Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER

ON September 5 Al Jazeera reported that 60 refugees stranded in the Mediterranean, mostly from Lebanon and Syria, had not got any help from European coastguards despite distress calls and reports of children among them dying. Instead, they were being watched from a container ship.
They were were eventually rescued by the Greek coastgaurd and a four-year-old girl died on her way to hospital three days after activists alerted them to the boat being in distress.
Such reports of criminal insensitivity are not an aberration. Every year, thousands of people die from drowning or go missing in the Mediterranean while trying to cross over to Europe from conflict-ridden, poor and developing nations in Asia and Africa.



