Yarls Wood and Labour’s soul
Neil from Bleeding Heart Show, who is on cracking form at the moment, has a great piece headlining at Liberal Conspiracy today about Yarls Wood (also at his place).
Rather than simply go on about the abuse that’s been going on there under Serco’s management, he sets out a measured challenge to Labour bloggers, and by extension the Labour grass-roots, about what can be done.
In the light of John McDonnell’s EDM on the hunger-strike, I hope this will be a campaign that will grow quickly and virally. That’s what this post is about – simply adding a voice to what I hope will soon be a multitude of voices from across the blogosphere then beyond.
Below, I simply copy over my comment to Neil’s piece, as I think it stands up ok, though I’d want to stress also that a Labour commitment, pre-election, to the closure of Yarls Wood, would draw in alienated voters – Labour finally doing the rig ht thing. Those who will be further alienated by Labour ‘going soft on immigration’ are not our voters anyway.
Let’s have the debate about basic humanity and children’s rights vs ‘firm’ immigration policy. It’s one Labour can win.
My comment to Neil’s piece:
I am a Labour blogger (at Though Cowards Flinch and Bickerstaffe Record) and can probably be described as pretty ‘loyal’ though not entirely uncritical. I am also Trustee to a charity that seek to mitigate as best it can some of the damage caused by Yarls Wood (and other detention centres).
Yarlswood is a disgrace, and a huge blot on the reputation of the Labour party, and you do well to use this space to highlight that. It is not valid, tempted as the loyalist bit of me, to explain it away by saying that the situation might be worse – that more acts of inhumanity inclusive of child cruelty flying in the face of the UN Declaration on the Right of the Child*– might be committed on these shores if the Conservatives were in power. Yarls Wood is specifically a creation of the Labour government, and has developed into a monster even though it was not intended to be such by policy makers in the early 2000s.
To paraphrase your central challenge to Labour party members: Why have Labour party members like me allowed our consciences to be sullied in this manner? And what can Labour party members now do about it?
The blunt answers are that Labour party members have become (and have been for quite a long time) disenfranchised on such matters. Members of the Conservative party have as well of course (and for longer) but such matters are not as important to them. By ‘members’ I also include a large number of MPs whose instincts on Yarls Wood will be much the same as the rank and file membership.
The reality is that Yarls Wood is not an issue ‘on the doorstep’ and is not going to be. Local Labour parties, which have become (even according to the rule book) primarily campaigning tools for the leadership are not by and large going to discuss the issue and in any event ‘resolutions’ about it will go nowhere of importance. Labour party members know that.
I have written a good deal, and I won’t bore you here, about how the structures might be changed from within so that a proper grassroots policy voice is heard and acted upon, and the leadership and its policy advisors bound to do things like close Yarls Wood, even in spite of what its rightwing media-attuned antennae are picking up about the possible ‘popular’ reaction to such a ‘weak on immigration’ move. Making such a move will of course, force the Daily Mail onto the backfoot as the truth is outed that there is actually a distinction between asylum/refugee status and more general immigration, and that actually people are a lot more humane in their thinking than the rightwing press would have them be.
But that’s not the state of affairs yet. At the moment, anti-Yarls Wood activity takes place outside the structure of the Labour Party, and there are Labour party members involved; it would be wrong to suggest that just because someone is in the Labour party that is all they do and think about (although it is the case for some).
At the moment the best way to get rid of Yarls Wood is through non-party based coalition campaigning of the type set up (and well-resourced) by Power 2010 (and its predecessor Convention on Modern Liberty).
Sadly, for these civil liberties/democratic change groupings, asylum seekers rights are as far down the priority list as they are for the Labour party.
The CoML in early 2009 did not have a single event about the ‘modern liberties’ of asylum seekers and refugees at its conference, which was dedicated to a different kind of liberty – the liberty of people who already have material resources and freedoms to maintain them (not in itself a bad thing). (Edit: Guy from CoML and Power 2010 comments below, contesting the accuracy my assertion about CoML 2009.)
Similarly, Power 2010 now has five pledges to put to MPs, none of which will benefit the people of Yarls Wood. Perhaps a place to start in an internet campaign of the type that will develop from this important post of Neil’s might start with getting Power 2010 to add, by popular acclaim from all at LibCon and associates, a sixth pledge to be signed by MPs:
‘ That I pledge, if elected, to campaign in the House, in whatever way I can, for the upholding of the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child’, and the consequent closing of Yarls Wood’.
* Para 2 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child:
The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.
Good post Paul, I will write something (link to the original and your post too) as well as a Labour blogger and combining it with te campaigning work done around Yarl’s Wood and SERCO.
I disagree that people who would be alienated by the media line of Labour going soft on immigration are not ‘our’ people. Immigration is a concern I have regularly come across in working class areas, or in workplaces, amongst people who are solid union members and are naturally suspicious of the political elite.
People like that can be influenced by a media that screams at the top of its lungs that Labour is soft on crime, that immigrants cause crime and that Labour is soft on immigrants. It defies belief (and fact) that the media can do this, but we’ve lived with the Waily Mail, Speccie and Migration Watch crews long enough.
There are better ways to win them over or win them back than persecuting hundreds of immigrants for the sake of show, but they’re still ‘our’ people. And it’s on this basis that Labour doesn’t play well in the South-East, when down here is where unionisation and a political alternative to Tory hegemony is what is needed most.
Dave
You’re right about the ‘our people’ issue, and I’ve not expressed myself very well. I know that the media has an influence that can only be challenged through working class organisation – as you know I know.
That is, though, why I didn’t say ‘our people’. I said ‘our voters’. I was setting out, for the very immediate future, the electoral calculation that Labour might want to do, which is that there is a group of ‘our people’ who are so alienated from Labour that challenging media portrayals (however successfully) about immigation will not draw them back to vote Labour in May anyway, and that electorally it’s more advantageous to focus on the group of people who might be persuaded to vote Labour because Labour is seen to put human rights before pandering to the media.
It is a narrower point, focused specifically about a short-term Yarls Wood ‘push’, than your broader one, and I think both points are right.
I don’t think that getting down and dirty with the Mail over the realities of immigration is how we win anyway. It can’t be a national narrative battle, it has to be a local one – of hooking up with unions and workers and bringing them together with immigrant labour, and of building campaigns against the sort of poverty which affects both immigrants and indigenous people, even where they are ‘lumpen’ elements that do fit into the Trisha-watching stereotype.
This has immediate ramifications for current Labour Party election strategy. Rather than siphoning off all the activists from ‘unwinnable’ areas, in all areas we should be looking to broaden and deepen the pool of activists available by putting what we have at the disposal of local campaigns and activists.
Even in Tory strongholds, the attempt should be made – Labour’s equivalent of a fifty state strategy of the type which I flagged up a while ago, in a slightly different context, but set against the same backdrop of hostile media narratives.
Well it’s driven me away! See ‘the coming election and LGBT asylum’ > http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2010/01/coming-uk-election-and-lgbt-asylum.html
It may not be an issue for most voters but I suspect it’s one for some LGBT voters. It’s the Achilles heel to any attempt by Labour to trumpet its LGBT rights record.
I should mention as well that for those who work on these issues there is no indication at all that the Tories would be worse. In the case of LGBT asylum, Cameron’s comments do at least suggest they may be relatively better.
A marvellous response, Paul, thank you.
In some respects I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to domestic politics, for the three issues that matter most to me are: asylum, penal reform and the economically-deprived/long-term unemployed. The only way I could’ve picked three groups who attract less public sympathy is if I blogged in defence of bankers, expenses-happy MPs and John Terry. It’s all very well me banging on, asking why parties such as Labour aren’t doing enough for these groups, but when you don’t situate it in the context of wider public opinion, you end up looking a little holier-than-thou.
Certainly agree with your critique of COML – I don’t recall there being much mention of penal/criminal justice reform, either. I rather like the Power2010 idea though, and suspect that – given that this will never be a ‘doorstep’ issue, a combination of local community work coupled with more national online advocacy would be a potentially productive way forward.
The issue of “our people”… at what point do we say to some Labour voters, I’m sorry, but you are wrong and there is no justifiable economic or social basis for you to be racist towards immigrants? Surely these people respect those who stand up for their principles, rather than those who simply triangulate to tell them what they want to hear.
It’s not about triangulation, as I should hope I’ve outlined above. Approaching something from another angle, which establishes a mass organization that can compete with the mass media narrative is precisely the opposite of triangulation.
And I think this strategy offers its own dividing line: can you (that is, the nominal individual) work together with immigrants for your common good, or do you prefer to attribute the world’s ills to these people on the grounds that they aren’t British?
“Sadly, for these civil liberties/democratic change groupings, asylum seekers rights are as far down the priority list as they are for the Labour party.
The CoML in early 2009 did not have a single event about the ‘modern liberties’ of asylum seekers and refugees at its conference, which was dedicated to a different kind of liberty – the liberty of people who already have material resources and freedoms to maintain them (not in itself a bad thing)”
Nonsense. There were at least 4 sessions at the London Convention alone looking at the civil liberties of minorities and vulnerable groups, namely:
http://www.modernliberty.net/programme/morning-sessions/9-xenophobia
http://www.modernliberty.net/programme/afternoon-sessions-2/are-rights-universal
http://www.modernliberty.net/programme/afternoon-sessions-2/are-rights-universal
http://www.modernliberty.net/programme/afternoon-sessions-2/torture
Also, it should be said, the CoML and POWER2010 aren’t the only groups campaigning in this area, there is for example the British Institute of Human Rights and Liberty, to name but two, both with significant resources.
I must say, you do have a habit on this blog of criticizing CoML and Power2010 for what they are not – and even then you often get it wrong!
Paul @3 and 4: Well clearly you have every right to be alienated from the Labour party and to stay so, even if there were to be a change of course and Yarls Wood (and like facilities) closed. With respect, though, as a thoroughly engaged LGBT campaigner who has looked at the parties’ attitudes and policies in enormous detail, you’re not the ‘typical’ voter I had in mind who might be drawn back towards Labour if it were to do the decent thing around Yarls Wood. I think therefore that promoting the potenital for electoral gain as a route to persuading the government to act on Yarls Wood is a generally valid point, your own ‘unreachability’ notwithstanding.
On Cameron/Torie, I’m not familiar with his specfic comments on LGBT asylum, but what I would say (and of course you’d expect me to say it) is that anything he says/commits to is likely to be met by countervailin pressures from the right of his party, which contains some pretty explicitly unpleasant, unsavoury elements – more indeed than Labour.
Guy @10: I’ve no desire to get into a blogfight about this, and I’m sure you’re tired of all that. I think it’s valid enough, looking at the 4 (though isn’t one just repeated) sessions you link to above, to say that there was nothing at CoML specifically about the rights of asylum seekers & refugees to fair and humane treatment in this country over and above general discussion about human rights universality, though I accept it may have come up within the sessions.
In fact, the point I’m trying to make is that initiatives like CoML and Power2010 do have a perfectly valid and potentially productive role in, for example, exerting pressure on the government to close Yarls Wood, and that this is so especially because political party structures are so sclerosed that such matters are not easily handled. And I accept that there are other organisations like Liberty around to campaign on these matters, but the point about CoML and Power 2010 is that they appear to be more suited to blog/internet orchestrated campaigning than these more ‘traditional’ organisations (and this debate started out at LibCon around interent/blog campaigning).
I don’t think any of this takes us any further forward in the now ageing debate about whether the focus and use of resources of Power 2010 is the right one, and I’m happy to agree that we respectfully disagree on that one, but hope you’ll accept that I was in my (fairly hurried, I accept) actually trying to be quite conciliatory about the potential of initiatives like CoML and Power 2010 to create a momentum around specific human rights injustices like Yarls Wood.
Practically it may be difficult at this stage, but would Power 2010 be interested in adding a 6th pledge on Yarls Wood if there was enough ‘obvious’ support? I’d sign up to that.
Anyway, I’ll edit the text slightly to ensure your view that I’m ‘wrong’ on CoML is pointed out.
@Paul in the article I link to I mention that Harriet Harman was booed by the crowd at Pride over LGBT asylum. I’m not naive enough to think this is a huge issue in the LGBT community but it does significantly undercut Labour’s claims on LGBT rights. There is a stench of hypocrisy when claims are made regarding their international work on LGBT issues at the same time as – last week – Alan Johnson’s representative was pushing for a Ugandan lesbian on a police list to be deported as Uganda is ‘safe’ and she could ‘be discrete’. Some of us want to make this an issue in the election campaign because the failure to do anything about the homophobia and discrimination within the Home Office and UK Border Agency needs to be spelt out.
In terms of the Tories, yes, we only have Cameron’s one statement. But you have the background of many years of trying to appeal to Labour Ministers and getting nowhere. Why would the Tories automatically be worse? Labour also has the background of resistance to any change on this issue. The stubbornness during the Mehdi Kazemi case (the young gay Iranian) especially of Jacqui Smith and Lord West stands out because he was supported by a number of Tories and LibDems but hardly any Labour MPs. I carry on the website the fantastic speech of John Bowis, a Tory MEP. If a similar speech by a Labour politician existed I’d carry that. I’d also note that gay Labour MPs have not done anything.
Paul: Fair enough. You’ve got much more info on this than me, and I bow to your greater knowledge of this area, though I’d of course note that one laudable speech from am MEP doesn’t make policy, or mean that all the countervailing pressures I’ve spoken of will be overcome.
Specifically on the subject of gay Labour MPs, I’d be a bit surprised if one of my local MPs, David Borrow, isn’t supportive of action on homophobic discrimination in the border agency and more generally in relation to the treatment of LGBT asylum seekers, though you may be right that he hasn’t been explicit on it in a speech. He does do a fair bit of work behind the scenes on discrimination issues (you’ve probably already checked this out).
And this behind the scenes policy shifting can be important at times, though I accept it doesn’t offer explicit enough challenge. I’m reminded, for example, of the quiet way in which Maria Eagle has gone about her work as Prisons Minister, with a focus on shifting some resource to keeping women out of prison. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/dec/02/prisons-minister-maria-eagle Not explicit enough, perhaps, but not to be ignored.
Agreeing with Paul, I’d sign up to the Power 2010 pledge even though I disagree with most of its parts if they added one about Yarls Wood! (I think I’m safe, it’d be a bit weird for their committee to add one without going through the same process, but I’ll hold to that in the unlikely event that they do.)
@Paul
In terms of LGBT asylum, I’m not aware of any gay or lesbian Labour MP making any statements. I haven’t heard either of any behind the scenes work – and if there has been any it seems pretty ineffective.
For example, see the list of people who signed up to the Mehdi Kazemi petition. Stephen Twigg’s on there as he’s an old mucker of mine but the rest are perhaps notable by their absence http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-11399.html/
Perhaps you could ask Borrow some questions on this?