Britain used to welcome refugees fleeing dictators. What happened?

In 1956 some 21,000 people fleeing the Soviet invasion of Hungary were welcomed in Britain. In 1972, when 60,000 were expelled from Uganda by President Idi Amin, 27,000 moved to the UK. And. of course, between 1938 and 1940 10,000 Jewish children from mainland Europe found safety from the Nazis in Britain thanks to the Kindertransport operation.

It is not wrong to claim that Britain has a “proud history” of accepting refugees from crisis-stricken nations. But as an estimated two million refugees have left Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion, the government’s response has not just been inept but categorically miserly. As of Wednesday morning just 760 visas had been issued to those in need – and their availability limited to those with direct relatives already living in Britain.

What happened to the UK’s rightfully celebrated record? How could so much change that those escaping air strikes have to engage in a logistically nightmarish and needlessly bureaucratic visa application?

This staggering fall from grace is thrown into starker relief thanks to the news that Poland had received 1.2 million refugees as of Tuesday; Hungary 191,348 as of Monday; and Moldova – one of Europe’s poorest countries – 82,762 as of Sunday.

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And Ireland’s open-door policy is ultimate proof that it is perfectly feasible for Britain, as a nation on this archipelago, to open its arms and lower its drawbridge.

At the very least when Hungary’s Viktor Orban outpaces the UK in questions of hospitality towards refugees it is surely time to do some soul-searching. And outsourcing the humanitarian effort to Poland is hardly in the spirit of international comity we might expect at a moment like this.

Bureaucracy

But as the British home office takes to Twitter to parade its made-up accomplishment of having “the first visa scheme in the world” for the settlement of Ukrainians, it is worth remembering that plenty of countries involved in the response have eschewed any visa requirements altogether.

Putting pressure on the UK government to streamline the currently slow moving process means rather little when its very existence is needless – a paragon for the evils of bureaucracy – in the first place.

And although plans to introduce a scheme to accommodate Ukrainian refugees with no ties to the UK over the coming days is welcome news, it cannot help but feel lacking in critical urgency when thousands across Europe are unable to cross the border.

As the UK government self-adulates, the family of a former London bus driver told the Guardian how they were detained twice, made eight trips to visa centres in Paris, two to a consulate and one to the embassy before being granted access to Britain.

And on Tuesday outside a visa application centre in Rzezow, Poland, queues formed in minus-three degrees as increasingly desperate people awaited a promise of safety.

When it comes to this crisis – the greatest Europe has seen since the second World War – any gestures to so-called Global Britain’s so-called world beating systems is not just risible but functionally a lie.

Charade

And being wildly out of step with its European neighbours is insufficient, it seems. Anonymous ministers have taken the charade a step further, declaring Ireland’s open-door policy as a threat to Britain’s domestic security. They claim Ireland’s lack of restrictions for Ukrainian refugees opens a backdoor to the UK via the Common Travel Area, leaving it vulnerable to criminal activity.

It is an argument not just based on a flimsy premise – the Common Travel Area only applies to British and Irish citizens, and most airlines require passport checks anyway – but it is also one suffering from a bout of Britain-first myopia too. It is in the very least amusing, even amid such a crisis, that some in the UK’s current administration are still unable to shake their primal instinct for taking needless potshots at Dublin.

Ireland is far from perfect, and it is in possession of some ambiguous morality of its own when it comes to this war: now is the time for the country to have the overdue conversations about the ethical sustainability of its militaristic neutrality. And meanwhile the UK has been valiant and generous in other aspects of its efforts. We should not forget that.

But as Europe comes together in a unified humanitarian response the British government seems somehow unashamed of the dearth of humanity that has come to define its home office.

And now, not just content with keeping people out of their own country, government ministers have taken to criticising their oldest, closest and crucially sovereign neighbour for letting them into theirs.

Passport policy

In scenarios like these we are told that the question is not that simple, that the government is doing its utmost given the testing context and political climate. They say their policy just needs ironing out. Actually it’s all to do with biometric testing, the Common Travel Area, airline passport policy. It’s because of once extant Albanian drug cartels. And they say, as it happens, the UK is championing a great visa scheme. And not to worry anyway, Michael Gove is looking into all of this as we speak.

But, of course, these homilies are base excuses for so-far base policy. Appeals to logistics and technicalities are paltry substitutes for empathy. And we shouldn’t cede moral duty to those who want to die on a hill of bureaucracy and pedantry.