What is in Kelvin's Head?

Pollokshields – These are our neighbours

14/05/2021

It was impossible not to be moved by people standing around an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields yesterday chanting “These are our neighbours, let them go”. Many people today are proud of those in this city who stopped this enforcement action.

Every country needs to have an immigration system and every immigration system needs to be enforced in some way. Every such system needs to be fair and just. However the immigration system in this country has ceased to be fair and has ceased to be just. Any government that actively seeks to be hostile to those seeking asylum has already failed the test of being fair and just. The immigration system in this country has not only become hostile to refugees but the government has recently announced plans to make it even more hostile and to limit the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court in asylum cases.

Every asylum seeker needs access to justice in order that the system itself can be seen to be fair.

Yesterday, the people of Pollokshields came out onto the streets because they believed that what was being done in their name was not fair. With an aggresively hostile system in place as a policy, it is impossible to be sure that any asylum decision is fair.

The police made a wise call yesterday not to try to clear the street and the two men detailed were set free into the community.

We need a fair asylum system. Without a fair asylum system, there will increasingly be successful protests by citizens who will prevent the authorities from being able to act.

If the government believes it can appeal to voters by making an already hostile asylum system even more hostile, the people in the streets of Pollokshields showed yesterday that at least in some places, that policy will fail.

asylum, refugees

8 responses to “I seem to have been spared”

Erp

06/12/2008

Glad to hear you are feeling better. May you have a good illness free Advent for you and your congregation. (Is blue or purple the Advent colour at St. Mary’s?)

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kelvin

06/12/2008

The colour is purple, though sadly we don’t have a full high mass set for this time of the year.

In my former congregation, we kept what people called “sarum colours” – blue in advent, unbleached linen in Lent.

I believe the term sarum colours to be historically incorrect, but I rather liked the distinction between the two seasons.

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Marion Conn

06/12/2008

Hi Kelvin, glad to hear you are feeling better. In respect to “sarum colours” may i suggest this website, http://anglicanhistory.org/essays/wright/sarum.pdf

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Erp

07/12/2008

Thanks for the distinction. One of the local churches (non-denominational university with one episcopal priest out of three ministers) here uses blue but I seem to have recalled purple from other places. I’m not sure where they got the blue candles though, they are a very odd shade.

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Ritualist Robert

07/12/2008

Speaking of Sarum, were there medieval uses peculiar to Scotland, Fr Kelvin? Presumably there may have been something like a St Andrews Use.

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ryan

07/12/2008

Yeah, I think the Sarum rite sounds fabulous, but Advent candles should obviously be purple and pink :-).

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kelvin

07/12/2008

I presume that there was a St Andrews Use, though I’m no medievalist and there may be people better qualified to comment about it than I am.

There certainly seems to have been a very spectacular Use at the collegiate church of St Mary and St Anne in Glasgow. There is some speculation that St Mary’s (with its side chapel dedicated to St Anne) might have some significant roots in that congregation, which met in a church where the Tron theatre now is.

The ceremonies (and endowments) of this church were lavish. There is a little about it on wikipedia.

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Fr Dougal

08/12/2008

Use of Aberdeen is very well recorded in FC Eels book on King’s College Chapel, rather like Sarum and Bangor.

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