This demonstrates perfectly how the rhetoric over the immigration crisis has got vastly out of hand and people have lost their marbles…the Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman sinks to the depths here…
A desperate father and a train ride with such grim echoes: ROBERT HARDMAN on the trains carting migrants off to detention camps in Hungary
Through the condensation fogging up this oven of a railway carriage, an exhausted, ecstatic face pressed itself to the window yesterday morning.
In the morning queues for loos and standpipes around Hungary’s largest railway terminal, several thousand of the saddest souls on Earth began to dream that they were on the move again after a two-day standstill. But not for long.
By lunchtime, the truth was out and spreading like wildfire through this infernal dump. This train had not been going anywhere near the border with Austria, let alone the longed-for embrace of Germany. It had all been a monstrous hoax. A Hungarian policeman admitted as much with a mirthless snigger the moment it left the station.
This cargo – there’s no way they could be described as ‘passengers’ – was actually destined for a railway siding next to the Bicske detention camp a few miles outside Budapest. The only welcome was police wielding batons.
As word reached back to Keleti, there was disbelief – as much among locals as the migrants themselves. You did not need to be a historian to sense the chilling echo of Europe’s not-too-distant past. The last time people were duped on to trains around here, they ended up in Auschwitz.
Pathetically, after making the explicit association with the concentration camps, he adds:
Let us be clear that there is nothing remotely comparable to the Nazi era in the conduct or intentions of the Hungarian authorities.
And oh yes…that ‘desperate’,’caring father’…..the one who got all the sympathetic photos in the papers and who is the main subject of Hardman’s piece? …look at exactly what he did to his pregnant wife who was holding a baby…
I read this and it was disgusting, he went on to say how many Hungarians we took in, in the fifties. Can anyone tell me where the Hungarian areas are in London ?
Because as far as I can see they settled here, knuckled down and didn’t try to “enrich” us in any way.
Yes we helped them but there did not force their way in, with a sense of entitlement and set up their own ghettos.
Hardman should be ashamed, the big over emoting, drama queen.
I remember the Hungarians. I was a young lad when they came as refugees to a camp near my home. In the school holidays I had a job working in a brickworks and met a few of them, and they talked about politics in Hungary and gave a different story than the one in the Daily Worker at the time. I saw myself as left – pro working class – but thanks to the Hungarians I never made the connection between the interests of working people and pro soviet Bolshevik parties. Most of the Hungarians settled, many married locals,and we did not have the Ken Livingstone’s and David Cameron’s to maintain diversity and cultural boundaries.
All the press are at it. The Sun today has the photo of thousands of illegal immigrant Muslim men walking from Hungary to invade Austria, labelled “refugee families”. There is not a woman or child in sight.
”The last time people were duped on to trains around here, they ended up in Auschwitz.”
”Let us be clear that there is nothing remotely comparable to the Nazi era in the conduct or intentions of the Hungarian authorities.”
So why did he say it in the first place then ? unless it WAS to link it. The Daily Fail strikes again.
The nut who rugby tackled the woman and baby, he’ll be a great addition to Sweden or Germany or whichever country he chooses.
Two days ago I had a conversation about how long it would be before a comparison to the holocaust appeared. Didn’t have to wait long did I?
In fact I put a comment on the weekend blog last night at 10:28.
Won’t be the last. I await, without bated breath, comparisons with our treatment of the Ghurkas in retirement, Afghan (and Iraqi) interpreters, and Hong Kong Chinese upon surrendering the colony to the PRC.
Another Time Another Place.
Can the BBC tell us what its own attitudes were , its editorial policies were in the fifties?
Can it return to them , like it wants us to have an immigration policy of the fifties or before ?
I remember two important moments in the ’50s – in 1956.
Eden launched the attack on Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. I believe BBC reporting was more factual then than now – simply an account of what was happening – the ultimatum to Nasser, the invasion of Egypt.
Most of the “left” strongly opposed Eden’s action. These days the BBC would play up the opposition case, would set out to crucify Eden. Back in 1956 there was no such impression from the BBC.
At the same time Russia took advantage of the Suez crisis to send tanks into Budapest, to crush the students and workers. Again, this was factually reported. We knew that lots of Hungarians were trying to escape. But there was no great emotional appeal from the BBC to “look after the Hungarians”. The UK Government duly took in a fair number of Hungarians – I remember there was a lad in the same dorm at the orphanage I went to – but this was a matter of careful deliberation by the Government rather than intense media pressure.
Those were the days ! – government by the elected administration, not government by media and NGO ;lobbying !
Good points John.
Don`t really think that the Hungarians have been forgiven for beginning the end of the Iron Curtain by letting people “swarm” across to Austria in 1989…AND they were in the forefront of stopping the USSR from getting away with ALL their evils.
Unlike the BBC and TUC-both of who rather approved of Uncle Sams enemies…neither of who backed Solidarity in Poland until it was “safe to do so”.
THAT is Socialism for you.
Needs saying too that Egypt, Syria, Libya and Iraq were as much National Socialist as Islamic for those Golden Years of anti-US rebellions…Nasser, Assad(Snr), Gadhaffi and Saddam were Soviet stooges (.as well as Islamic when desperate).
The BBC won`t tell you any of that though-you need the likes of Bernard Lewis and Robert Conquest…who die, with the truth left for Dan Snow Bettany Hughes, Mary Beard and Tristram Hunt.