Tag: abandoned

This is an open letter to my MP, one Mark Jenkinson of Workington in Cumbria. I’ve written it because I’m absolutely disgusted at the way this tory majority government has been riding roughshod over peoples’ rights, including abandoning unaccompanied children. Please consider doing the same. Either amend this letter or write your own, Send a paper copy or Email to your MP and also publish it widely across social media. Then wait for the response. Let’s make these appallingly cruel bastards face what they’ve done. Let’s make sure everyone knows just what monsters they have elected and let’s make sure that they never get to pretend to be decent human beings ever again!

Dear Mark Jenkinson, MP,

I am a Workington resident and so one of your constituents. I find it difficult to understand how anyone claiming to represent this fine community of hard-working people could vote repeatedly to abandon unaccompanied and isolated children. The horror of this scenario for vulnerable minors, including toddlers and presumably even orphaned babies will be beyond the experience of most if not all of your constituents and presumably beyond your own experience too.

Yet even you should be able to understand the helpless vulnerability to which you and your colleagues have condemned so many young refugees and asylum-seekers. If you have within you the slightest ability to empathise then I ask you to search your conscience now and undertake never again to repeat any similar travesty in the name of the people of Workington. Remember, people ‘lent’ you their vote because many in our community are impatient to get Brexit done but they did not consent to barbarity of this nature.

I do not know whether or not your votes to remove child protections and then to oppose the proposal to reinstate them were subject to party whips but it makes no difference. You may say that you had to vote with the government or lose the party whip but so what? You’d still keep your seat. You could still vote on any issue you wanted to, you could support the government when your conscience allowed and you could still maintain your integrity.

But no – the price of you remaining in the tory party (to whom you’ve shown precious little loyalty in recent years) is the abandonment of vulnerable children. They pay the price of your acceptance into the parliamentary tory club. And what a club it turned out to be, a nasty little cadre of abusers who are prepared to treat children this way isn’t a club I’d want to be part of.

• Why is it so appealing to you?
• Why is it so difficult for you to empathise with the children you have just condemned out of hand?
• Why are you prepared to see children suffer and die all alone in makeshift canvas villages just so that you can remain a tory?
• What makes you think that any of your constituents would ever consider that to be a reasonable trade?

I would be very grateful to hear or read your responses to the various questions I have put to you. I will be equally keen to publish your response alongside my letter or, if no response is forthcoming by Friday January 31st 2020, to publish a notification that you did not respond.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Sorensen
Workington resident