Southend MP speaks of fear after visiting Ukraine
An MP has spoken of the fear he experienced after he was caught up in three air raids during a visit to war-torn Ukraine.David Burton-Sampson, Labour MP for Southend West and Leigh, visited Ukraine for a five-day trip with other UK delegates last month.It has been three years since Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his army to forcefully cross the border and invade neighbouring Ukraine.Mr Burton-Sampson said he had "nothing but respect and admiration for the Ukrainian people," adding: "It was just two nights - these people have been going through this for three years now and they have to go into shelters night after night."
Mr Burton-Sampson travelled to Ukraine as part of a UK delegation, organised by the Leeds Central and Headingley MP Alex Sopel, the UK Friends of Ukraine and B4NZ—Bankers for Net Zerohas.The Essex MP has made a video diary of his trip for BBC Politics East.
"When you're not used to this kind of stuff, it was disconcerting, even when you hear the sirens and that whole sense of doom as it goes off - it is quite scary," the MP said.He said the first air raid was on 23 February and explained: "I had to go into the shelter at 22:30 at night, the air raid finished at 01:30 - went back up to bed in the hotel room and then it kicked off again at 04:00."At this stage there were not just drones, it was missiles. "I've got to be honest, at this point it was really quite concerning because I heard a explosion outside - you don't know what's going on."He told the Commons on his return that the people of Ukraine "just keep functioning as though it is normal life". He said many Ukrainians slept in the shelter at the start of the night with their children so they could ensure their safety without getting disturbed."Many of them don't bother going now, they just take their chances because it's every single night and you can't imagine the impact that is having on people's mental health," he added.
During his trip, Mr Burton-Sampson said he saw for himself people in hospital with life-changing injuries. He told the Commons: "A massive mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder issue is developing among Ukrainian citizens, and we need to be there and ready to support them when they come through the conflict."The MP continued: "We visited a cemetery in Lviv. "Lviv is right on the Western border of Europe, so it is very quiet in terms of air raids and attacks but this cemetery was just for service personnel who had been killed from the city of Lviv, not even the surrounding areas."It was full to the brim, there were graves that had been filled from men who had been buried that morning."
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In 2007, Alex Salmond nudged the SNP ahead of Scottish Labour by one Holyrood seat, establishing a minority government in Edinburgh for the first time by winning 47 seats to Labour's 46. Initially, the new regime wasn't given a snowball's chance in hell of lasting long. Having been ruled by Lib-Lab coalitions since 1999, general political wisdom was rooted to the majority-minded Westminster system, noting the inherent vulnerabilities of a minority government – by definition, always subject to being defeated or ousted by a determined and untied opposition. The 2008 by-election in Glasgow East – which saw the SNP pick up a 26% increase in support and beat the Labour party – suggested that the Holyrood outcome the previous year hadn't been an electoral fluke. It is difficult to understate the psychological impact. In 2007, Nicola Sturgeon was the solitary successful SNP candidate in Glasgow, winning Glasgow Govan from Gordon Jackson after umpteen runs at the constituency. When John Mason beat Margaret Curran in 2008, it demonstrated the old Labour hegemony in the beating heart of its historic heartlands in Scotland was not unassailable. But the UK general election result the following year seemed to scotch the notion the party was facing any more generalised revolt from its traditional political base in west central Scotland. And like all human organisations in denial, Labour were only to happy to seize on any reassuring evidence that everything was fine and that they weren't in the early stages of experiencing an involuntary shift in political gravity, whether they liked it or not. Under pressure in the rest of the UK from David Cameron's 'modernised' Tories, Scottish Labour claimed 42% of the general election vote and 41 of the 59 Scottish seats in Westminster, outpolling the SNP by almost 545,000 votes. Margaret Curran even won back Glasgow East for her party, taking 61.6% of the popular vote to Mason's 24.7%. Alexander Pope's observation – that 'even victors are by victories undone' – applies most powerfully to the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, but it also coloured Labour's attitudes as early as 2010. If you were looking for reassurance that ordinary service would shortly be resumed and that the old order of Scottish politics would be returning any day now – the results of the 2010 general election suggested that Labour could be intensely comfortable about its chances of ousting the Nats at the next Holyrood election. The case for complacency pointed at these strong electoral performances, and concluded the party didn't have to engage in any significant introspection about its future in order to convince a sufficient proportion of the population to 'come home to Labour' in the favoured formulation of the grand seigneurs of the People's Party. These victories were an analgesic, numbing nagging anxieties that any more fundamental might be afoot. 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This kind of political promiscuity is calculated to confuse politicians or party activists who imagine they have your vote or they don't. An SNP win in Hamilton would have been a morale boost – but like those Scottish Labour wins of the late 2000s, I wonder if it might also have been a spur to complacency at just the most perilous moment for the party to be complacent. Defeat underscores the existential insecurity party representatives must feel months out from the next Holyrood poll. How the party reacts is, to some extent, in its hands. Some thrive on confidence, finding the puff goes out of them when they experience setbacks and disappointments. Others come alive when they're on the back foot, fighting for survival rather than cruising towards easy victories. Old Tom Paine thought 'what we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.' Old SNP hands are more used to losing than winning, but there's a whole generation of younger party officials and activists who've only known the party in its pomp, in government. Like the Labour functionaires, lost in the new politics which emerged after 2007, they should brace themselves.
