{"id":263639,"date":"2026-01-02T16:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/263639\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T16:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:02:10","slug":"when-you-call-people-invaders-you-are-calling-them-the-enemy-that-sets-a-tone-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/263639\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018When you call people invaders, you are calling them the enemy. That sets a tone\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Britain remains mired in acrimony over migration, its parliament in Westminster<\/a> often discusses refugees. Rarely does it hear from one, except when Alf Dubs speaks.<\/p>\n

The Labour<\/a> peer, who turned 93 this month, escaped the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia<\/a> in 1939 on a Kindertransport journey via train and ferry to England, where he was met by his Jewish father. His non-Jewish mother followed later.<\/p>\n

Along with his fellow member of the House of Lords, the Anglican bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani who fled Iran in 1980, they are the only members of the UK\u2019s houses of parliament who arrived in Britain as refugees.<\/p>\n

In a country riven with division over the issues of asylum and migration, Dubs is an eloquent voice on the side of new arrivals from abroad who he feels can be traduced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe argument on behalf of human rights and asylum seekers should not depend on the personal background of the person making the argument,\u201d says Dubs, as we sit in his Millbank office across the street from the House of lords.<\/p>\n

\"RiotRiot police officers push back anti-immigration protesters outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in 2024. Photograph: Christopher Furlong\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cBut, clearly I was more emotionally involved. It meant I had more empathy when I met refugees in Britain. So, yes, it does make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubs, a former MP, says he can\u2019t remember how he felt as a child, when the Nazi threat arrived in Czechoslovakia. But he can remember specific incidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember having to tear out a picture of the Czech president from my schoolbook, and put in a picture of Adolf Hitler in its place.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also remembers the cheering when his Kindertransport train crossed the Dutch border: \u201cBut at the time, I didn\u2019t know what it meant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GermanGerman nazi troops cross the border near Kleinphilipsreuth, Czechoslovakia, to occupied the Sudetenland, October 1st 1938. Photograph: AFP\/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

The Kindertransport effort to save hundreds of mostly-Jewish children from the Nazis was spearheaded by London-born stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who arranged the journeys and paid families in Britain to take in the children.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Jewish father had always said he would leave if the Germans came to Prague. His cousins said they would take their chances, but they were sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis in 1942. My father left the city within 24 of the German occupation,\u201d says Dubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother was refused permission to leave. They threw her down the stairs when she went to ask, but they threw her passport after her, which meant she still had hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Dubs\u2019s father already waiting in London, his mother put him on the Kindertransport in June 1939.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe gave me some Czech sausages and rolls. It took two days to reach England, by train to the Hook of Holland and a ferry to Essex. When I arrived in London, my father wondered why I hadn\u2019t touched any of my food.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThreeThree Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany, waiting to be collected by their relatives or sponsors at Liverpool Street Station, London, after arriving by special train on the Kindertransport programme, July 5th 1939. Photograph: Stephenson\/Topical Press Agency\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Dubs\u2019s mother, still in possession of her passport, eventually managed to escape Czechoslovakia on August 31st, 1939. The next day, the war started when the Nazis invaded Poland. \u201cThat was her last chance,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Another central European man had promised Dubs\u2019s father a job in a textile factory, should he ever make it to England. He had permission from the British government to open a factory, but only in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where unemployment was highest. He found a disused factory in Cookstown.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo off we toddled to County Tyrone, where my father worked in the factory. Shortly after he had a heart attack and died. That left my mother and me in Cookstown. We were there for two years, but she couldn\u2019t make ends meet. We left for Manchester where she got a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, after former UK prime minister Tony Blair<\/a> appointed Dubs as a minister in the Northern Ireland office, an SDLP councillor in Cookstown announced that the new minister had lived in the town.<\/p>\n

Dubs says some of the staff in his Belfast offices were surprised to learn he had once lived in the North, and asked him: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you say?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI told them it was only for two years aged seven to nine, and that doesn\u2019t really qualify you to say you had lived in Northern Ireland. On the other hand, it\u2019s too long to deny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

It is painful that our traditional values are going by the board<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Alf Dubs<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Years before, Dubs had been a Labour MP for Battersea in London and had always been involved in Anglo-Irish affairs. Then he lost his seat in 1987 and went to run the Refugee Council. He was also appointed to the Lords.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Blair came calling to appoint him to \u201cMo\u2019s team\u201d \u2013 Mo Mowlam, then the UK government\u2019s Northern Ireland secretary. He served as a minister for 2\u00bd years, until New Year\u2019s Eve 1999.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Starmer under siege: the runners, riders and risks of Labour\u2019s next power struggleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Since then, Dubs has been an active voice for refugees and migrants. He says he finds the current febrile debate in Britain on these topics \u201cvery depressing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we were doing better on this a few years ago. It pains me \u2013 one political party is pushing it, and that\u2019s Reform<\/a>. I think it is painful that our traditional values are going by the board. Not enough strong voices are speaking out against it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubs is particularly upset by the occasional loose talk of an \u201cinvasion\u201d of migrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you call people invaders, you are calling them the enemy. That sets a tone. Language can have a very damaging effect on relations in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t think we will weaken the position of Reform by doing a \u2018me too\u2019 on their approach. It is not very helpful.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Alf Dubs<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What about the language and policies of his own Labour Party in government? Home secretary Shabana Mahmood recently announced a crackdown on asylum seekers and those who are granted refugee status: she has proposed making it harder under British law for them to bring their families, while their status has to be regularly reviewed even after a successful claim. As he speaks about it, it is clear Dubs is disappointed in her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she is being unnecessarily hardline. I don\u2019t think we will weaken the position of Reform by doing a \u2018me too\u2019 on their approach. It is not very helpful. I think we need to indicate that we are different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RiotRiot police officers push back anti-migration protesters outside a hotel housing asylum seekers on August 4th, 2024, in Rotherham, England. Photograph: Christopher Furlong\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Dubs is harshly critical of some of the protests seen this year outside asylum hotels in Britain, in places such as Epping, as well as the attempted burning of an asylum hotel near Rotherham in the riots of 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat shamed us. It shames us a country. I think those people outside those hotels don\u2019t represent what this country is really like.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is also frustrated by the tendency in the debate to confuse asylum with migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsylum is based on protection of human rights. Immigration is not unworthy, by the way. Governments can pick and choose which immigrants they want to stay,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a question around how you decide whether an individual is an asylum seeker or an immigrant. You need a proper system for it that doesn\u2019t take years to come to a conclusion for that individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubs says he would like Britain to be more generous about child refugees.<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t denigrate the people who vote for Reform. We\u2019ve got to educate them and help them see things differently<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Alf Dubs<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what about the concerns of some people in Britain, who may hold worries about the impact on their communities from an influx of immigrants of different backgrounds, faiths and cultures? Does he understand their concerns?<\/p>\n

\u201cI do understand. People are quite conventional, especially seriously older people. I understand that. I think we have to expect that. I don\u2019t denigrate the people who vote for Reform. We\u2019ve got to educate them and help them see things differently,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people who\u2019ve got their lives and they\u2019ve got their concerns. Our job is to make them realise that [immigration] is not a threat and to make them realise that this is something which our local communities have enough strength to absorb.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Inside Tommy Robinson\u2019s world: Leader of Britain\u2019s right-wing nationalist upsurgeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On the separate issue of asylum, Britain and Ireland were recently among 27 signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to sign a statement calling for reforms to the convention\u2019s Article 8, to make it easier to deport illegal migrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m nervous on that. Even if 27 countries gang up on human rights, I\u2019m still nervous about it. I think we\u2019ve got to be very careful on this, because the government\u2019s argument seems to be sometimes you have a really serious criminal, and you want to deport him. Now, there are very few instances where that has been stopped by the ECHR,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Countries such as Ireland and Britain, he says, \u201cshould set a better example\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Britain remains mired in acrimony over migration, its parliament in Westminster often discusses refugees. Rarely does it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,5446,20568,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,20565,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-263639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-keir-starmer","14":"tag-labour-party-uk","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-uk-politics","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115826350042186464","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}