19th of June 2020

This poem and film have been chosen for us today by Tim Macguire our Humanist Chaplain in honour of refugee week.

As you may remember, just over a month ago on Good Friday, the Labour Peer and refugees’ rights campaigner Lord Alf Dubs issued a secular Easter message to atheist and humanist prisoners held in British jails via National Prison Radio, urging them not to give up hope in the middle of the coronavirus crisis. He made the recording because he was concerned that they, like other prisoners, were unable to have visitors during the national lockdown.

His message included an excerpt from Auden’s poem, and he told the story of how he fled to Britain on the Kindertransport trains that evacuated Jewish children from countries like Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. 

The Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network, founded by Humanists UK, has volunteer chaplains in almost 20 percent of prisons across England and Wales providing non-judgemental like-minded support to non-religious prisoners who may be struggling to find meaning and cope with their difficult life circumstances. 

In 2019, the Northern Ireland Prison Service allowed two humanist volunteers to provide pastoral support to prisoners who identify as having ‘no religion’ in Maghaberry, a high-security prison regarded as ‘the most dangerous prison in the UK.’ After Christians, prisoners who identify as having ‘no religion’ make up the largest population there.

At present, The Scottish Prison Service has no similar arrangements in place for non-religious pastoral support, but my hope is that will change.

Poem & Film:

http://movingpoems.com/2019/11/refugee-blues-by-w-h-auden/