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As the new US administration moves to enact a series of ever-more discriminatory policies, and as the material consequences of those policies begin to be felt around the world, those of us based in the UK face an additional blow as they watch their government throw its lot in with Trump’s.
In response to this blow, we, a group of UK-based legal academics, decided that one relatively straightforward action we might take, as the first step in a wider strategy of resistance, would be to draft an open letter of protest to the Prime Minister. This initiative was born at Kent Law School and has been supported by colleagues based in universities across the country.
The letter is below. If you would like to join us in signing it, please click on this link and add your name to the list of signatories. From now until 18.00 on Sunday, 5 February, the letter will be open for any member of a UK university to sign. After that date, it will be sent with all signatures to the Prime Minister.
We’re working to publicise the letter with newspapers and other media sources.
We would be grateful if you could share the link as widely as possible.
Dear Prime Minister,
We would like to express our collective dismay at your decision to align the British Government with the administration of the new President of the United States, Donald Trump.
President Trump’s recent actions have serious domestic and global implications. Among the most alarming are his openly discriminatory decisions to block immigrants and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority states from entering the US and to suspend the US’s Syrian refugee admissions programme indefinitely; to insist on the construction of a wall along the US-Mexican border, threatening Mexican goods with a 20 per cent import duty (notwithstanding US commitments under NAFTA) if Mexico does not pay for it; to suspend federal funding to any US global health organisation willing to discuss issues surrounding abortion with its clients; to freeze federal support for the US Environmental Protection Agency and throw his weight behind the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipeline projects; to voice his support for outlawed ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques including waterboarding; and to threaten or dismiss any member of the US legal and judicial establishment (including the acting Attorney-General, Sally Yates) who questions the legitimacy of his government’s measures.
While many of these actions were anticipated during his campaign, much more surprising is your decision as the British Prime Minister to refrain from expressing clear opposition to the Trump government on behalf of the UK as a whole, even as Trump puts his promises into action, bringing tens of thousands out onto the streets in protest in the UK and across the world.
We would like to remind you that seeking to realign the UK with the US while breaking its ties with Europe will be a disaster not only for the British economy and the NHS, but also for:
- Britain’s already-tarnished reputation as an open, multicultural society capable of supporting vulnerable individuals and communities and acknowledging its imperial past;
- The safety of UK citizens, residents and civilians worldwide, now more vulnerable than ever to forms of extremism and nationalism, including white supremacism;
- The resilience of an international order founded, however imperfectly, on a commitment to the equality of individuals and states; and
- The possibilities available for thinking differently about the challenges of the twenty-first century and, in particular, about the extent to which those challenges are reproduced by the ‘solutions’ on offer in such a profoundly skewed international order.
The alacrity with which Trump has put in place, by Presidential decree, a swathe of openly racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic measures, together with the President’s total disregard for existing US commitments under international law, indicate that the British Government’s decision to renew its ‘special relationship’ with the United States at this time can only lead, in the short-term, to further suffering and discrimination. We can only hope that this self-serving programme will, in the long-term, set in motion a demand for real change that governments and communities across the world will be forced to answer.
With this in mind, we call on you not only to cancel Trump’s invitation to visit the UK but also, and more fundamentally, to withdraw the support of the British Government for the United States more generally until these indefensible policies have been reversed and disavowed. If you do not, we fear that the UK will find itself, like Trump, on the wrong side of history, with serious consequences for us all.
Yours sincerely,
Legal Academics across the UK
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