Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

82 Open Borders
it. It had become merely a phrase. So now we are using a different one which is
‘abusive asylum seekers’, in trying to distinguish them from the genuine. At the
moment the word ‘asylum seeker’ has been linked in the media to ‘bogus’ and all
asylum seekers are not bogus. We recognise that.
Refugees are always genuine, asylum seekers may or may not be. They may be
abusive or they may be genuine. Once they are accepted as a refugee they are genuine.
But the words will change. A year from now, perhaps, the word ‘abusive’ will have
become a pejorative term. But it is making sure that the issue is kept in focus and that
the words don’t distort the agenda.
Which didn’t stop Mike O’Brien telling demonstrators outside Campsfield
immigration detention centre that nearly all the detainees there (some of
whom subsequently get refugee status) were bogus. When demonstrators
suggested that the government was failing to uphold Labour’s principles in
its treatment of asylum seekers, O’Brien said ‘We are New Labour.’
When a few hundred Romany refugees began to arrive in Dover the
government, rather than putting the matter in perspective and expressing
sympathy with the Romas’ plight under the post-communist regimes they
were fleeing from, promised to deal with them firmly and to send them back.
As Gill Casebourne, of the Kent Refugee Action Network, wrote to the
Guardian of 21 August 1999,
The local population has been repeatedly assured over three years in all official
national and local pronouncements that asylum-seekers are nearly all ‘bogus’ and
will a) be prevented from arriving or b) promptly despatched elsewhere. ...
Despite repeated appeals, no official effort has ever been made to present the facts
to the public about real numbers and support levels, to deny racist and inflammatory
rumours or to denounce prominently verifiable violent attacks on asylum-seekers
including children ...
What is clear is that the igniting of the tinderbox was absolutely inevitable given
the failure of the authorities to recognise what effect their persistent negative publicity
would be bound to have on baffled and suspicious local people. J’accuse.
A Guardian column of 26 June 1999 reported correspondence with Mike
O’Brien, who responded to the Guardian’ s accusation that ‘Not one minister
has publicly condemned the outpouring of racist filth against Gypsies and
Kosovans in local and national newspapers in the last two years’ by saying
that he ‘did precisely that in the House of Commons last Tuesday’. The
Guardian continued:
I checked. And this is what he said: ‘Setting aside the knee-jerk reaction of the
appallingly racist Dover Express and the bilious mendacity of the odd leftist journalist,
the debate on the bill has been constructive in the national press’ ...
Admittedly, the Dover Express was so bad that the editor was interviewed by the
police, but it is not alone in spreading prejudice against refugees, and it is not a
national newspaper. The Sun (‘Kick the gypsies out’) and the Mail (‘Kosovo on sea’)
are, regrettably, distributed throughout the country. But I’m sure New Labour finds
their support constructive.