Dear Stella  -  #RefugeesWelcome, Let’s Address the Root Causes

, 16 September 2015, Tags:

Letter to Stella Creasy — my MP, 14th September 2015.

Dear Stella,

I’m so glad that you spoke with such passion and positivity last week about our ability and obligation as a country to take refugees. Thank you — and for your part in the debate about Yarls Wood.

You say the question is a moral one and I agree — will you therefore act in parliament to highlight and address our complicity in the root causes of this crisis — our support of the arms trade and our contribution to the causes of global climate change?

Of the many possible actions we can take, these seem the most pertinent this week:

• Urge David Cameron to Shut down the DSEI Arms Fair — happening in East London now and supported by our taxes. Saudia Arabia have been explicitly invited by the UK Government — the bombs they buy are used on the Yemeni people and are creating the next wave of refugee crisis.
  
  Our taxes subsidise these atrocities. This is money that could be spent on our services — Whipps Cross Hospital for example, with its crippling PFI debt — and these are arms sales that create refugees.
  
  
  
  This has continued through successive governments and needs to end.
  
  
  

• Oppose any new runways in London. Drought — climate change — was akey factor in the Syrian conflict now producing millions of refugees. These impacts will increase. The science is clear — reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, which rules out any aviation expansion.
• Oppose Fracking and call for a complete moratorium. “You can be in favour of fracking, and you can be in favour of tackling climate change, but you can’t be in favour of both.”

Congratulations on your strong campaign for deputy, and I look forward to an opposition in Parliament fighting with renewed vigour against austerity.

Kind regards,

Rebecca Tully
Green Party member and Walthamstow resident

(Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@rebstully/dear-stella-refugeeswelcome-let-s-address-the-root-causes-38844efe719c)