Category Archives: Immigration

Britain, Culture, Government, Immigration, Society

A moral victory for the Anglican Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury

MORAL AUTHORITY

Intro: The message from the pulpit is not just for Christmas

THE GUARDIAN’S editorial on Friday, 23 December, was a necessary narrative on the cruel policies being exercised by the UK Government on refugee rights.

One of the Conservative Party’s reliably belligerent MPs, Jonathan Gullis, took exception to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s excoriation of the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Mr Gullis discerned a troubling modern tendency to “use the pulpit to preach from”. After a challenging year, the Anglican hierarchy were afforded some light relief with such comments, laughter elsewhere in society no-doubt. The Archbishop, Justin Welby, responded that he appreciated the feedback and looked forward to advice on more appropriate pulpit activity. Lambeth Palace can be forgiven for indulging in some festive humour at Mr Gullis’s expense, as a sobering 2022 draws to a close.

The editorial team rightly point to respect for the late queen’s devout faith which has meant that the Church of England’s established status has never truly been brought into question. In the post-Elizabethan era, however, serious scrutiny now seems inevitable – especially in the context of wider constitutional and House of Lords reform.

That will become a necessary debate for another day. Right now, the presence of the lords spiritual at Westminster has clear benefits. At a time when the government is attempting to sell performative cruelty towards migrants as a form of humanitarian intervention, the Anglican bishops, led by Mr Welby, deserve considerable praise for insisting on telling it how it is.

Earlier this month, the archbishop’s annual debate in the Lords was used by Mr Welby who attacked the “harmful rhetoric” that is allowing asylum seekers to be dehumanised, referring to the inflammatory language of “invasion”, expressed by the home secretary, Suella Braverman. This followed a scathing Easter Sermon at Canterbury Cathedral by Mr Welby in which he denounced the Home Office’s offshoring plans as unworthy of “a country formed by Christian values”.

It is unsurprising, of course, that some Conservative MPs have taken umbrage at the ecclesiastical onslaught, accusing the Church’s clergy of ethical grandstanding. The archbishop was accused by John Redwood of fomenting political discord while offering no solutions. But in his Lord’s speech, the Archbishop of Canterbury explicitly identified the danger of loftily moralising without confronting the complexities that politicians are required to face. The bishops have rightly highlighted the need to expand safe, legal routes and by accelerating the processing of claims. The need to balance generosity and compassion with efficient control of borders has been acknowledged.

Nevertheless, in a certain sense, Mr Gullis’s reference to preaching from pulpits identified something important. The way the Church of England has spoken about refugees has indeed been profoundly moral, in a way that has dangerously eluded the secular political debate. Over the past year – amid arguments about deterrence, logistics, the cost of accommodation and deportations, and the speed of the asylum application process – the humanity of the individuals arriving on our shores has been almost lost to view. The citing of the illegal, indecent squalor at the Manston asylum centre in Kent – and that it should ever have been tolerated – is an indication of where that can lead.

By reminding us that “recognition of human dignity is the first principle which must underpin our asylum policy”, and of the need to “see the faces of those in need and listen to their voices”, Mr Welby’s Lord’s speech highlighted what must be the starting point of all refugee policy. This is not mere naivety, at odds with the real world. It is to ground our engagement with that world on an ethical footing. The Archbishop of Canterbury has performed a valuable public service in pointing that out to a political class that has lost touch with the basics.

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Books, Britain, History, Immigration

Book Reviews: The Windrush Betrayal & Homecoming

WINDRUSH

FROM a ship to a scandal, from Commonwealth immigrants full of hope to elderly people shamefully traduced by the system, the name Windrush resonates through decades of history.

Both these valuable books give great voice to the families of those who travelled to Great Britain from the West Indies in search of a better life in the chilly place they had always been told was the “mother country” and which actually needed them.

Drawing on scores of first-hand accounts, Colin Grant (born in Britain of Jamaican parents) offers historical testimony at its finest, while Amelia Gentleman’s very different book is a chronicle to the dogged energy of one of Britain’s best investigative journalists whose anger at injustice spills on to the page.

We should all be familiar with those iconic pictures of serious, well-dressed black men in trilby hats, suits and ties, disembarking from the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Dock in 1948. But Colin Grant also remind us that “the popular image . . . has also reduced the story – not least because it excludes over 200 women who were also passengers.”

Significantly, he points out that it can get in the way of “the bigger picture of the impact of mass migration”, as “some 300,000 adventurers made their way to Britain” from all the West Indian islands over the next 15 years. Grant was spurred to record people “before their stories disappeared”.

His interviews reveal natural courage and style enough to face down even the vile racism encountered on the streets of Notting Hill in the 1950s and afterwards.

Soon after he began recording, “the British government gave a new twist to the story ensuring that the name ‘Windrush’ will now also forever be associated with scandal.”

Coincidentally, at the same time, prize-winning British journalist Amelia Gentleman was revealing the scandal of how the government’s “hostile environment” policy for illegal immigrants led to thousands of Windrush descendants being wrongly classified as living here illegally.

Many lost their jobs, some were deported, all were hurt and enraged by their appalling treatment at “the mother country”. One quotation encapsulates a bewilderment that can never be assuaged. “How do you pack for a one-way journey to a country you left when you were 11 and have not visited for 50 years?”

Whose fault was it? Gentleman paints a searing picture of a Home Office not fit for purpose and politicians who exist with a self-centred Westminster bubble of partisan party politics. It’s impossible to read her account of the step-by-step betrayal without feeling ashamed that it was done in your name.

But despite real admiration for this literary work, she and some readers are likely to part company on some of the broad strokes of her postscript. For example, she seems determined to see the scandal as symptomatic of widespread endemic racism rather than shocking bureaucratic bungling and negligence.

She does assert, however, that it suits the government to present what took place as “a small predicament affecting a niche-group of retirement-age Caribbean people who had no papers.”

Gentleman quotes a fellow journalist colleague: “It has yet to fully sink in that what was wrong for the Windrush generation is wrong for all immigrants.” Is it? All? Should peoples be lumped together in this way?

There were and are very real public concerns about the true extent of immigration to these shores – the latest projections suggest the population will hit 70 million by 2031 – and its effect on infrastructure.

These cannot be dismissed as “xenophobic, anti-immigrant conviction” and “a gradual withering of empathy.” Yes, the Home office was wrong, very wrong.

But what the Windrush generation should have taught us is that they shouldn’t be shoehorned into any wider debate on immigration that would arguably chip away at their very special status.

– The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman is published by Faber, 336pp

– Homecoming by Colin Grant is published by Cape, 320pp

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European Union, France, Germany, Government, Immigration, Italy, Politics

The desperate migrants’ route across Europe

EU IMMIGRATION

IN the freezing passes of the Italian Alps, migrants march slowly up an icy incline as they head for France.

The mountains have become an unlikely route for Africans looking for a new life across the border.

Thousands are thought to have tried to traverse the range over the last few months alone, wearing clothing that is unlikely to protect them from the extreme conditions.

Faced with the policies of Italy’s Right-wing government, asylum seekers who arrive by boat on the country’s Mediterranean shores have headed north instead to reach France.

From there they can move on to Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland and – ultimately, for many – Britain.

The latest route used by desperate migrants is increasingly coming to the attention of populist Right-wing political groups that have risen to prominence on the back of Europe’s migrant crisis.

Already, Italy has swung heavily to the right, with interior minister Matteo Salvini turning migrant boats away from harbours. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has made stopping immigration a cornerstone of his philosophy, and young conservative Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for an “axis of the willing” to strengthen borders. Anti-immigrant MEP Christelle Lechevalier – of the renamed French right-wing National Front, now National Rally – last week tried to make political capital out of African migrants crossing from Italy into France at the ski resort of Montgenevre.

Some 26 European nations are in the supposedly border-free Schengen zone, which makes it possible to cross between member states without border controls. But faced with the prospect of mass immigration, police at several border posts are increasingly turning away new arrivals and sending them back to Italy.

As a result, migrants are turning to mountain passes, ski resorts and hiking trails to avoid official checks.

Snow-free in the summer, the Alps are a far less dangerous hike. And even if migrants are caught and sent back to Italy, they can always try again.

Earlier this year there were reports of migrants using the Col de l’Echelle mountain pass into France through thick snowdrifts. At the end of their eight-mile journey, African migrants would simply knock on the first door they saw.

Up to half a million migrants are thought to be in Italy, despite the fall in the number arriving – usually from lawless Libya – in boats across the Mediterranean.

Widespread public reaction to Europe’s migrant crisis has prompted EU nations to belatedly close off entry points and movement routes (as well as proposed detention centres in the Med to process asylum applications). German chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the migrant summit agreement as a success, with its vague talk of promises of cash for Third World countries to help them control population flows and loosen proposals to tighten border controls within the EU.

But no European country, let alone any African one, has yet agreed to host a migration centre. Mrs Merkel’s firm grip on Germany, which she has led since 2005, has weakened in recent months. Interior minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian CSU party, was so incensed with last week’s deal that Mrs Merkel’s governing alliance was in serious jeopardy of collapsing. There were fears he was on the verge of ordering German police to start turning new arrivals away (in direct defiance of Mrs Merkel’s wishes).

Last Friday’s summit agreement failed to nail down any firm agreements on exactly how migrants arriving in EU countries on the Mediterranean coast could be dispersed elsewhere.

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