Becket House - an immigration prison in SE1

At present there are major building works going on next to London Bridge station in St Thomas Street with the construction of a 27 storey 'EDGE London Bridge' office block well underway.  Whatever you think of it, nobody is going to much miss the Home Office building it replaced, known as Becket House. Before the latter vanishes from historical memory it's important to record what happened there as possibly the last designated prison in a part of London that has seen many prisons over the centuries.

Protest at Becket House in 2010

Becket House's purpose was probably unclear to those fortunate enough not to have to use it, including the many commuters passing by as they exited the south entrance of London Bridge station. The only clue was the daily queue of people from all corners of the world stretching around the building each morning.

Becket House was an an Immigration Reporting Centre where asylum seekers were required to attend regularly.  In most cases this would involve a long queue and a short signing on but the terror underlying this was never really knowing when you left home that morning whether you would be coming back again. Asylum seekers could be detained when they turned up and for this purpose Becket House had what was called a 'short term holding centre' where people could be locked up until they were moved to a longer term detention centre and then potentially deported.  This was officially designated as a prison and subject to HM Prisons Inspectorate (see for instance this critical report of a 2009 inspection). It consisted of two adjoining secure 'holding rooms', one for single adults and one for families. As well as being used for people detained when signing it was used to lock up people arrested in immigration raids in the community organised from Becket House.  People were usually moved to a removal centre on the same day, though sometimes they were moved overnight to local police station cells. The centre was run for  some of its time for the then UK Borders Agency by Group 4 Securicor (G4S).

At one time Becket House was processing 15,000 appointments a year. How many people were detained in total is unknown but one report shows that between August and October 2009 alone 255 people had been detained, including 39 children (15%) and 59 women (23%). Among those who were  locked up there was Amir Siman-Tov from Morocco. Detained when he reported to Becket House in January 2016 he was transferred to Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre where he died the following month (see Inquest report). 

As part of the Government's Hostile Environment, Becket House was designed to intimidate - in 2018 the Guardian reported that an official there had been filmed saying 'We are not here to make life easy for you. It’s a challenging environment we have got to make for people. It’s working because it’s pissing you off'.

Becket House was the focus for a number of protests from migrant solidarity groups. The building closed in 2022 and was demolished soon afterwards.

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Several hundred people paused at Becket House during the March for Migrant Rights in October 2006

 which went from Imperial War Museum to Tanner Street park

No Borders protest in 2009

SOAS Detainee Support, Migrants Organise and These Walls Must Fall at Becket House in 2021

The only Immigration Reporting Centre for South London is now at Lunar House in Croydon. 

I am Human - Precarious Journeys

Coming up next weekend at Goldsmiths in New Cross:

'I am Human - Precarious Journeys

Trace the precarious journeys of refugees as they navigate the perils of land, sea and a deadly human landscape riven by geopolitical failure on an unprecedented scale. Documentary filmmaker Professor Sue Clayton presents a multimedia installation responding to three perilous spaces that refugees fleeing conflict to the UK must navigate: the sea, the national border and the camp.

Featuring original music composed by Brian Eno, a soundscape of voices, the throb of tides, motorways and the human heart, visitors will be invited to interact with three short films activated by movement.

Opening event on Friday, 18 November. At 7pm Professor Clayton will give a talk introducing the work and situating it within her documentary filmmaking practice and her recent experiences helping children escape the Calais 'Jungle'.

St James Hatcham Building, St James', London SE14 6AD. Runs from Friday 18 November to Sunday 20 November. Free entry, booking advised for opening night - here.

Lewisham Welcomes Refugees

An impressive turn out at the 'Refugees Welcome Here' demonstration in central London yesterday (Park Lane to Downing Street), I would estimate at least 50,000 people - making it possibly the largest pro-migration march ever seen in this country.

Also good to see a 'Lewisham Welcomes Refugees' banner there.

A local contingent met up in New Cross Gate before heading into town to join the demo:

'No human being is illegal' - members of the local New Cross community on route to the solidarity with refugees march

New Cross church collecting for Calais Migrants

St Catherine's Church at the top of Telegraph Hill SE14 is collecting donations for migrants in Calais. Rev. Sheridan James, Vicar, says:

"If you bring things into church on Sunday mornings (either before the service at 10am, or immediately after - 11.15am) we will collect the items up and make sure they get collected and sent to the migrants in Calais. Conditions are very poor in ‘The Jungle’, and whatever our political position on the situation, the people are in urgent need of humanitarian help ...
Reverend Tim Clapton has linked up with a small Catholic voluntary organisation in Kent called ‘Seeking Sanctuary’ who in turn is working alongside a Catholic charity in France. The aim of this organisation is to provide material aid to the migrants in Calais.

Firstly can I say how moved I am by the amount of things which have been delivered to church already - by church members and local community. So can I just re-iterate:
St Catherine's Church is acting as a local collection point for men's jeans, jumpers, training shoes, Bibles, games (scrabble, chess), toiletries.

These will be be taken to Calais early Sept. The resources will be handed out in an organised fashion, by a bona fide charity to EVERYONE in need. Please drop stuff off at church on Sunday 23 or 30th August - either before the service 9.30am...until 10am, or immediately afterwards 11.15-11.45, when there will be people around to recieve your gifts. Please make sure that whatever you donate is clean and usable.

Thank you so much for the response so far. Whatever our politics, whatever our faith perspective #loveyourneighbour is a life rule we all can follow.After Tuesday 18th please refer any questions to Jane Elliott, Assistant Priest at St Catherine's, as I will be on a short sabbatical."

'Working Illegally': Detention Centre film in Deptford

Coming up next month - Thursday, July 23rd,  6:30pm - at Goldsmiths Students Union (Dixon Road SE14), South London Anti-Fascists present a screening of the film Working Illegally that  'exposes the ever increasing phenomenon of coerced labour in detention centres...  Told primarily through detainees' testimonies, based on original research by Corporate Watch, this film offers critical insight into the labour that maintains the UK detention estate, as well as a general introduction to the immigration detention system'

 This will be followed by a discussion with former detainees and related campaigns, with speakers including:

'Aderonke Apata- formerly a detainee at Yarl's Wood and currently fighting for asylum, has despite the abhorrent treatment she has faced, been extremely active in condemning and challenging the politics of deportation. See an interview she did with Novara Media here

Standoff Films- someone from the organisation will introduce the film and join the discussion afterwards. From their website: "Our documentaries seek to uncover unsettling realities by hearing from those most directly affected by the social and political situations we examine."

Movement for Justice by any Means Necessary- MFJ have been at the forefront of recent efforts to challenge the existence of deportation centres, in particular Yarl's Wood. Organising a number of demos at the centre, including one upcoming on the 8th August.

The Anti-Raids Network- The resources that ARN have compiled over the last couple of years, and make readily available on their website, have been invaluable to local communities and activists resisting raids. Also successfully mobilising against various UKBA/Immigration Enforcement initiatives including Operation Centurion'.

Suggested donation £2/£3. More info and Facebook event details here.

Note - this event was previously scheduled to take place at Deptford Cinema, but venue has been changed

Burn the Sea at Deptford Cinema

Tomorrow night at Deptford Cinema - Amakino present Burn the Sea 'an evening of documentaries about migration and the Meditteranean border'. The Cinema is at 39 Deptford Broadway and the films start at 7:30pm.

Very topical - this image was released by Amnesty this week, who say: 'The ongoing negligence by European governments of the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean has contributed to a more than 50-fold increase in migrant and refugee deaths since the beginning of 2015 compared with last year... As many as 400 migrants are feared to have died off the coast of Libya in recent days'

Goldsmiths student facing deportation

Goldsmiths Fine Art post-graduate student Laura O'Dochartaigh is currently facing deportation and is trying to raise funds to pay for legal fees for her fight to stay in the UK - where her son was born. She says:

'Our family and private life have been seriously disturbed by the UK Home Office. They have now extended the removal order to 23 of May, 2014. This ordeal began when we received wrong counsel from our previous solicitor stating it was OK to leave the country while we had a pending appeal. We visited my parents who had not seen their grandchild in months. Upon return I was detained and held at Heathrow Terminal 3 with my breastfed 1 year old. This was the beginning of a arduous and expensive journey through the legal system to try and stop Border Control and to exercise our Human Rights.

Both my husband and son, born in the north of Ireland, have the right to demand our family not be separated. We have started a new case but the Home Office is still refusing to withdraw the deportation order.  We need to raise enough funds to cover the massive legal expenses we have had to incur. Our savings have dwindled and we can no longer afford to continue this battle' (Donate here)

Laura's case is sadly not unusual - a reminder that behind all the political 'tough talk' about immigration are real people being forcibly separated from friends and family.

South London's Migrant Majority

I sometimes feel London is a different country to the rest of the UK, certainly different from the imagined country addressed by politicians and much of the mainstream media. This is particularly the case in relation to immigration, which in this imagined country is continually framed as a problem and a source of anxiety for the 'majority'. But in London, migrants and their descendants are the majority.

Data released this week shows that just over one third (34%) of people living in the borough of Lewisham at the time of the 2011 Census were not born in the UK (in Lambeth and in Southwark the figure was 39%, and 31% in Greenwich).

Many others were the children or grandchildren of migrants. In terms of ethnicity, people defining themselves as White British (or English/Welsh/Scottish/NI) are the largest group in Lewisham (42%). But the majority (58%) are from other ethnic groups,  the most significant groups being Black African, Black Caribbean and White Other (which includes Western and Eastern European, as well as Americans, Australians etc.): 

Ethnicity in Lewisham, 2011 Census

Ethnic groups other than White UK also constitute a majority in Southwark (60%) and Lambeth (61%), as well as making up almost half (48%) of the population of Greenwich. In London as a whole, the figure is 55%. Of course many of the 'White UK' population in London are also migrants to the city from other parts of Britain, and many too are descended from previous waves of migrants from abroad, such as Jewish refugees in the 19th century - London has always been a migrant city.

How can debates around immigration continue to treat the largest part of the capital's population as if they are some kind of social problem? Far from being a problem, migrants and their descendants are at the heart of London and make it a truly World City. This week I have had a Bulgarian colleague fix my computer, listened to an African parent sing the praises of the Polish support worker for her autistic son, and heard how a Brazilian teacher has helped transform a local nursery. In other words, a typical week in London - no problem.

'Integration' doesn't happen because governments command it, but because people mostly get on with each other and mix with each other as they go about their lives in the city. Work is one place where this happens, but some migrants are banned from working, and many others are unemployed. In addition the very social spaces where people from different backgrounds encounter each other - Children's Centres, libraries, youth clubs etc. - are continually threatened by cuts, as are English classes for adult learners. In this sense, the actions of the government are more of a barrier to integration than the behaviours of migrants and their neighbours.

[Incidentally the Census estimates that the population of greater London is 8.2 million - an increase since 2001 but still less than the estimated peak population of 8.6 million in 1939]

More UKBA raids

The UK Borders Agency continues its harrassment of migrant communities in South London.

Last week three people were arrested in a raid on Tiendas del Sur shop at Elephant and Castle (pictured below), an area that is a major centre of Latin American social life in London

Earlier this month a Lewisham restaurant, Everest King Curry on  Loampit Hill, was fined £15,000 following a raid last year which saw the arrest of 3 members of staff from Sri Lanka. Two of them were later deported despite having claimed for asylum. Deportations to Sri Lanka have been widely criticised because of the continuing use of torture and other human rights abuses against the Tamil minority there.

UKBA has a number of Local Immigration Teams carrying out these fishing expeditions. The Bexley, Greenwich, Lambeth and Southwark LIT is based at Becket House, 60-68 St Thomas Street SE1 (near London Bridge Station). The Croydon LIT and the Lewisham & Bromley LIT both operate out of Electric House at 3 Wellesley Road, Croydon.

(See previous report on operations in New Cross and Elephant)

Goldsmiths support for London Met students

Eyebrows were raised last month when Goldsmiths in New Cross advertised for the post of 'UK Borders Agency Compliance Officer'. The duties were set out as follows: 'you will be responsible for ensuring that Goldsmiths maintains its status as a Highly Trusted Sponsor under Tiers 2, 4 and 5 of the United Kingdom Border Agency's Points Based System. Key tasks will include advising academic, professional and administrative staff across the institution on Tier 2 and Tier 4 PBS sponsorship duties, reporting and auditing requirements, and working with senior managers to ensure that appropriate systems and processes are developed and that the day-to-day operational activities at Goldsmiths comply with all relevant aspects of UK Government legislation in relation to international student and staff recruitment'.

The existence of the post highlights the extent to which colleges (and indeed employers) are now expected to act as an arm of the Government's immigration authorities, carrying out checks on students and workers that were previously the responsibility of immigration officers. The consequences of being judged as not implementing policies properly have been spelt out at London Metropolitan University in the last week, with its 'Trusted Sponsor' status withdrawn, and thousands of international students there being told they can't complete courses.

Des Freedman of Goldsmiths lecturers' union UCU has criticised the action:

'The UK Border Agency’s decision to revoke the licence of London Metropolitan University to recruit and teach international students marks the latest stage of the government’s assault on higher education. Some 2,700 students from non-EEA countries now face deportation for the crime of having chosen to study at a popular and multicultural institution, widely respected for its widening participation profile. This applies both to those on their way to London to start their degrees as well as those in their final year of study, perhaps only a dissertation away from a degree.

The UKBA claims that it has identified ‘serious and systemic failings’ concerning the University’s monitoring of language qualifications, immigration status and attendance and that, despite several warnings, London Met has failed to deal adequately with the problems. Yet, from what we can gather, the numbers involved are tiny and involve only a very small minority of international students. If there are serious problems with checks, why should thousands of innocent students be penalised for the failure of the institution fully to carry out its responsibilities? (read full article here).

http://handsoffourclassmates.tumblr.com/

Goldsmiths UCU and National Union of Students have issued a joint statement: 'Goldsmiths Students Union and Goldsmiths UCU send their solidarity to all staff and students at London Metropolitan University affected by the UKBA’s recent decision to revoke the University’s licence to recruit and teach international students. This is not simply a question of systems and procedures but a political attack on the right of international students to study in the UK and is based on fundamentally discriminatory legislation which collectively treats students from outside the EEA as suspicious and ‘bogus’. The UKBA’s decision is completely disproportionate and will penalise thousands of students who entered the UK in good faith and with a genuine desire to study. We call on the Home Office to issue an immediate amnesty to existing students at London Metropolitan that will safeguard the futures of those promised an education in the UK. We further pledge our support to campaigns organised by students and staff at London Met to challenge the UKBA’s actions'.

You can sign the petition calling for an amnesty here:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/amnesty-for-international-students-at-london-metropolit.html

An 'Amnesty for London Met Students' protest has been called for this Wednesday, 1 pm at the Home Office, Marsham Street, SW1P

New Cross welcomes Cameroon Boxers

New Cross has still got that internationalist Olympics spirit, as reported in today's South London Press. According to tonight's Standard (sourcing their story from SLP without credit I assume)::

'Five boxers from Cameroon who went missing three weeks ago from the Olympic village have reappeared in a south London gym.The five fled amid suggestions — denied by the Cameroon authorities — that they had been threatened after losing their bouts. Another theory was that they planned to claim asylum when their visas expire in November.

This week they turned up to train at the Double Jab Boxing Club in New Cross and said they were living in Lewisham. Jim Addis, assistant coach at the club, said: “We understand they will be applying to stay in the UK.”'

An Italian Harpist in Deptford (1870s)

'Street Life in London' was written by Adolphe Smith with photographs by John Thomson. Originally issued as a magazine in 1877-78, it was then published in book form, and features some of the earliest documentary photography of  Victorian street life.  You can now view the whole book courtesy of LSE Digital Archives, and it is remarkable seeing what people actually looked like as opposed to what we are used to imagining as Victorian dress from countless films and TV dramas. 

There are several photographs from Clapham Common (Thomson was living in Brixton at the time), and from Lambeth. The one below features a young Italian harpist from Deptford, though it is not clear where the picture was actually taken.

Smith writes: 'Other children come over to England to join their families, or the more enterprising members of their families, who have found out how to make money in our midst. The Italian harper, whose photograph accompanies this chapter, belongs to the latter class. His parents have long been established in England, and have a regular home at Deptford. From this centre various members of the family radiate in different directions, frequenting the sea-side in summer, and the cities and large towns in winter. One of the daughters plays the fiddle admirably, and the young son is equally skilful with the harp. He has only been in England about two years, and can already speak English fluently. He is described throughout the neighbourhood, where he is known to every one, as a charming boy, whose amiable disposition, modest bearing, and musical talents ensure him success wherever he may present himself. It would be absurd to treat this youth in the light of a mendicant. His clothes are ample, neat, and clean, his purse well-filled, for his earnings almost equal those of a skilled artisan, though he is but a boy, and he has far more right to public support and sympathy, in exchange for the good and simple melodies he brings to the doors of the poor, than, for instance, the great majority of singers who lower the taste and degrade the morals of the audiences at our Music Halls'.

Adolphe Smith, sometimes known as Adolphe Smith Headingley, was a socialist journalist who took part in the 1871 Paris Commune. As discussed here before he later earned the displeasure of Jim Connell, who wrote The Red Flag in New Cross Road, for changing the tune his song was sung to.

Immigration Fishing Expeditions

Last week in New Cross Road, there was a combined police and Borders Agency operation. A witness from South London Solfed describes: 

'On my way to work this morning I found the bus stops around New Cross bus garage swarming with police and UKBA immigration officers. I saw a man being questioned by immigration officials and surrounded by several police under the bus shelter... a bus stopped and people started piling out. I spotted a plain clothes officer (see hoody in pic) eyeing someone up and start moving so I shouted at him. I asked if he’d seen someone he didn’t like the look of and made everyone aware that he was an immigration officer (probably police in hindsight)... The most interesting part of our discussion was when I asked him on what basis he was stopping people. He told me that they were stopping men from African countries such as Ghana as there is a “big problem with them around here”. 

'According to UKBA enforcement guidance and instructions Chapter 31.19 pg 21. “an Immigration Officer (IO)may not stop an individual based upon their racial appearance and race or colour can never be the basis of the IOs “reasonable suspicion” that someone has committed an immigration offence”... So the hooded man was probably police, picking up people based on race to hand over to the Immigration Officers with clipboards. This is known as a Crime Reduction Operation (aka a CROP) and seems, unfortunately, to be legal'. 

I have seen similar operations in New Cross before, as well as in Peckham and at the Elephant and Castle. They are essentially fishing expeditions which rather than responding to crime are focusing on people going about their daily business. People who left their kids at school and set off to work can find themselves suddenly detained because they don't have the correct documents. Of course they are self-justifying in that if you trawl through a group of people you are bound to be able to find some minor ticket offences, drug possession and immigration paper irregularities so that a press release can trumpet that 'X arrests were made', but these do nothing to address the real problems of burglary, rape, robbery and other violent crime that most people would view as priorities.


Another fishing expedition was carried out at the Coronet at Elephant on February 25th, when Latin American people waiting to see Puerto Rican singer Don Omar were targeted. According to a report in community newspaper The Prisma 'a short while before the concert room’s doors opened people were already queuing to go in. Suddenly, they saw how the police began to arrive and walk along the queue line, and all of a sudden they started to ask for ID... they started to separate those who did not have ID and put them into vans'. Around 90 people were detained, and an unknown number were deported (further discussion of this at People's Republic of Southwark). Since when have people in the UK had to carry proof of ID?

There is clearly at the very least an element of racial profiling which determines where these operations take place and who gets viewed as 'suspicious'. No doubt rounding up Australians going to a rugby match would find a fair few overstaying on their visas, but I can't really imagine it happening.

Immigration raids in South London

Catford Central picked up late last year on the story of the immigration raid on McDonald's in Catford. In November, the UK Border Agency raided the place and 'After checking the immigration status of staff, officers found that three people were working illegally – a woman from Cameroon and a man and woman from Turkey. The Cameroonian woman and the Turkish man have been detained pending their removal. The Turkish woman has been released on immigration bail and must report regularly to the agency while steps are taken to remove her from the UK'.

There was the usual triumphalist press release from the UKBA - 'Simon Shutte, who heads up the UK Border Agency’s Lewisham and Bromley local immigration team, said:
"Any employer who takes on a foreign national without permission to work in the UK is undermining law-abiding businesses and faces a big fine. This successful operation shows that our officers will find immigration offenders wherever they are in the Lewisham and Bromley area"'.

I don't see how anyone can take such pleasure in rounding up people just trying to make a living. Behind the rhetoric about fighting crime is the reality of people going out to work in the morning, leaving behind friends and loved ones, and then ending the day in a detention centre or on a forced flight out of the country. The fact that McDonalds was involved in this case just highlights another contradiction of the age of globalisation - capital can go where it likes, but labour can't. Or as the asylum-seeker narrator puts it in Chris Cleave's fine novel 'The Other Hand': 'Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl... A pound is free to travel to safety and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalisation. A girl likes me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi'.

Another series of raids have occurred recently at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in South London. Campaigners have issued the following statement:

'Where are the St Thomas’ disappeared? Where are our workmates?

Last month 72 workers disappeared from Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. They were part of the hospitals’ ancillary staff. They are migrants. Where did they disappear to? The economic crisis means their cheap labour is not as useful anymore – at least for the moment. So the UK Border Agency was called in to get rid of them. The NHS trust complied. The workers were either arrested or deported.

The workers who clean the hospital and feed the patients earn around the minimum wage. And due to the UKBA the workers are not even always paid for their hard work. Isn’t this slavery?

As hospital users, workers, trade unionists, migrants’ rights activists we cannot stay silent in the face of this brutality. Exactly when cuts and privatisation are threatening our public health service the exploitation of migrant labour increases. This is an attack on all workers.

We call for solidarity with the disappeared, with all migrants, with all workers, on Friday 18th February 5pm to 7pm outside St Thomas main entrance (Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7EH). Called by the Cleaners Defence Committee, No One Is Illegal, Hands off my Workmate, Latin American Workers’ Association.

E-mail cdclondon@gmail.com or call 07971719797 for details'.

Three of those arrested were jailed for obtaining money by fraud on the day after the raids took place in January 2011 - it's hardly fraud/theft to work and get paid for it. And what kind of legal representation did they have in this show trial - arrested one day, jailed the next?

Immigration raids in South London

Oops posted this twice in error - post is here

Goldsmiths Students Not Suspects

Students and staff at Goldsmiths in New Cross have been mounting a vigorous campaign against the new 'points based' system for immigration.

They say that the 'rules represent a serious threat to campus democracy and freedom of speech. They require non-EU students and staff to have biometric ID cards, involve demands on the financial background of applicants and mean that staff are obliged to report students to the UK Border Agency when they have not attended regularly'.

The Students not Suspects campaign has highlighted a number of cases where this bureaucratic nightmare has resulted in serious disruption to students' lives. The campaing has held a number of big meetings at the college and has produced some snazzy t-shirts for both students and staff. The staff version, below, states 'we are not border agents' - since the rules do in effect ask college staff to become an extension of the border police.

The latest initiative is a petition to Pat Loughrey, the new Warden of Goldsmiths, calling on the college managment to support the campaign:

'I am writing to express my grave concerns with the implementation of the UK Border Agency's (UKBA) Points Based System of Immigration (PBSI) at Goldsmiths. By imposing the UKBA's agenda of national security and border control on universities, PBSI has effectively turned students into suspects and staff into border agents. These xenophobic and reactionary tendencies run counter to the openness and free exchange of ideas necessary for research, teaching, and learning to occur.

Furthermore, the UKBA has transferred the financial and administrative burden of PBSI, which is considerable, onto individual staff and students, resulting in elevated workloads and stress. By increasing the cost and complexity of the visa application process, the UKBA has rendered universities less accessible and less welcoming to non-EU nationals, thus potentially damaging the reputation of higher education in the UK. The result will be less cultural and social diversity in higher education, to the detriment of Goldsmiths and the sector overall'.

You can read the full petition here - signatures are being collected until May 25th.

Given that this is an area with a high migrant population, it would be good too to link with non-students in the area who are also at the receiving end of Border Agency attention. For instance, in October 2009, the Bromley and Lewisham local immigration team raided homes across the area, detaining a Bolivian man in New Cross Road, two Turkish men in Pomeroy Street, a Nigerain woman in Catford and a Brazilian man in Forest Hill (Border Agency press release, 29 Oct. 2009; see also this raid in February 2009).

The Border Agency are sometimes to be seen out on force on New Cross Road, mounting joint operations with the Transport Police. The deal seems to be that if someone is caught with the wrong ticket or not enough money on their Oyster card they can then be questioned by the Border Agency and ultimately detained. A similar proposal in Arizona has quite rightly been criticised as outrageous, but nobody much seems to notice that it is already happening here. Perhaps next time this happens in New Cross, students and others should demonstrate against it.

General election in Lewisham - racism rears its head

Not planning to spend too much time on the election at Transpontine, and certainly steering clear of party politics. However, I cannot let some of the disgraceful comments attributed to candidates in the Lewisham Deptford consituency pass without comment. In a feature on immigration at BBC News (19 April), the parliamentary candidates of all the three major parties come out pretty badly. Of course they may have been misquoted - in which case let's hear them back pedal pretty quickly.

Worst of all was... can you guess? They 'said areas like Lewisham could not sustain high rises of immigration because standards in services like schools, housing and hospitals had fallen "well below par". She added: "In the past 13 years, Labour has operated an open door policy on immigration, with the UK seeing the largest sustained rise in our history. I'm still surprised every time I knock on someone's door and find that despite living here most of their life, they can hardly speak English." '

No this wasn't the BNP candidate, but Gemma Townsend who is standing for the Tories. The comment about people's language is nonsense - how does she know how long they have been living here, if they can't speak English? Maybe I am underestimating her, perhaps she is polylingual and is able to converse with them in Bengali, Somali, Spanish and Polish about their personal histories. The comment about the open door policy is also nonsense, unfortunately. Try telling that to people locked up in detention centres or dragged on to planes for deportation. But the suggestion that there is some link between migration and falling standards in public services is plain racist in so far as it seeks to blame migrants for totally unconnected social problems. Whether standards have actually fallen is a moot point, but in what way could migrants be held responsible for failings in health care? In London, the health and social care system is largely dependent upon migrant labour - far from damaging it, migrants are keeping it going. As for education, are migrants really dragging down standards? In many schools migrant children do at least as well as their English-born counterparts.

As for housing.... well, over to the Liberal Democrat candidate, Tamora Langley: 'People are frustrated by seeing immigrants placed in council housing when they, or their children, have been on the waiting list for years. Particularly in Lewisham Deptford, where the Labour-run council has lost money that should have been ours to spend on upgrading social housing, people feel let down, and some wonder if immigrants are getting a better deal'. Of course there is a shortage of social housing, partly because of the 1980s Tory policy of selling off council homes and partly because Labour then placed a moratorium on building new council housing. But to talk of immigrants jumping housing queues is again pandering to racism. It a BNP-fostered myth- a study last year by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that migrants are actually under-represented in social housing - only 1.8% of social tenants are immigrants who have moved to the UK in the past five years. Of course many of the British-born people who live in social housing are black, which is actually the subtext of a lot of complaint about 'foreigners taking our housing' - racism from people who think that only white people really 'belong here'.

What of the Labour candidate? Joan Ruddock avoids saying anything negative and talks about her constituency work helping community groups 'access grants and establish self help groups '. This may be true, but tiptoes around actually saying anything about policy. I sometimes wonder how someone like Ruddock sleeps at night knowing, for instance, that her party's immigration policies are leaving children locked up in prisons, sorry detention centres.

Green Party candidate Darren Johnson does say "I support an amnesty for migrants who have been here for a number of years". In the context of national politics this seems almost unthinkably radical, but is actually the Strangers into Citizens position that is supported by Boris Johnson as well as the previous Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Lots of migrant organisations are supporting this call, though others have wondered whether this could be used as an excuse to be even more intolerant of those who don't fit the criteria for an 'amnesty' - is it 'regularisation for all' or only a minority? This is the real debate about immigration that we need to have - how do we best recognise the reality and humanity of the hundreds of thousands of people living, working, loving and having kids in London regardless of what papers they hold? Everyone knows, including the Borders Agency, that most of these people are here to stay.

One of the rarely commented on positive results of mass migration is that it undermines the electoral success of explicitly racist politics. It may be true that in some areas the perception of an influx of migrants can be manipulated to create a racist backlash - as the BNP have done to a certain extent in Barking and Dagenham. But the bottom line is that once migrants and their descendants reach a critical mass beyond a small scapegoated minority, it is very difficult for openly racist candidates to get elected. Apart from anything else only a tiny number of immigrants and 'non-white' people are likely to vote for explicitly racist candidates which means that the latter could only be elected if a very high proportion of 'white British' voters support them. In the 2001 census, one third of Lewisham residents were defined as 'non white'. In Lewisham Deptford today the proportion is probaby higher - suggesting that playing to the racist gallery in elections round here is flirting with political suicide. Time will soon tell.

(Update - shortly after posting this, Lib Dem candidate Tam Langley commented at this post that it is not her view that immigrants are jumping the housing queue - in the BBC story she was reporting the perceptions of some voters, not her own perspective. It is true that her statement on immigration on her blog is much more positive. Taken on their own, TL's comments in the BBC article appear to acknowledge but not challenge the perception that 'immigrants jump the housing queue'. Of course the BBC journalist put their particular slant on the story, and may have left out other comments that make this clearer).

Stop the BNP at Lunar House in Croydon

Following the earlier post about fighting fascists in Peckham in the Thirties comes news of a contemporary echo. This from South London Anti Fascist Group Organising Team today:

'We have just found out that the BNP will be holding an anti immigration protest outside the Home Office, Lunar House, Croydon – THIS THURSDAY [15th April]. Lunar House management allowed the BNP to protest last year, however, this year they have bowed to anti fascist and union pressure and said that this year they can not demonstrate. However, it is now the police that are refusing to stop the event going ahead as they say that Lunar house is public property.

The protest will be on the afternoon of Thursday 15th at 2pm at the front of Lunar house - at a time when many families will be waiting to speak with staff in the Home office. This is of course unacceptable and the South London Anti Fascist Group will be supporting PCS comrades in the counter demo. Please join us from 2pm at Lunar House'

Lunar House is tough enough for migrants queueing up to make their way through the Borders Agency lottery without the added hassle of a demo by racists, so get along if you can.

Occupations and borders

Wednesday night (27th May) sees South East London radicals spoilt for choice. At Goldsmiths College, Lewisham Way SE14 (Room RHB308, Main building, 2nd floor, follow signs), Autonomy and Solidarity are hosting a discussion on occupations. They say:

'2009 - the year of the recession - is also the year of the OCCUPATION. From workers in a Ford factory in Enfield demanding their redundancy pay, to parents in a primary school in Glasgow demanding it stays open, to university students just about everywhere (even Goldsmiths) demanding greater access to education, everywhere it is being demonstrated as a viable tactic.
Whats the potential of OCCUPATION as a tactic for getting what we want? Come find out - open to all students and non students. Speakers from the OCCUPATIONS at: LEWISHAM BRIDGE PRIMARY SCHOOL (SE13), CHARLOTTE TURNER PRIMARY SCHOOL (SE8), LONDON METROPOLITAN UNI (E1), FORD VISTEON CAR FACTORY (EN3). 6:30 pm start.

On the same night at Pullens Centre, 184 Crampton Street, Elephant & Castle, SE17 3AE, London No Borders presents a talk from an activist from No More Deaths (nomoredeaths.org), which gives humanitarian aid to migrants on the US/Mexican border. Plus showing of the 2006 film "Crossing Arizona". 7 pm start.

Strangers into Citizens

On bank holiday Monday (May 4th), Strangers into Citizens are holding a big Justice for Migrants' rally in Trafalgar Square (Asian Dub Foundation will be playing at the rally). SiC is campaigning for a 'one-off regularisation' (or 'amnesty') for long-term migrants.

A South London feeder march, organised by Latin American community organisations, will be leaving from the Fusion Centre in Elephant & Castle from 10am.