Prague reflections
- 2016-06-08
- By ReimaginingEurope
- Posted in Postcard from..., Yates
There are two issues of current public concern in the Czech Republic which are also topics of discussion in the UK, in advance of the EU referendum on Thursday 23rd June. One is migration and the other is security.
As I wrote in my earlier ‘Postcard from Prague’, one right of membership of the EU which Czech people do not want to lose, is their freedom to live and work in another EU member state, notably either in the UK or Germany. Yet this very freedom of movement is also blamed as being a major contributory factor in the migration/refugee crisis that Europe is currently facing. This is creating the fear that if Middle Eastern refugees are settled in the Czech Republic by EU diktat, it will permanently change the country’s culture and way of life.
This attitude is very much one of wanting all the benefits of EU membership, but none of the concurrent responsibilities. It is totally hypocritical but it is far from being unique to the Czech Republic – it is similarly alive and well in the UK.
Back in November 2014, a survey was undertaken of British attitudes towards the EU, for the Independent on Sunday. In that survey, 52% of respondents said they believed that UK citizens should have the right to live and work anywhere within the EU. But only 36% said that they thought EU nationals of the other 27 member states, should have the right to live and work in the UK. I suspect that if the same survey were undertaken now, it would produce similar results.
As a Christian Minister living and working in the Czech Republic, I want to challenge the widespread attitude that this country should not welcome Middle Eastern refugees because ‘they are not like us’. But that becomes difficult when so many citizens of my own country, have similar double standards. And it isn’t just an attitude expressed in a survey. A number of Czech people I know, who either have or still do, live and work in the UK, have told me numerous tales of being treated there, as second class citizens.
As I also wrote in my previous ‘Postcard from Prague’, having been a subjugated people for so long – six years of Nazi occupation, quickly followed by nearly forty-two years of Communist oppression orchestrated from Moscow, having regained control of their own destiny once more at the end of 1989 - Czech people are reluctant to lose it again. Therefore there is a resistance to anything that is seen as a diktat from Brussels - refugee quotas being a prime example.
But with that, there is also an equal and opposite fear that if the UK were to vote to leave the EU, it could easily lead to the break-up of the organisation and with it, the economic and political stability the Czech Republic currently enjoys. It is widely noted here, that the only world leader in favour of a Brexit, is President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
There is a considerable Czech dislike of Russians, because of past history. Czechs quite rightly, see little difference between the former Communist-led USSR and present day Putin-led Russia. Both are seen as wanting to dominate and control the neighbouring states of Central and Eastern Europe, either by military or economic means – often a combination of both. The Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014, just confirmed the worst fears of most Czech people.
About the author
Ricky Yates is the Anglican Chaplain based in Prague, the only Anglican priest in the whole of the Czech Republic. He leads a multi-national Anglican congregation in Prague, together with a small satellite congregation in Brno. Since the beginning of 2016, he has also taken responsibility for the monthly English-language Anglican Service, hosted by the Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany. Before moving to Prague in September 2008, for over fifteen years he was Rector of a rural multi-parish benefice in North Oxfordshire.
These comments could also be a reflection on the attitude of many people here in Poland. It is a great pity that the pre-referendum discussions reported from the UK are not an example to be followed and, as mentioned in the blog, even reinforce the ungenerous and sometimes racist reactions encountered here. I’m afraid hypocrisy appears in different forms. As the last three paragraphs indicate, place of birth, while a cause of legitimate pride, can lead to British people assuming an unwarranted sense of superiority. Greetings from Gdansk.
Sir
Very well, let’s talk about immigration to the UK.
Most of the major urban areas are settled in by second and third generation British black and ethnic minorities. It is precisely those areas where immigrants tend to settle for the simple reason of cheap accommodation.
British blacks and minorities are still not ‘fully’ integrated into British national life. There are numerous reasons for this state of affairs (most of them reasonable and some unreasonable). As new arrivals settle in these areas pressures for school places, waiting times on doctors’ lists, hospitals overwhelmed by demands on their services, police and local government, lawyers require interpreters in 27 languages. The costs are enormous.
In the last two decades a window of real opportunities had opened up for their children to more fully integrate. What they find is, for example, their children’s education stunted because in class interpreters are required; so whilst interpreting is being conducted to explain why the square on the hypotenuse has not grown old and is still useful they are robbed of time when they should’ve been educated; this in turn has a knock on effect for competition into the top universities and professions and the goal of integration buckles under the weight of immigration.
The children of white immigrants will integrate way before their generation retires – not so for British black and ethnic minorities. Ask any economist that before they think a recession has arrived they’ll look at the rate of black and ethnic minorities’ redundancies.
You speak about the refugee crisis – and quite rightly so. Why is it that Muslim countries cannot adopt the constitutional pillars of liberty, security, freedom and democracy? Why didn’t these countries start to make great strides in science, human rights and law? Why didn’t they start the industrial revolution? They should’ve done so; for example in Middle Eastern countries they had instruments that demonstrated the planetary motions way before European countries. Why did their scientific knowledge suddenly come to a grinding halt? Why can’t Muslim theologians accept the law of cause and effect?
What the West did was accept Christianity and this in turn produced a curiosity about the world God had created (‘To think God’s thoughts after Him’ (Sir Isaac Newton)). It produced great lawyers, Henry Bracton (c. 1210 – c. 1268) De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (“On the Laws and Customs of England”); Archbishop Stephen Langston Magna Carta (1215) England’s Charter of Liberties (revered around the world by lawyers). It produced the notion of human rights: man is made in the image of God. The English Civil War Lawyer John Cook (Puritan) produced the idea of ‘Command Responsibility’ and brought to heel that dictator King Charles I. It is a legal doctrine used to prosecute dictators today (Milosevic).
Islam by rejecting Christianity; demanding that the writ of law runs from tribal chief to serf: could never produce contract law required by entrepreneurs for investment, work and production: freedom from want, squalor and poverty.
In the 19th century the British working-class was seized by alcoholism (see Hogarth’s Gin Lane). God sent John Wesley to preach. Thousands were converted and imbued with new habits of self-control, abstinence and temperance. God lifted them out of their wretchedness. The Communist historian EP Thompson in his A History of the Making of the English Working Class said (in a post-script) that Wesley’s preaching averted a bloody revolution. At the same time France was guillotining its most educated (1789) always the intellectuals.
In a British court of law, the prisoner at the bar has equality before the law: the aristocrat and the butler have the same status. Islam cannot produce that.
Now, if you really want to solve the refugee crisis why don’t you the churches of Scotland and England send missionaries to Islamic countries? I am sure Archbishop Welby will receive that as a capital idea.
As you have succeeded in opening wide the doors to large-scale immigration will you take your fair share and receive refugees into your vicarages, rectories and Lambeth Palace?
We already have a large ethnic population, and there are places in the UK, such as London, where there are more people of foreign extraction, than native British.
We need to absorb the immigrants we already have, as well as the hundreds of thousands more that arrive, each year.
As to world leaders, a good example is the US President.
Obama wants us to stay in the EEC. But he has double standards.
Whilst he expects EEC members to have open borders, his country, is strengthening it’s borders, especially with Mexico.
How much sovereignty would the US surrender?
Would they make American law, inferior to any other law making body?
If Brexit does occur, and the EU does subsequently implode, that may be a good thing for Europe.
After all, the EEC, is a monolithic and corrupt organisation, that is progressing from being a trade body, to being a undemocratic super state.
Better it collapses sooner rather than later.
The longer it hangs on, the more harmful to it’s component nations. The Czech republic surrendered it’s own sovereignty, in 2004, so is a independent nation no longer, but is merely a vassal state
As to sending missionaries, to Islamic countries, Britain does, and has done so for about 200 years.
My Church financially supports a British couple, who have worked in a Muslim nation for years.
There are hundreds of others, as well.
The problem is not having those willing to go, but getting permission from the Muslim nations, for them to live and work as missionaries, in their countries.