In living memory: Anne M Jones on the importance of vigil

‘I pray for those mothers who will never see their sons again.’

Each month, a group of about twenty people gathers outside the Home Office. It’s a vigil, held to acknowledge the deaths of people fleeing wars and famine, seeking sanctuary in Europe. The vigil is organised by Westminster Justice and Peace group, and the London Catholic Worker. I have been vigiling for over three years.

Can ‘vigil’ be used as verb in this way? I think it can, because the actions involved in joining this monthly event are complex.

We participate, meaning we have made a clear decision, usually well in advance of the date, to get to Marsham Street, a journey that might take an hour or three. We stand on a hard pavement, and are discomforted by the cold or rain, dripping down to make soggy our sheets of paper; or we welcome the sunshine as it warms us. All of our cognitive functions are engaged, which is what makes ‘vigil’ as a verb significant. But above all our emotions are engaged: it is painful reading through the long list of refugees who died in the same month one year ago, as they sought sanctuary. This is hard work: ‘Twenty-five drowned off the coast of the Canaries, including seven babies… one unknown drowned off Samos… four unknown… a pregnant mother… a woman shot at close range while trying to enter Greece.’

If we pause during the readings to consider the terror of each person’s situation, the sorrow is unbearable. I might instead avoid the pain by focusing on the geography of each environment, or by making sure I am reading the wording correctly.

So, in this way, ‘vigil’ is far more than simply standing solemnly to acknowledge something significant. And it matters. It is an ongoing fixture that absorbs my own planning.

Why does it matter? I first think of the conversations I have had with young men – teenagers – in the refugee camps in and around Calais. Their mothers have packed them off from Kabul or Aleppo, with the words, ‘You must go, you are not safe here.’ These young men left home without knowing when, or whether, they would ever see their mothers again. The journeys they have made can be lethal. They are still alive, at least. But when tragedy occurs, do the mothers ever find out? If they do, their grief will be fathomless.

For those ‘unknown’, who else is praying for them? In the days when I packed my teenage boys off to faraway places, with their new rucksacks, strong boots, and a Kodak Brownie camera, I was certainly anxious – but I was almost totally certain I would see them again.

And so I did. But, at times, the fears and worries, as I read postcards from Iran or Pakistan, were overwhelming. (And the irony is not missed: how easy it was, in the 1990s, for western kids to travel east.) Today I pray for those mothers who will never see their sons again.

My second thought is that bearing witness to appalling tragedies, which could be avoided, matters. Those who remember appalling events like the fire at Grenfell also keep their vigils. I like to think that our vigil outside the Home Office stirs a few consciences.

Thirdly, we draw attention to ourselves and our intentions. ‘Just a bunch of religious nutters’ might be the response from some casual observers, but when they bother to stop and ask, some are genuinely interested. This is when the word ‘refugee’ takes on a human meaning, in the way that Francis the pope has described: ‘Every person has a name and a face.’ Yes, and a story, too.

Over the years that I have been vigiling, among our various, changing prayers, we have always spoken these words: ‘Today we are called upon, more than ever, to welcome those fleeing from war… Open our hearts and those of our country… to those who need our shelter.’

I have prayed and fervently hoped this, yet we now have to watch as our government criminalises refugees. If the Illegal Migration Bill passes through the House of Lords (it passed through the Commons in April), the law will likely mean that anyone who arrives on small boats will be prevented from claiming asylum and deported, either back to their homeland or to a so-called safe third country, such as Rwanda. They would be banned from ever re-entering the UK.

This brings me another kind of pain, because it flies in the face of everything that I – along with many of my generation – had felt was still in place, namely some decent humanitarian values.

On the recent International Workers May Day rally at Clerkenwell Green, I struck up a conversation with a woman who was holding a banner that said ‘Welcome refugees’. I told her I liked it. Someone had handed it to her, along with a badge that read ‘Stop Rwanda’, but she didn’t know what the badge signified. ‘I don’t read the papers or watch TV’ she said, ‘So I protect myself from all the pain of the terrible things around.’

Her comment was in part the answer to question of why we vigil – of why we travel, stand, and read, and why, ultimately, we wilfully choose to feel the suffering of some of the world’s pain.

Perhaps another part of the answer lies in those famous words of Martin Niemöller: ‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.’ What makes Martin Niemöller’s quote so resonant is his history: he was open about his own early complicity in Nazism, and his eventual change of heart. His words now stand, as the Holocaust Museum has it, as ‘an indictment of passivity and indifference’. To vigil is to resist this indifference; it is to seek empathy with another. It is, and must be, a verb.

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Comments

I would like to join you if I can. In fact I saw you on Monday when I was outside the National Conservatism conference with a banner.

By suehampton@btinternet.com on 20th May 2023 - 12:00

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