Flora’s story IV
15 February 2014
“We love Flora,” said Stephen Rippon, the chair of the meeting in support of Flora attended by community groups in Hull last night, and that was the theme throughout the meeting. Speaker after speaker told of her personal qualities and commitment to the community. The meeting, held in Princes Avenue Methodist Church, took the form of a prayer meeting, and was organised by Hull Open Doors Project, which supports asylum seekers and refugees as well as other immigrant workers. At the end of the meeting, the following petition was signed by everybody:
“We, the undersigned, gathered at a meeting of community groups in Hull on 14 February 2014, ask Home Secretary Theresa May to release Flora Wanyu Yennyuy from detention at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre and to grant her indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
“Flora came to the UK in 2007 to do a Master’s Degree at the University of Hull, and she was awarded an MSc in Environmental Technology in 2010. She was granted a work visa, but when the relationship on which it was based broke down due to domestic violence against her, the work visa was cancelled. She is now in detention for a second time, awaiting deportation on 3 March.
“Flora has been consistently in employment, paid her taxes, and has not claimed state benefits. She has also become an integral part of the community in the churches she attends, as well as at the Open Doors Project and other community groups in Hull. She was also a trustee at the Mental Health Action Group charity.
“We believe that it is unjust for her to be detained and it would be unjust to deport her. She should be released from Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre and granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK so that she can continue to work and contribute to society as she has been doing in Hull since her arrival.”
I posted the petition to Theresa May today, accompanied by the following covering letter:
“Dear Mrs May,
“I am writing concerning the immigration case of Flora Wanyu Yennyuy.
“At a meeting of local community groups and friends of Flora at Princes Avenue Methodist Church last night, called to support Flora Wanyu Yennyuy and her right to stay in the UK, concern was expressed at her detention at Yarl’s Wood IRC and at the government’s stated intention to deport her on 3 March. We do not believe this decision to be just.
“During the meeting, Flora’s work and dedication to the local community in Hull was reiterated and celebrated and at the end of the meeting we all signed the enclosed petition.
“We know that you have received a number of representations on Flora’s behalf and we add this one in the hope that you will, after considering all the facts in her case, order her release from detention and grant her leave to remain in the UK …”
And now, of course, we wait.
If you haven’t already signed Flora’s online petition, please do so here:
Whose war was it anyway?
Time: 1915; place: Port Glasgow, where the Clyde shipbuilders were at the heart of the war effort. They produced battle cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers and merchant ships.
In February 1915, the Clyde workers went on strike. They saw the bosses making a packet out of the war, while they were being called to hard work and sacrifice. Profits had soared and what the Clyde workers did was an early rejection of the notion that “we’re all in it together”. Instead they called what the bosses were doing by its proper name: “profiteering”. They went on strike over a number of issues, including pay. The government arrested the strike leaders and, after three weeks, the strike collapsed.
In the second episode of Britain’s Great War (now there’s a dead giveaway of a title!), Jeremy Paxman told some of this story. And he managed to put the strike leaders down by calling them “ringleaders” (Oxford English Dictionary: “a person who initiates or leads an illicit or illegal activity”).
But he ends with an interview with two present-day trade unionists with a sense of what the history meant, Davie Torrance and Davie Cooper. Paxman raised the question of strikes being acts of “disloyalty” in time of war. Davie Cooper explained to him:
“There was a feeling there that it wasn’t our war, it was the bosses trying to carve out more capital for themselves. That was the feeling.”
“But”, protested Paxman, “vast numbers of people did volunteer.”
“Ah well,” said Cooper, “people got conned. They’re still conning people to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“The point, of course,” said Davie Torrance, “is that the people who wished to continue with the war, to a great extent, were profiteers – and racketeers in many cases. So therefore to say that we were less than patriotic, I don’t think is quite correct.”
Paxman frowned. “Do you really think that the ruling classes unnecessarily prolonged the war so that some people could make money out of it?”
I was reminded of Sassoon’s Declaration: “I believe that this war … has now become a war of aggression and conquest.” He protested “against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.” His politics may not have been the politics of the Clydeside workers, but he had just as strong a sense of being conned and used as they did.
“Yeah,” replied Torrance. “It’s a fair assumption.”
The next part of the story proved the trade unionists’ case and showed the government there were limits to what it could get away with. The landlords of Glasgow’s overcrowded Govan tenements raised their tenants’ rents while many of the men were away at the war. The women who remained fought back. In November 1915 the men of the shipyards joined them in a big and noisy demonstration outside the court where rent strikers were being tried. The government halted the case against the rent strikers and promised a Rent Restriction Act which protected tenants from exploitation. It fixed rents at pre-war levels.
Generosity on the part of the government? No, it was fear – they knew, this time, they were beaten. During a panicky phone call from Glasgow’s Sheriff to Lloyd George (the Minister for Munitions), the Sheriff said, “They’re threatening to pull down Glasgow!”
“Stop the case,” said Lloyd George.
That’s the way to do it.
Flora’s story III
The developments in Flora’s case come thick and fast, but make no sense. On 28 January the Home Office informed Flora’s legal adviser that her biometric data had to be taken and noted that her case was complicated because of human rights issues. On the face of it, this admission of human rights complications might have been a cause for hope. However, on 29 January, the Home Office wrote that her application for leave to remain had failed and that she had until 12 February to arrange her departure. This seemed to ignore, not only the previous letter, but also the fact that she was already detained at Yarl’s Wood.
Next, the 12 February deadline was also ignored, as the first attempt to deport Flora was made at Yarl’s Wood, also on 29 January. The attempt foundered because Flora had not been given the required 72 hours’ notice of deportation.
On 2 February, an officer from the security firm Serco informed Flora that a flight had been booked for her for the following day, 3 Feb. The officer asked her if she was “comfortable” about going to “administration” to talk to them about it. She replied that she again hadn’t been given the 72 hours’ notice, and refused to go. 2 hours later two male Serco officers came to her room and made the same request. She refused.
3 February came and went. Flora still has no idea what will happen next. Flora is depressed and on medication as a result of her experience of domestic violence which triggered this series of events. After speaking to her on the phone, her partner Keith says: “I am now concerned that her mental health may be affected by her detention as she sounds as though she is becoming more depressed.”
Flora should be released from detention immediately. If you have not already signed the petition (https://www.change.org/petitions/theresa-may-secretary-of-state-release-wanyu-flora-yennyuy-from-detention) please do so. It would also be helpful, considering Flora’s urgent need to get out of Yarl’s Wood, if you could also email Home Secretary Theresa May (mayt@parliament.uk) and Immigration Minister Mark Harper: (ministerforimmigration@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk)
Ambiguously sent to war?
Now where was I? Oh yes, the sexual ambiguities in Sassoon’s poem The Kiss (see previous blog). So to continue Pat Barker’s conversation between army psychologist W.H.R. Rivers and his patient, Captain Manning:
“‘And of course it’s crawling with sexual ambiguities. But then I think it’s too easy to see that as a matter of personal … I don’t know what. The fact is the army’s attitude to the bayonet is pretty bloody ambiguous. You read the training manuals and they’re all going on about importance of close combat. Fair enough, but you get the impression there’s a value in it which is independent of whether it gains the objective or not. It’s proper war. Manly war. Not all this nonsense about machine-guns and shrapnel. And it’s reflected in the training. I mean, it’s one long stream of sexual innuendo. Stick him in the gooleys. No more little Fritzes. If Sassoon had used language like that, he’d never have been published.’ Manning stopped abruptly. ‘You know I think I’ve lost the thread. No, that’s it, I was trying … I was trying to be honest and think whether I hated bayonet practice more because … because the body that the sack represents is one that I … Come on, Rivers. Nice psychological term?’
“‘Love.’
“‘I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t think so. We all hate it. I’ve no way of knowing whether I hate it more, because we don’t talk about it. It’s just a bloody awful job, and we get on and do it. I mean, you split enormous parts of yourself off, anyway.’
“‘Is that what you did?’
“‘I suppose so.’ For a moment it seemed he was about to go on, then he shook his head.
“When he was sure there’d be no more, Rivers said, ‘You know we are going to have to talk about the war, Charles.’
“‘I do talk about it.’
“Silence.
“‘I just don’t see what good it would do to churn everything up. I know what the theory is.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘My son Robert, when he was little … he used to enjoy being bathed. And then quite suddenly he turned against it. He used to go stiff and scream blue murder every time his nurse tried to put him in. And it turned out he’d been watching the water go down the plughole and he obviously thought he might go down with it. Everybody told him not to be stupid.’ Manning smiled. ‘I must say it struck me as an eminently reasonable fear.’
“Rivers smiled. ‘I won’t let you go down the plughole.’”
The divided self?
Pat Barker’s First World War trilogy continues to come up with interesting stuff for this centenary year. Like this, from The Eye in the Door. Psychologist Rivers asks a patient, Captain Manning (no, not Captain Mainwaring!), what he thinks of “the strict Freudian view of war neurosis”. This is apparently the view that the all-male environment of war, with its high emotional intensity, plus the experience of battle, arouses suppressed “homosexual and sadistic impulses” and that “in vulnerable men, this leads to breakdown.” Manning replies:
“‘Is that what you believe?’
“Rivers shook his head. ‘I want to know what you think.’
“‘I don’t know what makes other people break down. I don’t think sex had much to do with my breakdown.’ A slight smile. ‘But then I’m not a repressed homosexual.’”
Rivers presses him for an answer. Manning replies:
“‘I’m just trying to think. Do you know Sassoon’s poem The Kiss?’
“‘The one about the bayonet. Yes.’
“‘I think that’s the strongest poem he’s ever written. You know, I’ve never served with him so I don’t know this from personal experience, but I’ve talked a lot to Robert Graves and he says the extent to which Sassoon contrives to be two totally different people at the Front is absolutely amazing. You know he’s a tremendously successful and bloodthirsty platoon commander, and yet at the same time, back in billets, out comes the notebook. Another anti-war poem. And the poem uses the experience of the platoon commander, but it never uses any of his attitudes. And yet for once, in that one poem, he gets both versions of himself in.’
“‘And of course it’s crawling with sexual ambiguities …’”
Well, more of the sexual ambiguities later. But for now here’s the poem itself:
“To these I turn, in these I trust –
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.[1]
I’m not absolutely sure to what extent “he gets both versions of himself in” here. But there it is.
[1] Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, Faber & Faber, London (1983), p. 29. Sassoon explains the poem’s imagery: “A famous Scotch Major (Campbell) came and lectured on the bayonet. ‘The bayonet and the bullet are brother and sister,’ he said.”
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