"As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) pointed out, many Jewish refugees fled from Russia in 1905 and from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. If the Bill had been law at that time, they could not have come here. There are also the victims of the Iran-Iraq war, the Fascist junta in Chile, and so on. The list is endless. The Minister should come clean about it. He should be honest enough to say that he is turning his back on all the asylum problems in the world. The racist connotations of not having anything to do with the problems of the Third world show that the Minister is working in concert with other European Governments to turn their backs on problems which in many cases were created by west European Governments in the first place...All that the Minister is trying to do is to appeal to the basic sense of xenophobia in the media, in the country and throughout Europe. They want to turn their backs on the problems of the rest of the world. I hope that there will be a greater sense of civilised values on this side of the House when we come to vote against the Bill than has ever been shown by the Tory party."
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomAnti-war activistsLGBT rights activistsActivists from EnglandHuman rights activists
Original Language: English
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Speech in the House of Commons (16 March 1987).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeremy_Corbyn
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Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (born 26 May 1949) is a British independent politician who was formerly Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition (September 2015–April 2020). He was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North in 1983. At the July 2024 general election, he returned to parliament as an independent MP.
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