We must find moral courage to do more

THERE are many, very many, legitimate reasons to be concerned about an influx of desperate refugees into a small country struggling to provide — or establish — reliable social services but none of them carry enough weight to give us an excuse to avoid doing what is so obviously the right thing.

Doing the right thing, as it so often does, requires some moral courage and the self-confidence we sometimes lack — as our forefathers did when they repeatedly refused asylum to the persecuted Jews of Europe during World War II. In the face of the escalating refugee crisis we must learn from that shameful episode, one so very shaming it has all but slipped from public consciousness.

That so many millions of people born on this island were forced to become economic migrants must inform our response to the crisis too which, apart from our navy’s Herculean efforts in the Mediterranean, has been less than ambitious. We have, through our Government, offered to accept a few hundred refugees — as many as might be drowned trying to reach Europe from Libya in one week.