To celebrate Refugee Week, Waltham Forest activists hosted an evening of film, poetry and music to signal their support for asylum seekers and raise funds for the refugee charity Care4Calais.
Held at Walthamstow Trades Hall and organised by Waltham Forest Stand Up to Racism and Love Music Hate Racism, the evening included a short film by Amnesty International called Pylos One Year In: No Justice, poetry by British-Nigerian Dauda Sols and Eelam Tamil refugee Thivyaa Gangatharan and music from rapper Reload, folk band Hugmunger and alternative group Middle Name John.
The event comes shortly after the Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s speech on immigration in which he said that the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without strict rules on migration and integration.
Critics pointed to the similarity to Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech in which he feared white Brits becoming “strangers in their own country”.
Starmer has since revealed he “deeply regrets” the turn of phrase in an interview with The Observer.
Event organiser Siobhan Hawthorne, from Waltham Forest Stand Up to Racism, believes anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiment is deeply dangerous.
She said: “The rhetoric that’s been generated here over the last few years around the small boats coming over from Calais […] it’s that type of rhetoric that dehumanises people trying to seek help and doesn’t allow safe passage that actually makes it okay for people just to be left to drown in the [English] Channel.”
Hawthorne organised the event to raise awareness of the plight of refugees, and to celebrate their lives.
One of the event’s performers, poet and musician Dauda Sols, put it like this: “Protest and celebration can all be one”.
“It’s events like this that really bridge that gap of celebrating all our differences and fighting for our differences as well”, he added.
To hear music and poetry from the evening, please click below.
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