The right to work for asylum seekers

Argus title : Let asylum seekers work

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has been in Brighton this week. Most of its deliberations have focussed upon ways of defending workers’ rights, wages and conditions in the face of recession – and on influencing the Brown government to change direction.

However, the TUC has never confined its interest solely to UK workers’ rights. It is also concerned about the rights of those who are unable to work – and is committed to international solidarity with trade unionists abroad.

The trade unions’ record in this regard has not always been heroic. At times, in the past, they seemed less concerned about workers’ rights than about protecting the limited work-place privileges of white male workers against the incursions of women and immigrants. However, those days are long gone. The TUC is at its best when it flexes its muscle to defend those who are unable to protect themselves from injustice. It has done so this week.

On Wednesday, at a meeting in Brighton’s Friends’ Meeting House, Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC joined with individual leaders of many of the UK’s major trade unions to support the Refugee Council’s national campaign to allow asylum seekers in the UK to work.

Currently, the vast majority of asylum seekers are forbidden to work – despite the fact that many have no immediate prospect of returning home. Those whose applications for asylum are still in progress are forced to live on benefits which are set at just 70% of the level of Income Support. Those who have been refused it, receive nothing even though in many cases the government accepts their countries are too dangerous for them to return. Individuals are left in a state of limbo, with no recourse to benefits or services provided through public funds.

At Wednesday’s meeting – which was jointly organised by the Refugee Council and Brighton Voices in Exile – trade unionists pledged themselves and their unions to campaign against this injustice.

A spokesperson from the Refugee Council said: “These are people who fled persecution in their own countries looking for a place of safety….they want to work, support themselves and their families, pay taxes, and contribute to the economy. But they are being denied these opportunities. Instead they are forced to live on handouts…or are denied support altogether and end up destitute. It is unhumane to treat people in this way and it makes no economic sense.”

Helen Connor, of the Educational Institute of Scotland, said: “The right to work is a fundamental right – one the trade unions have founght for through the centuries throughout the world.”

She criticised the myths that fuel media attacks, saying: “Asylum seekers are often referred to as economic migrants or illegal immigrants, which is very misleading to say the least. They have not come to the UK for economic reasons, neither are they here illegally. They have been driven from their homelands by persecution, conflict and human rights abuses They are exercising a legal right in making a claim for asylum – a human right we all share.”

The Refugee Council stresses that the majority of asylum seekers have skills and a high level of education. Some have been employed as journalists and civil servants in their home countries. Many are qualified nurses, teachers and academics. There are, for example, 1,500 refugee teachers in England – and 1,100 medically qualified refugees on the British Medical Association database. The Refugee Council points out that while it costs £250,000 to train a new doctor, it takes a mere £10,000 to prepare a qualified doctor from abroad to practise in the UK.

Donna Covey, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council said:

“We know asylum seekers want to work. Many are highly qualified and had good jobs in their home countries, and are desperate to contribute to the country that has taken them in. It is an outrage that they are left to rely on handouts from the state when they have so much to offer this country.”

Tendai is an example of this. She is Zimbabwean asylum seeker who lives in Brighton with her 2 children. She told the meeting:

“I worked as a Chief Cash Controller for a company in Zimbabwe until I began to have problems because of my political opinions. This forced me to flee leaving my one year old son. I arrived in 2001 to seek asylum and it has not been what I expected. I am able and happy to work and contribute to the British economy but I am not allowed, and I am being forced to live on handouts.”

She added:

“I do really appreciate the protection given to me by this country, which of course my country failed to give me. But what was taken from me is my right to work…Because of this my confidence is taken away, I am deskilled and it has an effect on my children and family life”.

She explained movingly that though she wishes to marry, she is prevented from doing so by government regulations.

The meeting heard that many refugees have become refugees because of their trade union activities. Luka Phiri, also a Zimbabwean, is a skilled toolmaker in his home country, trusted and relied upon by his employer. He told the meeting that the proudest achievement of his career was to design and build a die-casting smelting furnace. He said: “The furnace worked perfectly and the company had to make three more furnaces to sell to other companies. My ambition was simply to accomplish something as a family man and share my valuable knowledge and special skills with young people training to be engineers and toolmakers.”

Robert Mugabe’s government put paid to that dream. Luka was a trade unionist and became regional secretary of the Engineering Trade Union of Zimbabwe. In 2003, as the country began to slide towards anarchy, he was forced to leave because of his opposition to the government.

He said: “When I came to this country I thought it would be easy for me to integrate, since I come from a Commonwealth country. But my asylum case has not been an easy road. My case has been refused and I do not know what the future holds for me in the UK.

“The Home Office has said I cannot work. That deprives me of a lot of things as a human being – especially my dignity. But this policy has meant that the great skills I brought with me to this country have become rusty over the past 5 and a half years. Not only is this a tragedy for me, and wasted potential for the UK economy – it is a disaster for my country.”

He ended poignantly: “When it is safe, I would like to return to Zimbabwe to help rebuild my great nation and recover my shattered dreams and ambitions. How can I do that if I have lost my skills and work experience?”

Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, was evidently much moved by what he had heard and pledged his full support. He said:

“Forcing often highly skilled, highly trained individuals to sit idle for considerable periods of time is not only a personal tragedy for them but is also a huge loss to the UK economy, which is missing out on their many talents. The Government must think again and change the rules so that asylum seekers are allowed to work….”

The TUC and Refugee Council will now be working together to persuade the government to reinstate the right to work. Given the passion and deep commitment expressed at the meeting, it is hard to imagine they will fail.

Anyone wishing to help the campaign should contact the Refugee Council on 0207 3466700 or visit the website at www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/letthemwork. Trade unionists can email Wilf Sullivan, TUC Race Equality Officer at wsullivan@tuc.org.uk. Brighton Voices in Exile can be contacted on 01273-328598.

Human Rights in Britain and the London Olympics

Argus title : Cool Britannia? Not with our rights record

I’ve enjoyed watching the Olympics. I still don’t think the Olympic authorities should have approved games in China, because of human rights abuses there, but I must confess to real excitement and a sneaky surge of nationalistic pride when our athletes achieved medals.

I’ll look forward to the London Games in 2012. It’ll be interesting to see what the British organizers make of the challenge. In Beijing the contrast between the closing ceremony of the Chinese and the British acceptance slot was fascinating. As was the case in their opening ceremony, the Chinese chose to make reference to symbols of their ancient culture – and there was no particular emphasis on the city of Beijing.

The British, on the other hand, made no reference to our history and focused not on the country as a whole, but on contemporary London – choosing a London Bus; queuing in the rain; rock music; and football as centre-pieces of the presentation. My husband lifted his head from his newspaper just long enough to comment “So they didn’t show 50 young people being stabbed then?”.

The organizers had obviously made a decision to market London as “cool”, yet the presentation seemed oddly dated. I was reminded of old films of the sixties featuring what was then called “swinging London”. I kept expecting to see shots of Carnaby Street and Mary Quant and to hear Roger Miller’s 1966 pop song “England swings like a pendulum do/Bobbies on bicycles two by two”.

There were no bobbies on bicycles in this display. I guess the UK organisers couldn’t take the risk. In the past, people of other nations may well have had an image of unarmed, helpful British bobbies in big boots and strange hats helping old ladies across the road. However, nowadays they’re more likely to have in mind poor innocent Jean Charles De Menezes shot repeatedly at close range by a police officer while lying pinioned in the London Underground.

Our politicians and the media have been forthright in condemning human rights abuses in China and rightly so. However, I don’t believe our leaders and opinion makers are at all prepared for the international scrutiny of Britain’s social welfare and human rights record which will almost certainly accompany our preparations for the London Games.

British authorities are no keener than the Chinese to see their dirty linen washed in public. A “Visit London” video which was screened in Beijing caused outrage within government and opposition alike, because it contained a brief glimpse of Marcus Harvey’s portrait of Myra Hindley, made from multiple copies of children’s handprints. It was immediately withdrawn. Yet child abuse in Britain is hardly a rarity.
Just this week Detective Chief Inspector Nick Stevens, head of the Metropolitan Police’s paedophile unit, said: ‘There are huge numbers of paedophiles online, surfing the net and looking for child abuse images, at any one time. The problem is far, far larger than anyone is aware of. Ten years ago the Metropolitan Police seized perhaps a few thousand images a year. Now you’re talking millions.”
Vicky Gillings of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), which operates nation-wide to prevent abuse, warned of growing evidence that paedophiles are concentrating on ‘pre-verbal’ victims, who are attractive because they are unable to report abuse or describe their abuser.
Jim Warnock, head of operations at the CEOP, estimated that as many as one in six children – 1.9 million – might be victims of abuse.
Our leaders tell us that violence in Britain is decreasing – yet what we see in London is a carnage of young people, killed by gun and knife crime. We know that at least one child a week dies at the hands of a parent or step parent. And within the last few days we have learned that in some impoverished parts of Britain a baby born now will have a life expectancy of only 53 years, while those living in more affluent areas of the same city can expect to live well into their eighties.
End Child Poverty (ECP), a network of children’s charities and other groups, has condemned the gap between rich and poor, calling it a “huge injustice”. Its recent report “Health Consequences of Poverty for Children” was based on an analysis of government data. It found that children from poor families are at 10 times the risk of sudden infant death as children from better-off homes. ECP also revealed that babies from disadvantaged families are more likely to be born underweight, that poorer children are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer chronic illness when very young and are twice as likely to have cerebral palsy.
Nick Spencer, who is Professor of Child Health at the University of Warwick and one of the report’s authors, told the Observer newspaper this week: “Poverty is now one of the greatest dangers faced by our children” adding “If poverty were an infection, we would be in the midst of a full-scale epidemic.’
This bleak portrait of British society is confirmed by another recent report in the Observer, this time about a collaboration between fashion magazine Vogue and Kids Company, a south London charity set up to assist children and young people in difficulty.
Journalist Stephanie Merritt wrote of the children: “The majority of the young people who knock on the door…… asking for help do not have a functioning adult at home. Many of the parents are rendered incapable by drugs, some are abusing the children or permitting them to be abused in return for money or drugs. Some of the children appear in states of severe malnutrition and steal because they are starving. Most are not registered with doctors or dentists.”
Camila Batmanghelidjh, one of the founder of Kids Company, told Stephanie Merritt that in her opinion 500,000 young people ought to be on the Child Protection Register, adding grimly that “there is only capacity for 30,700”.
Batmanghelidjh said “We allow ourselves to describe children who present disturbed behaviour as “young offenders”, then we can say: “They made a poor moral choice.” But if your brain chemistry is adapted for violence because of neglect or abuse, you don’t have much of a choice. By labelling them criminals, we say the flawed morality is the child’s and the rest of us get away with not facing our flawed morality in failing to help them. In my experience of working with these children for 11 years, none of them wants to be a criminal.”

It is hardly surprising that, according to UN research, our children are some of the unhappiest in the developed world.

The news of recent days has repeatedly emphasized the connection between financial investment and good results in the Olympics. It’s now acknowledged that it is long term, stable central funding from the Lottery that has made the difference. This provides a valuable lesson from which politicians should learn.

If the government invested properly in welfare, educational and health services and child protection systems with a view to eradicating inequalities and abuse, we could have a very different society, one in which children could be both safe and happy.

We can only hope that in the run up to the Olympics, the scrutiny of the world may help concentrate the minds of our politicians to better support and protect our young people. However, I am not confident.

I keep thinking about the rich pickings to be made from sportspeople and visitors who will flood the capital before and during the 2012 Games – and the market they will create, not least for sex and recreational drugs. I’m sure every major pimp and drug dealer in London is already making plans.

It’s to be hoped that London’s police and politicians have a genuine commitment to disrupt them.

Queuing

Argus title : It is amazing that the nation that first organised a revolution, created Parliament and even executed its king should be prepared to stomach so much from its political masters

I was queuing in the old Co-op post office in London Road this week. It’s come to be something of a habit.

This time it took approximately 40 minutes to reach the counter and send off my parcel. I had moved two thirds of the way up a queue of about 20 – 25 people before I realised that I hadn’t taped my parcel properly. I could have cried. Fortunately, the kindly woman behind the counter took pity on me and taped it herself.

Sometimes the people in the post office queue are pretty morose. It’s hardly surprising. It’s incredibly hot in there and sometimes the sewers smell. However, on this particular day the air, though tropical, was relatively fresh and the people queuing with me were chatty.

I met former Mayor Bob Cristofoli there and a young woman who told newcomers to the queue as they arrived “I’ve been here a week”. The funny thing to watch was the nanosecond of utter confusion within which they half believed her.

Bob railed against the closure of the post offices and I agreed with every word he said. It’s hard for me to believe that a Labour Government is overseeing the destruction of the post office system.

The effect on businesses must be destructive. Most of the people in the queue seemed to be carrying parcels. I was posting back something I’d bought from a catalogue that wasn’t suitable. It was delivered efficiently by a courier firm, however I know that I won’t buy by mail order again. I’m simply not prepared to risk the inconvenience and waste of time of returning something by post.

Gazing idly around, I saw several people who had obviously nipped out from work approach the post office counter, look at the queue in mute frustration and leave again. A number of people said they used to use the small post office above Preston Circus, which is now closed. Someone commented that the Trafalgar Street post office has now also shut.

A woman using crutches reached the end of the queue with difficulty then asked the woman behind me if she’d keep her place while she sat down in the small waiting area. The woman behind me agreed to shout down the length of the queue when it came to her turn.

The disabled woman was full of fire – and deeply angry about privatisation. She said she couldn’t believe the way things are going in the Post Office and added that she was appalled at creeping privatisation of GP surgeries. She said “I watched a documentary the other day. They say that even the surgeries need to operate like businesses. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous”.

She wasn’t the only disabled person in the queue. Several older people arrived and looked at the length of the queue with mute despair. Some left, but others quietly joined us. They didn’t sit down. There was only one chair left and anyway they probably didn’t have the nerve to ask someone to yell for them. Or maybe they thought they’d be forgotten, or pushed out of the way, as elderly people so often are. So they just stood there, in the heat.

The elderly man in front of me growled: “The country’s going to the dogs” then smiled at me. I said I couldn’t believe what had happened to the postal service and he agreed. He said “I’m in my seventies now, but when I was a boy I thought the twenty first century was going to be very different. I thought technology would have moved on.”

He laughed “When I was nine I thought we’d all be so mobile. Cars would have been abolished and we’d move around on hovercraft. That’s what we thought in those days. And here we are still queuing. We seem to be going backwards”. As an afterthought, he added “There’s two things the English do really well…moaning and queuing.” I said I was surprised people didn’t riot.

I stood in that queue and thought about the so-called “John Lewis list”, by means of which which M.P.s are able to furnish state-funded second homes from John Lewis’ store at tax payers’ expense – not just with essentials, but with luxurious fripperies. I thought about pensioners scrimping and saving on tiny pensions and a benefits system which allows sick, disabled and homeless people to buy only the most limited household equipment. I wondered why we put up with it.

Endurance is one of the greatest strengths of the English, but also, it seems to me, one of their greatest weaknesses. It is amazing to me that the nation that first organised a revolution, created parliament and even executed its king – well before the French did it – should be prepared to stomach so much from its political masters.

The electorate may give this particular government a bloody nose at the next general election, but the next government, if Conservative, will be as bad. After all, it was the Conservatives who privatised the post office and other public utilities, sold off our common heritage and successfully demonised all nationalised industries.

By the time they lost power in 1997, the Tories were distrusted and deeply unpopular. Labour had the opportunity to counter the Thatcherite myth that the private sector is always good and the public sector always bad, but failed to do so.

There were times at which Labour could have taken some privatised industries back into public ownership – as the New Zealand government has just done – and have received public support for doing so, but it ran scared of big business and the media. It could at the very least have improved things by properly controlling and regulating the privatised industries, but it didn’t have the courage or the principle to do even that. We live with the results.

The Tories will do no better. “Compassionate conservatism” will go out of the window when they hear the siren voice of private profit or the barked orders of Rupert Murdoch.

And where does that leave us, the poor foot soldiers standing in queues up and down the country? What can we do? Maybe there are lessons to learn from another great British tradition – that of civil protest. Perhaps it is not too late to learn from early trade unionists, the suffragettes and the civil rights campaigners – and nearer to home perhaps even from the noisy protesters at the EDO factory in Brighton.

It’s very difficult to know what anyone can do regarding the post office. The public has submitted huge petitions, written thousands of letters of protest to Post Office chiefs, M.P.s and government ministers and held many demonstrations, but all have been comprehensively ignored.

We can’t criticise the post masters and mistresses, because they’ve been the backbone of the campaign to save the post offices. We can’t berate the post office workers because they’re understaffed and overworked. We can’t set fire to post boxes – as the suffragettes occasionally did – because we’ll lose our own mail. We can’t confront Post Office bosses because they’re never in sight.

I suppose we could organise a series of one-day boycotts of the Post Office. Or occupy our M.P.s surgeries or gardens (especially if they voted the wrong way in Parliament). Or chain ourselves to the post office counters.

In the old days people like the suffragettes would indeed have chained themselves to post office counters or post boxes – or lobbed bricks through the windows of government ministers’ offices. Alternatively, had they lived today, they might have sent unsigned protest letters to the authorities who had ignored their previous submissions – assuming they’d take more notice if they received them in unstamped envelopes or parcels for which they subsequently had to pay.

I don’t believe that would be illegal, but in any event I couldn’t possibly recommend it.

Nowadays, we’re all far too well behaved.