Over the decades the British tabloids and rightwing press have kept up a firestorm of hatred against asylum seekers, portraying them as everything from dole scroungers to pedophiles to swan eaters, often in language only slightly less intemperate than that found in theglory days of Der Sturmer. Asylum seekers (always called “bogus” or “failed” by these newspapers were supposed to take the jobs and homes of decent British working families, so you’d think there would be a lot of resentment in those neighbourhoods were the Home Office chose to settle asylum seekers, usually not the best of estates. But funnily enough, when “decent British working families” come into contact with asylum seekers and sees what happens to these people when their claim is rejected they see them as people, not scroungers and resist attempts to evict them:
The estate became home for hundreds of families escaping persecution and torture in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Uganda and Congo. Most had their request for asylum in the UK turned down, and when the Home Office began coming to the estate at 5am to remove them, Donnachie and the rest of the residents looked on in horror. “It was like watching the Gestapo – men with armour, going in to flats with battering rams. I’ve never seen people living in fear like it,” says Donnachie. “I saw a man jump from two storeys up when they came for him and his family. I stood there and I cried, and I said to myself, ‘I am not going to stand by and watch this happen again.'”
She got together with her friend Noreen and organised the residents into daily dawn patrols, looking out for immigration vans. When the vans arrived, a phone system would swing in to action, warning asylum seekers to escape.
The whole estate pitched in, gathering in large crowds in the early-morning dark to jeer at immigration officials as they entered the tower blocks. On more than one occasion, the vans left the estate empty – the people they had come for had got out in time and were hidden by the crowd. The estate kept this up for two years until forced removals stopped.
But what happened on the Kingsway is not unique. Over the past few years there has been a growing resistance to the government’s attempts to deport failed asylum seekers. From Manchester, from Sheffield, from Belfast, from Bristol, the Home Office is being bombarded with requests from British people all over the country asking for asylum seekers to be given another chance.
One reason why deportations are being challenged is that, despite reports to the contrary, many asylum-seeking families have successfully integrated. Inefficiencies in the system have meant cases have taken years to process, giving families, in particular, the chance to put down roots. Many of their children were born in Britain, go to school here and have close friendships with local children. The government does not allow asylum seekers to work, so many put in hours of voluntary work to occupy their time. They have forged strong links with locals, who have helped them fight to stay.
The same happened here in the Netherlands, where a grassroots resistance movement against evicting asylum seekers grew as much out of local people being concerned for their neighbours as it did out of principled if theoretical opposition against the system itself. Ordinary people can be surprisingly decent if they get the chance, but if you only look at what the gutter press says “they” want, you’d think they all can’t wait to lynch every failed asylum seeker in the country.