A heart-felt speech by one of 'Stand Up To Racism' organisation members, called Michael Bradley, in front of the crowd with placards and candles at the Home Office vigil for the 39 Chinese migrants (all 39 migrants were confirmed as Vietnamese at a later stage of investigation) tragically killed in Essex lorry:
Tonight at the Home Office we are having a vigil in London but there are vigils in Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Bristol, in Swansea and Cardiff and right across Britain happening in the next couple of days. I think the real point of this is - this should be a moment where something changes. In parliament they are saying nice things about being upset about what happened to the 39, but nothing is going to change.
Nothing is going to change - unless we do something about that first. People have talked about deaths over the last few years. Thousands of people are drowning in the Mediterranean. There were thousands of refugees in miserable camps in Greece and other places. The EU is doing deals with Turkey and other people to keep migrants and refugees out of Europe. What we've got here is a "fortress Europe" policy. And those 39 people who have died - have died as a result of that "fortress Europe" policy. It is a political policy that is killing people. If you think about a country like Britain, it was built on migrants .... The National Health service would not work without migrants. Our schools and our universities would not work without migrants. There has been a long history in Britain of accepting refugees. We are all part of one planet. Those 39 people are people. They had children, they had families, they had lives, they had dreams. They were on a truck because they wanted to have decent lives, they wanted to contribute something.
We need to make sure it is 39 more deaths and we mark it for a day and then it is over. These people can not carry on scapegoating ordinary people by letting them die to make political capital. Let's be clear, that is what they are doing. So we really do need to come together... We really can't allow them to go into a general election where they are going to scapegoat migrants and refugees and try to divide us. #39ChineseMigrants #MichaelBradleySpeech #London #vigil #speech #SafePassage #StandUpToRacism #ComeTogether #migrants #refugees #WeNeedChange #candles #LondonRemembers #FortressEurope