could be the dominant power by now in a resurgent Africa, if only Britons had sent all unwanted migrants there, starting with Romans, Danes, Vikings, Saxons, Normans and recent arrivals.

Researchers think the first human activity started in what we now call the "Great Rift Valley" in Africa. African mineral resources, from Aluminium to Zinc, are huge. What a powerhouse Africa could be.

Without migrants disturbing them, Britons would have been able to lead quiet lives, farming fields, telling tales and supping ale, as depicted by The Hobbits in Tolkien's books. Transport would have been safer. Horses know better than to run into each other and can walk home, even when the rider is drunk!

A more realistic thought is that our British way of life has evolved from the combined attrition and assimilation of all these different tribes and cultures over 2,000 years, including recent intakes of African, Afro-Caribbean, Middle Eastern and Asian people as well as Europeans and Jews. Polish airmen made a major contribution to the Battle of Britain, not sufficiently honoured due to political deals when Russia took over Eastern Europe in 1945.

Migrants and refugees come from many situations. True refugees are escaping with their lives and freedom from oppression, migrants are just refugees from poor living conditions seeking a better life. Many thought Brexit was to prevent people from poorer EU countries coming to earn more here than they could at home, yet be paid less than local residents. Brexit also took us out of the European bureaucracy. Fancy having "mince meat" prohibited at Christmas because it doesn't contain meat, and ordering beer in litres. Unimaginable.

The present migration problem is quite different. Our worry to "stop the boats" is minor compared with the Mediterranean migration from Africa into Italy and Greece making the EU struggle. Some EU countries refuse to accept any migrants at all, while Italians are beside themselves, torn between compassion and protectionism. The USA has a similar problem with vast numbers migrating north through central America. However, "undocumented" workers pick and pack the low cost fruit and vegetables that people throughout the USA rely upon!

Years ago, illegal migrants would have been set to work with camps set up to house them, picking fruit and vegetables, filling potholes, building affordable houses and acting as care workers. Nice kind activists believe we should house migrants more comfortably, exceeding the living conditions they left behind, including makeshift camps in France. There is a middle ground, providing migrants what we give our own homeless people and other worldwide refugees during this housing crisis. Genuine refugees should be absorbed alongside the many races and tribes from which we are all descended!

Migrants come here to earn more than the pittance paid in their home countries to produce cheap goods that keep prices down in our shops. We should worry about the disparity between rich and poor, with more concern for those who make cheap goods in sweatshop conditions in poor countries. We should support organisations trying to raise the standard of living in those countries from which people are migrating to escape, as well as the needy in our own society, and promote a greater worldwide equality and diversity

Our freedoms and democratic lifestyle need to be exported, not romanticised or fenced off. We should be among the leaders in the world doing it.