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Good Morning Some 50 years ago a visiting speaker came to the school I went to situated on the white cliffs of Dover to speak to the 6th Form. A short stocky academic. I don’t remember his name but I remember his message – the only one of a hundred I must have heard. He was asked to talk about the future. The biggest threat to us, he said, was not the Cold War or the Nuclear Bomb. It would be continental migration on a massive scale – from Africa to Europe. The movement of people has forever been a part of humanity’s story. Ever since Adam and Eve were forced out of the Garden of Eden people have been on the move. The expansion of the Christian Faith throughout the world flowed directly from Jesus telling his followers to take his message to the ends of the earth. The Christian heritage of these islands and the mix of our population are testimony to that command and to the freedom to travel. It may be why the political debate about immigration is so contentious. We cannot forget our history as we contemplate our future. But a society born out of migration knows that its own stability depends on being able to care for each other. This vision of social harmony also has its roots in our heritage of faith and the maxim to love our neighbour as our self. So the pressures being faced on these islands by the people of Kent and the lorry drivers stacked up and stuck on the M20 stir our sympathies. But what’s happening in Calais is symptomatic of a bigger crisis. And that very principle of loving our neighbour as our self takes on a global dimension and challenge as we see the plight of refugees taking flight from East and South. The scale of migration is enormous. The causes and moral challenges are equally complex. And in the company of migrants there are rogues as well as heroes, vice as well as victims. In North Africa in the 4th century a Christian philosopher called Lactantius wrestled with the meaning of justice and came up with this definition: “The whole point of justice consists precisely in providing for others through humanity what we provide for our own family through affection.” Nobody should be in any doubt that with the sheer numbers involved the political application of such a principle requires the Wisdom of Solomon. But political debate anchored in such values is more likely to produce fairer solutions than one that is at sea and cut adrift from any moral moorings.