Re your article (Record 1,295 people in one day cross Channel in small boats, 23 August), this time last year I was in Dunkirk. The summer before, England had sung the praises of the little boats and the lives they saved in 1940. Just a year later, we gathered there to mark a life lost, a man left to die by the fifth richest country in the world.
It had been a summer of record-breaking crossings. A boat had capsized and a man had drowned. I was out there volunteering, so rather than reading all about it from home, I was in the middle of it. I played with a young girl who had survived the sinking, who’d been left floating in the dark with her mother and baby brother. She believed God did not want her to go to England. But this wasn’t God’s will – just callous, uncaring politicians.
Seeking asylum is a human right. Our government has no legal way to stop people from coming. So what do they do? They give money to the French police to make Calais as hostile as possible. They destroy tents and throw teargas at food collection points. A coward’s tactics, a thug’s tactics. Rough them up so they know they’re not wanted here.
What lawmakers must be made to understand, from this to the repeal of Roe v Wade in the US, is that making something illegal will never actually deter the people who truly need it. If there is no legal way to end a pregnancy, to eat rather than to starve, to get your family to safety, people will always find a way, and will be turned into criminals by the very state that has failed them.
Katherine Logan
Manchester
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