The true meaning of 20,000 (and why it’s a thinly veiled slap in the face)
One of my primary criticisims of the traditional media’s response to the profound humanitarian crisis taking place under our noses has been its heavy focus on figures rather than faces. One key figure being bandied about is 20,000 — the number of refugees David Cameron has so generously deigned to resettle over the next five years. Incidentally, also the number of people who attended the Abbey Park firework display in Leicester at the weekend. And my goodness, didn’t we all feel the fallout from that?
Naked numbers can be misleading, and the press knows this. Sadly, even usually reasonable and responsible publications seem to have fallen into the trap, usually reserved for sensationalist tabloids like the Daily Mail, of using numbers as a tool for fearmongering around this issue. It is true that the numbers of people suffering this crisis directly are monumental, but these numbers will always be more digestible, and more impactful, when expressed in practical, rather than purely mathematical, terms.
The number of forcibly displaced people around the world is currently at an all-time high of 59.5 million — just under the UK’s population of 63.8 million. From a group of as large as its own citizenry, the government is offering a place to fewer than the number of fans who fit in Craven Cottage stadium, Fulham football team’s home ground (capacity 25,700). Understood in these terms, “20,000” — which at first glance, out of context, may sound like a lot—begins to assume a different significance.
Of these 59.5 million people, 86% are currently being hosted by developing countries. Our government’s argument, then, that, as the fifth richest nation in the world, our “frail economy” and infrastructure cannot allow us to welcome more than 0.034% of these vulnerable people (and 0.031% of our own populace) is a deep embarrassment to the British people; to refer to this as “fulfilling our moral responsibility” is profoundly sinister. Twenty thousand is the number of people on 20 rush-hour tube trains. It is the number of refugees I saw land on Lesvos in four days. It is the number of refugees to enter Germany over a weekend during the apex of this crisis. Our government will accept this number over five years. It gives me chills to think about.
Twenty thousand is one fifth of the one hundred thousand people who arrive on an average day into Heathrow airport, and yet a fierce battle is waging between Heathrow and Gatwick to build another runway and increase this capacity. Twenty thousand people could be flown in on just under 31 Jumbo Jets, landing in the space of half an hour — but instead the government prefers to leave them risking their lives and enduring inhumane conditions for another five years before doing so.
Twenty thousand is the number of british citizens “stranded” in Sharm el-Sheikh when flights from there were suspended last week. I don’t believe that our general population felt bereft of this holiday-maker-shaped hole in its demographic, so surely it follows that we would not feel “swamped” (sensationalist media’s favourite lexical item of late, second only to “swarms”) by that number of people joining our country, say, in the next month. From the fuss over the “plight” of these poor Brits “trapped” on holiday, you might be forgiven for thinking that their lives were in acute danger, or that they were living in knee-deep mud and excrement under tarpaulin. If only we could get the government to react with as much urgency to the far more life-threatening situation of the refugees freezing at its borders as to a group of inconvenienced tourists, we would be making serious headway as a humanitarian nation.
I would like to think that no one could still remain unconvinced of the cripplingly inadequate response of our government to the misery, danger and death facing so many millions of our fellow global citizens. However, should it be necessary, these events that you’ve probably never heard of provide incontestable proof that the movement of twenty thousand people does not have an overwhelming, or “swamping”, impact on our society: the Offshore Europe oil and gas conference in Aberdeen in September hosted twenty thousand participants; Tesco’s Taste Festival in Belfast in September was visited by twenty-five thousand, and — believe it or not — a Shaun the Sheep sculpture exhibition in Bristol in September received over twenty-five thousand visitors in nine days. Seventy-five thousand people in total attended these events, and I wonder how many of you know someone who went to any one of them…
Curiously, the media apparently lost its appetite for numbers when reporting on the 12th September’s ‘Refugees Welcome’ demonstration in London. While the organisers — always on the optimistic side — recorded one hundred thousand participants, all major media outlets merely told of “tens of thousands”. A realistic estimate of actual numbers might sit between sixty and eighty thousand (an insignificant margin of twenty thousand). One thing can be sure, though: that many more than twenty thousand British people took time out of their day to march through the streets of the capital, demanding that we welcome more refugees — and that’s just in one city.
In Vienna — one of the cities most directly affected by high numbers of refugees arriving, and through where I passed in the company of several thousand refugees — twenty thousand people marched in solidarity with these refugees, welcoming them to their city. While our ‘tens of thousands’ of compassionate Brits marched on London, thirty thousand took to the streets of Copenhagen — a small capital city of just 583,000— with similar aims.
Meanwhile, a petition for the UK government to accept more refugees has exceeded four hundred thousand signatures, and just under one hundred and two thousand people have posted #refugeeswelcome selfies on Instagram. Contrary to the impression broadcast by the media, there is no shortage of refugee-sympathetic sentiment in the UK. The actively hostile are a small, though nonetheless unfortunate, minority.
Perhaps we might consider adopting a just and entirely representational policy of welcoming one refugee per ‘Refugees Welcome’ demonstrator — or, even better, per petition signatory — ensuring that the country receives no more refugees than the number of people keen to welcome them, and reflecting the compassionate side of our society.
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To show your compassion, join the ‘Refugees Welcome: Don’t let them freeze’ protest vigil outside Downing Street at 6pm on Thursday, 12th November and sign the petition. Links to both below:
