It happened 21 years ago but it feels like yesterday.

I remember it as a seminal moment; a time when this country looked at itself anew and didn't like what it saw. Our natural place, or so we thought, was on the moral high ground. We were a liberal democracy, a good, tolerant, kindly people keen to help our fellow man.

Then came the Rwandan genocide. We watched as Hutus raped and killed their Tutsi neighbours. We saw bodies pile up and the innocent slaughtered. We had the means to intervene at little or no cost to ourselves yet we did nothing. Between April and July 1994 between 500,000 and one million people were butchered. We didn't even strengthen the UN Assistance Mission. The four-month period was a finger snap in history but it was a lifetime for the Tutsi people who waited and hoped for help that didn't come.

The UK was criticised for its inaction along with the USA, the UN and Belgium.

Then, there were bloated bodies floating in Lake Victoria. Now they are in the Mediterranean, closer to home and still we are doing nothing, except talk.

At the weekend at least 700 men, women and children drowned in a desperate attempt to reach Europe. How many more will die before we act? How long will it be before we take to the streets to insist that the Government supplies deeds not words?

We're not just passive. The UK's record is more shaming than that. When the Italian government launched a rescue scheme in 2013, David Cameron, acting in our name, refused to contribute money or expertise. The Prime Minister said rescue boats would encourage the traffickers.

That operation, called Mare Nostrum, saved 140,000 lives in one year but Italy said it couldn't afford the €9.5 million it cost monthly. The rescue mission was replaced by Titron, which is more limited and funded by the EU. Its budget is €3m a month and it patrols within 30 nautical miles of the Italian coast. Its aim is border management, not rescue.

Humanitarian agencies warned at the time that the death toll would rise. At least 3,500 are estimated to have drowned last year. In the past four months, 1,600 are already feared dead.

In response to the latest and awful loss of life, EU foreign ministers met yesterday morning. Afterwards we heard warm words about something needing to be done both in humanitarian terms and "upstream". The traffickers must be controlled. The governance of North Africa's failing states must be tackled. Blah, blah.

It was very like what was said six months ago when ministers announced they were stepping up efforts to start a "political dialogue" with Libya and identifying ways to reinforce the border management capacities of Ethiopia, Niger, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia; and to propose a "credible number of resettlement places."

Meanwhile, the flow increases and every week more men women and children drown.

But these politicians are supposed to represent us. Is that what they are doing? Is this who we really are? Are we people who sit back and watch the less fortunate die in front of us? Are we privately thinking: better that than let them come here to share our wealth?

Would we be more engaged and enraged by their plight if they were more like us? Would we help if they were white and Western? What about French, Spanish or Italian refugees? If ex-pat British people were perishing in these numbers, what then?

I bet there would be a flotilla of private boats and fishing boats setting sail if the Government failed to act. I bet the streets of Whitehall would be blocked with protesters. Headlines would speak about our courageous fellow countrymen. We would hear tales of their heroism and fortitude in adversity. It would the Dunkirk spirit all over again.

So why is there such a difference? Is it because, in the dark depths of our souls, we are racist after all and think some peoples of the world are more worth saving than others?

What other explanation can there be for the way that we have lost sight of the humanity of these desperate people?

Yet on Sunday we saw a burned baby being carried ashore and a child, arms outstretched, whose face was in a rictus of agony. They had been caught in a gas canister explosion on their boat as they crossed the Mediterranean.

We read how the 700 drowned when a rescue craft was sighted. Excitement and ignorance of the sea caused them to rush to one side of their flimsy craft, flipping it over.

They look like anonymous black faces but I heard two speak. One was a young man who dreamed of studying at Oxford. The second was a mathematics teacher. When he refused to board the small, rickety, overloaded boat he was told his alternative was to be shot.

Why are we, surely a compassionate people if we are to judge by our donations to charity, unmoved by the plight of these people? Why do we allow our politicians to be slow and cautious in their response?

Perhaps it is because we are focused on our own survival. We have talked up recession and austerity to the point where we are deluding ourselves. Yes, some people are having a very bad time. But in relative terms most of us are wealthy set against those refugees.

Or is it the political undercurrent against immigration that is to blame? Are our politicians too frightened to do the right thing and send in the Royal Navy because they fear a backlash from the electorate? I think there's something in that.

But would we really rather let desperate and vulnerable people die than help? And if so, can we call ourselves either liberal or humane?

We turn immigrants into pariahs. Look what it does to us. Why repel a teacher of mathematics? And who could refuse medical help to children who have been burned?

Seen en-masse, helpless and in search of the kindness of others, this seemingly never ending stream of migrants is alarming. I accept that and, of course, something must be done to stop the traffickers. But aren't the migrants just people who need help right now and who have much to offer in future?

We have had our collective fingers burned by our interference in Iraq and by the long, drawn-out war in Afghanistan. Our intervention in Libya, though well intended, had unforeseen consequences. We fear dipping into Syria.

But this action requires no boots on the ground and holds no threat of open-ended war. It is entirely a life-saving mission.

If we hold back; if we keep talking, organising meetings of this ministerial body and that bureaucratic gathering; if we fiddle while Rome burns what will it cost us as a people? We'll save money but won't we have lost our humanity?

Politicians like to say, "it's the right thing to do". To our shame we failed to do the right thing in Rwanda. Let's not make the same deadly mistake again.