We watch the scenes in Ukraine from afar, part of the action but not, as we shout our encouragement whilst offering very little in terms of substance. We are rightly full of sympathy for a people being steamrollered in their own backyards by a supposed superpower. Arming themselves with kitchen knives, lumps of 2x4 and Molotov cocktails, they are united in passion and pride in their homeland.

As we, along with NATO, the US and numerous other ‘allies’, remonstrate, we tie ourselves up with the ultimate threat that, if we are to poke Putin’s hornets’ nest too forcefully, he may be inclined to throw a couple of nukes our way. Many leaders rule by fear, and Vlad the invader is delivering a masterclass.

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So, what can we do to help? The truth is, relatively little. We can give money to charities, but we must be experts on their inner workings to ensure our hard earned reaches its end destination instead of a charity CEO’s back pocket. Many have practically demonstrated their strength of feeling: one lady the other day stated she was packing her car with nappies and travelling to the Ukrainian border to help which, although noble, does not come across as economically viable, whilst we watch the prices at the pump skyrocket.

Many countries have accepted large numbers of the three million and rising refugees. Poland is nobly leading the humanitarian effort, whereas we have thus far taken but a small handful of folk. And so, having been criticised by the UK public, the big political guns were on point at the weekend offering £350 a month to offer housing to people who can’t get here anyhow, as the system which they are running doesn’t allow them to cross our border which is straining under the weight of red tape.

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What the Government are actually doing is asking us to help our local councils out. It is a council’s responsibility to house its residents, and should we therefore be asked to open our homes?

But my main issue is this: despite claims to the contrary, the Ukrainian war is not on our doorstep. Yes, it’s in Europe, but in a straight line from London, it is over 1,600 miles away whereas Morocco is a shade over 1,400 miles. Although still a problem in some quarters, many do not buy into the rhetoric that the UK is an institutionally ‘racist’ country. To me, it’s too black and white and yet, by offering help to house Ukrainians, we are doing little but proving that we do indeed tick the prejudice box.

There are ongoing conflicts, of differing severity, in African countries including Southern Sudan and Somalia, along with serious battles further afield in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Sierra Leonian civil war, which officially ended in 2002, saw tens of thousands of deaths, an average mortality age of twenty-one and over one third of the population displaced.

How many packed the car up to drive down to Somalia to feed their starving and traumatised population? No doubt you could count the number on the fingers of one hand.

So, could the result possibly be that Ukraine is different as, dare I say it, their faces are generally white? Maybe, despite the collective angst, what we are doing is re-affirming the thoughts of those who believe we are nothing but little Englanders who only look after their own, or at a push, those who look a little like them.

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher