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Hypocrisy, two kidnappings and a wedding
Let me just say: this wedding of a royal personage to a “woman of colour” has taken place against the background of Theresa May’s continuing “hostile environment” for the Caribbean Windrush generation as well as for recent migrants. However much Theresa May pretends to be sorry, she hasn’t ended the hostile environment. Another man was jailed this week after responding to a government invitation, to people whose status has been questioned, to contact the authorities with a promise that they would be safe. He turned up at his MP’s surgery last week for advice, was given an appointment at the Home Office, and when he got there the police were there to arrest him, charge him with an offence of “handling stolen goods” allegedly committed (he says not) 20 years ago, and throw him into Pentonville prison before he’s even been tried.[1] That’s the British state for you, the state whose head is Her Majesty the Queen, whose grandson today got married to a “woman of colour”, an occasion described by the press as marking a sea change in British society.
There’s something else. Before the wedding took place, the streets of Windsor were cleared of homeless people. They sleep on the streets of Windsor, the town where the big castle is, because they have nowhere else to go. They were pushed off the streets by the police. That was an act of the British state too, whose head is, etc., etc.
Why do I emphasise that it was the British state doing all this stuff? Because the “hostile environment” has existed no matter what government has been in power. In the 2000s, when the Labour government was in power, it operated an “agenda of disbelief” and set targets for the deportation of refugees, who were assumed to be guilty of lying unless they could prove they were innocent. Where possible, the state made sure that they were deported before they got the chance to prove their innocence. It’s now happening today under the Conservatives.
My point is this: a couple of weeks ago Theresa May apologised on behalf of the state for being party to the “rendition” and torture of two British citizens, dissidents from Libya, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar. They were handed over to Gaddafi in 2004 as a reward for the Libyan state’s cooperation with the British state on a number of issues. May wasn’t apologising for the Conservatives, because these events took place during Tony Blair’s Labour government, when Jack Straw was Foreign Secretary. She was apologising for the state. If Jeremy becomes prime minister, he and his government will be put under the same pressure to do the bidding of the state, especially the security services (MI5, MI6), and powerful civil service bureaucrats, in all sorts of different areas of policymaking. It’s unlikely, to say the least, that Blair and Straw put up any resistance at all to the Belhaj “rendition”. Labour Home Secretaries like David Blunkett didn’t resist when it came to the agenda of disbelief. Jack Straw, when he was Home Secretary in 1998, seemed keen for a while to have former Chilean dictator Pinochet extradited to Spain to be tried for crimes against humanity. But his resolve failed after 16 months of argument (while Pinochet was held under luxurious house arrest in a large country mansion). A secret medical report was produced, allegedly stating that the General’s deteriorating health made him unfit to stand trial. He was allowed to go home to Chile. Duncan Campbell later wrote:
When Pinochet arrived in Chile, he magically abandoned his wheel-chair in a gesture that was widely seen as an indication that he had fooled the English doctors who had examined him and proclaimed him unfit.[2]
Jeremy will resist. Successfully? Who can tell? But he could put down a marker now, so that they know. During the Belhaj apology, he and his front bench sat there looking grim and embarrassed and then thanked the government for the apology! But he could do more. Soon after he became Labour leader, he apologised on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq war. He had never supported it. He was at the head of the anti-war movement. But he apologised for the war because it happened under a Labour government.[3] Perhaps he should apologise now, on behalf of the Labour Party, for the treatment of Mr Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar. And perhaps that will make it easier when he comes to resist future demands from his officials to commit high crimes and misdemeanours.
[1] His MP, David Lammy, tweeted to Home Secretary Sajid Javid: “Your officials asked to come to my constituency surgery. Your officials asked for my advice on an outreach strategy because people are too scared to come forward. My constituent followed your advice and went to his interview. The police were waiting with handcuffs to arrest him.” https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/997576317913780226
[2] The Guardian, 11 December 2006: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/11/post783
[3] The Guardian, 6 July 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2016/jul/06/jeremy-corbyn-apologises-for-iraq-war-on-behalf-of-the-labour-party-video
The Tory hostile environment continues – but Labour must face up to its past
No sympathy should be wasted on Amber Rudd. Her role in the Windrush scandal can be dealt with swiftly. According to the Home Office memo sent to Rudd and other ministers:
- The Home Office set a “target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18 … we have extended our target of assisted returns[1]
- This target set the government on a “path towards a 10% increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year.”[2]
- Rudd set the target “personally”.[3]
So her responsibility for what happened is established and her claim to know nothing about targets is rubbish.
However, this isn’t just about the Windrush generation or even their descendants. The injustice done to them is manifest and for many of them a tragedy. But this story of targets goes wider than this particular scandal. It is about a very real and ongoing hostility at the Home Office towards migrants in general and asylum seekers in particular.
The memo cited above speaks of “assisted returns”, a category which certainly does include asylum seekers. “Typically”, says the memo, “these will be our most vulnerable returnees.”[4] The use of the word “vulnerable” does not indicate sympathy any more than talk of “assisted returns” indicates a helpful approach. When Home Office officials use the word “assisted” it means the same as when they use the word “enforced”.[5] It means you’ve got to go, we don’t believe you, we don’t want you, didn’t you understand the message on Theresa’s big van? – GO HOME.
I described what happens when you are in the hands of the Home Office in earlier blogs.[6] As I said in these blogs, during my research as long ago as 2007 I found that what was called an “agenda of disbelief” had permeated the asylum process. This was encouraged by section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, which obliged “a deciding authority” to “take account, as damaging the claimant’s credibility, of any behaviour” specified as such. I gave several examples of how, in the frantic rush to find “credibility issues”, Home Office officials forgot the UN Guidelines urging them to give, wherever possible, “the benefit of the doubt” to asylum seekers’ accounts of persecution or torture and instead set up what asylum support and human rights groups called an “agenda of disbelief” which enabled them to cast doubt on the stories told by large numbers of applicants who had indeed been persecuted or tortured.[7]
The focus today is not on section 8 of that Act but on paragraph 322(5) of the Immigration Rules. Caseworkers are using this paragraph to justify refusing indefinite leave to remain (ILR) to 1,000 highly skilled migrants by claiming they are guilty of lying in their applications, typically about their incomes or their tax records. Growing numbers are taking their cases to court – and winning. According to The Guardian, among the cases waiting to be resolved are
a former Ministry of Defence mechanical engineer who is now destitute, a former NHS manager currently £30,000 in debt, thanks to Home Office costs and legal fees, who spends her nights fully dressed, sitting in her front room with a suitcase in case enforcement teams arrive to deport her, and a scientist working on the development of anti-cancer drugs who is now unable to work, rent or access the NHS.[8]
Saleem Dadabhoy is unlikely to become destitute or fall into debt, since he is
a scion of one of the wealthiest families in Pakistan, [facing] deportation under [para.] 322(5) despite three different appeal courts having scrutinised his accounts and finding no evidence of any irregularities, and a court of appeal judge having ruled that he is trustworthy and credible.[9]
Others connected to him, however, might well face debt or destitution: if he were to be deported, 20 people employed by him would lose their jobs and the company (worth £1.5m) would close.
It has become clear that all this is the result not just of Amber Rudd’s time at the Home Office but of Theresa May’s creation of a “hostile environment” when she was in the same job. However, it goes back further than that. The examples I have given of the “agenda of disbelief” relate to Labour’s time in office. The hostile environment, in fact, goes back to Tony Blair, who set targets for asylum seeker deportations, and to Home Secretary David Blunkett, who had kids separated from their parents and put into local authority care in order to persuade their parents to go home when they were afraid to do so. Rod McLean, Head of Asylum Policy at the Home Office in 2006, told me this was because Blunkett was making policy “with an eye to the media”, who wanted tougher measures on removals. He then told me the policy would be abandoned “because it hasn’t worked”. I asked him, “When you say it hasn’t worked do you mean that, instead of waiting for you to take their children away, they just disappear?” “Yes,” he said. Unfortunately the policy wasn’t abandoned – it remained on the statute book.[10]
I believe that Labour not only has to blame the Tories for the “hostile environment” but own up to its own past, when it presided over an “agenda of disbelief”, in which asylum seekers were considered guilty until proved innocent. Because if Labour doesn’t recognise its past it will be in danger of repeating it. This is not to cast doubt on Corbyn’s best intentions – but the tabloids are still there, and so are the successors of Rod McLean.
Immigration Rules, para. 322: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-part-9-grounds-for-refusal
[1] “Amber Rudd was sent targets for migrant removal, leak reveals”, The Guardian¸ 28 April 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/27/amber-rudd-was-told-about-migrant-removal-targets-leak-reveals
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., see the “Q & A” box, “What are enforced departures?”
[6] https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/the-secretary-of-state-still-doesnt-believe-you-2/
https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/inappropriate-behaviour/
[7] See Dealt with on their Merits, pp.151-162: https://hydra.hull.ac.uk/assets/hull:2678a/content
[8] “At least 1,000 highly skilled migrants wrongly face deportation, experts reveal”, The Observer, 6 May 2018:
[9] Ibid.
[10] See Dealt with on their Merits, pp.220-221: https://hydra.hull.ac.uk/assets/hull:2678a/content
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