Show the world

It is al­most a cen­tury since my grand­par­ents were stoned out of an Eng­lish coastal vil­lage.

They were for­eign­ers, you un­der­stand. Not wel­come by a bru­tal few. My late fa­ther was a baby in a pram. The fam­ily had just moved some 160km from a city to the rolling hills on the east coast and were try­ing to start a new life.

They didn't have trans­port and were rent­ing a tiny house in a mar­ket town, but it was a much needed, hope­ful mo­ment for them, a fresh be­gin­ning after dif­fi­cult times.

They des­per­ately wanted to see the sea, so after a few days set off with pic­nic and pram on the long walk through wood­land and fields to­wards the beach. Cuts and bruises pulled them up short and they bled home.

It was a stun­ning in­tol­er­ance, a re­vul­sion, a vi­o­lence fu­elled by sus­pi­cion and ig­no­rance in an age of in­su­lar is­land life where we can un­der­stand some com­mu­ni­ties were still, to a great de­gree, very in­su­lar and dis­tant.

That was then. Now, of course, is now, very dif­fer­ent, the re­verse in many ways. Per­haps we now know an enor­mous amount, or think we do. I fear, how­ever, the con­se­quence could be the same, of ex­clu­sion and in­cen­di­ary iso­la­tion, if na­tions do not prize hu­man­ity as highly as sov­er­eignty.

Cat­alo­nia's at­ti­tude could not be clearer. The three para­graphs of wel­come to refugees on the com­pre­hen­sive, ac­ces­si­ble and in­tel­li­gent refugee.gen­cat.cat web­site de­fines what all na­tions should must be doing, of­fer­ing the hand of sup­port and wel­come, striv­ing “to pro­vide an­swers to so­cial prob­lems and hu­man­i­tar­ian crises hap­pen­ing in the world from the po­si­tion of sol­i­dar­ity and de­mo­c­ra­tic re­spon­si­bil­ity”.

Fine, vital words backed up by will. It in a very small way coun­ters my gross sense of im­po­tence and de­spair. The sit­u­a­tion for the Syr­ian peo­ple is be­yond des­per­ate.

How, hon­estly, can we, with the sim­ple priv­i­leges of peace, a roof and a table, not be deeply dis­turbed by the knowl­edge that this mass atroc­ity is hap­pen­ing? Yet life in the in­for­ma­tion-over­load, numb na­tions of priv­i­lege seems to bum­ble on as if it does not touch us. News bul­letins of blood and twisted metal slot in be­tween celebrity red car­pets and won­der goals. But it is there, isn't it, like a cease­less voice in our heads, or men­tal im­ages of dead chil­dren, telling us we can­not ig­nore.

That is the es­sen­tial gene of de­cency and moral­ity.

Barcelona es­pe­cially has shown once again it is a worldly-wise, tol­er­ant cap­i­tal, fos­ter­ing yet fur­ther a fun­da­men­tal pride in this re­mark­able na­tion that re­mem­bers all too vividly what it is like to ex­pe­ri­ence bomb­ing, ex­e­cu­tions and mass ex­o­dus. Such a state­ment of hu­man­ity and clearly de­fined com­mit­ment is, in de­fi­ance of moral cow­ardice , also a re­in­force­ment of sov­er­eignty.

But can we get to the num­bers? As with Britain I re­main stunned and pro­foundly ag­i­tated by how lit­tle Spain and some other coun­tries are doing in re­la­tion to the cat­a­stro­phe. With more than 11 mil­lion peo­ple forced to flee their homes, hun­dreds of thou­sands killed and the gut-wrench­ing re­peated news of un­think­able acts such as the bomb­ing of hos­pi­tals the need is over­whelm­ing greater than the re­sponse.

This is my plea to the Gen­er­al­i­tat to move out of the shadow of Spain right now on this defin­ing issue, to act in­de­pen­dently, with ur­gency, with the un­ques­tion­able le­git­i­macy of com­mon hu­man­ity, moral­ity and com­pas­sion, and for the Cata­lans to com­fort and help re­build not thou­sands but tens of thou­sands of lives.

We in this house offer sanc­tu­ary. Refugees are wel­come.