A Moral Reckoning: Britain’s Past, Present and the Promise of Sanctuary

Eighty years after ‘never again’, Britain faces a moral crossroads on asylum – will we fail again?

We stand at a crossroads of conscience, where the ghosts of our past whisper urgent lessons we ignore at our peril. The foundations of our asylum laws were laid in the bitter soil of regret, watered by tears we should have shed eighty years ago but never did. When Jewish families begged for sanctuary from the horrors of Nazism, our doors stayed shut. Ships were turned away. Visas were denied. Lives were lost, not by accident, but by decision, buried under paperwork and prejudice.

The same arguments used back then echo in today’s debates. We’re told that desperate souls will ‘change the character of our nation’, that Britain can’t absorb them, that they might be criminals or terrorists. The newspapers of the 1930s could almost be mistaken for today’s, so familiar is the rhetoric of rejection.

That shameful chapter was not just history’s judgement, but a betrayal of the values Britain claims to stand for. From those ashes came a promise, not just in law but in spirit. Never again would we turn away those fleeing for their lives. The 1951 Refugee Convention, shaped in part by Britain, was meant as atonement. A solemn vow that those fleeing persecution would find protection here. Yet today, some would tear up those very principles. They float the idea of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights. This is the very framework Britain helped build after the Holocaust, and they would abandon it just to avoid their responsibilities to people arriving by boat.

They propose that asylum seekers could simply be sent back to France to make their claims, as if the Channel were a moral boundary where obligations vanish. They pretend there is no human cost to such policies. They ignore the desperation of people who have fled war in Syria, tyranny in Afghanistan, or conflict elsewhere. Their fear mirrors that of those Jewish families we once ignored. Their need is the same. Their right to safety is the same.

To those who call for closed borders, who argue that compassion puts Britain at risk, we must speak plainly. This rhetoric carries the foul stench of our darkest moments. When you say Britain is ‘overrun’ or that our way of life is under threat, you repeat almost word for word the same warnings used against Jewish refugees in the 1930s. When you label asylum seekers ‘invaders’, you borrow directly from fascist language.

The Nationality and Borders Act, with its two-tier asylum system, the Rwanda deportation scheme condemned by the United Nations, and now the threats to abandon the ECHR, are not solutions. They are surrenders to fear. They show a Britain willing to unpick the very protections we once fought to create, just to avoid showing basic decency to those in need. This is not strength. It is a retreat into smallness.

But that is not all we have been. Remember who we were when we opened our doors to Huguenots fleeing persecution. Remember the Kindertransport, when we welcomed Jewish children to safety. Remember the thousands of Ugandan Asians we took in after they were expelled by dictatorship. These weren’t acts of charity. They were affirmations of our better self. Proof that we could meet fear with humanity and come out stronger for it.

Now we face that test again. We can repeat the failures that stain our history or we can live up to the promise we made after those failures. We cannot talk of moral leadership while threatening to abandon international law. We cannot claim to believe in rights only when they are easy to uphold. The Britain we need is one that meets its obligations, legal and moral, with courage. One that processes asylum claims fairly, without cruelty. One that creates safe routes so no one has to risk their life in a flimsy boat.

Above all, we must remember. Remember the faces we turned away in 1939. Remember the vow we made: never again. Remember that every generation is tested. And history is not kind to those who choose fear over decency.

The refugees at our borders are not a threat to British values. They are the test of whether we ever truly believed in them. Let us prove that we did. Let us be the Britain that keeps its promises, honours its past and remains a light for those in darkness. Anything less is a betrayal, not just of those seeking safety, but of everything we have ever claimed to stand for.