Tabloids & Asylum Seekers (Part 2- 2000+)

[Note: the masses in a western democracy are starved for authentic info & brainwashed by the amoral & rightwing tabloids (millionaire owned, capitalist & rightwing) and TV.
‘The people are reared to live in an altered reality – like broiler chickens or pigs in a pen.’ (ARoy, 1Sept03)

They have no ready access to alternative sources of info. Socialist papers cannot afford to become mass dailies for lack of advertising.] Here are some snippets

S Worker, 14 Dec 02

Lies & more lies 

The tabloids directed their venom against 144 Afghans who had been subjected to a terrifying 3-day ordeal of a plane hijack to Britain.

Lie 1: The Sun said that asylum seekers can enjoy ‘years of cushy life on benefits’.

Refugees get only 70% of the normal benefits. Most of this is in vouchers for essential goods. The cash provision is just £1 for adults and 50p for a child per day. That is why many refugees are forced to beg on the streets. With vouchers abolished, refugees are only entitled to £37.77 a week – 70% of the normal income support. The overcrowding in schools, hospitals & doctors’ surgeries is not by refugees but from underfunding by both Tory & Labour govts.

Lie 2: Refugees get homes while British families live in crowded accommodation or are homeless.

New Labour wants to settle refugees in internment camps or ‘reception centres’. These will be located outside London away from support networks. There are some 750,000 empty homes in Britain – enough to house all in need.

Lie 3: The Sun says refugees are a drain on resources which could be spent elsewhere.

The cost of supporting refugees (jncluding welfare benefits, accommodation, legal aid, health & education) amounts to just 0.33% of income tax. New Labour refuses to tax the rich which would free up millions for the NHS. Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Int that produces the Sun paid just 1.2p per pound in 1995 on recorded profits of nearly £1 billion.

Lie 4: Britain is a ‘soft touch’ and refugees are flooding in.

Britain has taken fewer AS in the last 15 years than other countries. Germany has taken over 2m refugees and Holland with fewer people than Britain has taken 200,000. The number of applicants actually fell last year (2001) to 71,365. The press doesn’t comment on the large number of Australians who come here to work.

Lie 5: Migrants take up jobs

Many industries are crying out for workers in the basic trades. 80,000 truck drivers are needed and NHS needs 1000 lab technicians. Britain’s agribusiness relies on 19,000 workers from Eastern Europe to pick fruit and veg each summer.

MigrationWatch UK poses as a respectable group with ‘no political axes to grind’. But it is a front organization set up to stir fear and hysteria over refugees. It is constantly quoted by the rightwing anti-immigration papers like the Times, Sun & Daily Mail.

The group was set up just a year ago by ex-diplomat Sir Andrew Green and his sidekick, Oxford don David Coleman. Both worked for Thatcher govt. Coleman was special adviser to several top Tories in 1985-87, including Leon Brittan and William Waldegrave. Sir Andrew started as a civil servant and became ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1996-2000). He twice met Oliver North in Washington during the Iran-Contra affair. While ambassador, Green was a director for the arms firm Vickers, a major exporter to S Arabia.

Coleman is now professor at the luxurious St John’s College at Oxford Uni.

Migrationwatch echoes the arguments of the Far Right. It damns overseas nurses and students as wellas refugees fleeing persecution. No wonder the BNP has praised the group. It was even invited to a Home Affairs select committee alongside the respected Refugee Council.

S Worker, 7 Dec 02

The Sun and Mail were cheering the closure of the Sangatte camp. The same papers that attacked the firefighters also run hate campaigns against refugees. David Blunkett boasted that the deal would solve the problem of the Sangatte refugees. HE wants to show how brutal Labour is to refugees. He has echoed all the lies against refugees pumped out by the two papers.

Morning Star, 30 Nov 02

New Labour takes the Daily Mail as their guide in figuring out what ‘Middle England’ wants and as a result what policies the govt should support. The approach has borne bitter fruit in privatization, education, hostility to trade unions and most of all to immigration & asylum.

The Daily Mail has often disgraced itself with tendentious claims and phoney allegations that incite hate against refugees, blacks and foreigners. The more the govt bows to the Mail agenda, the more extreme the Tory flagship tabloid becomes. The latest diatribe accuses AS of spreading AIDS and ‘causing racism’. The assumption is that in the absence of blacks there would be no racism.

Britain’s biggest union UNISON joined anti-racist campaigners yesterday to condemn a vile racist diatribe in the Daily Mail. On the day the govt confirmed an increase in asylum applications, the paper claimed Britain tops the league in applications, that £125 billion will hav eto be spent housing refugees and that AS are spreading AIDS. Incredibly the Mail also accused the immigrants of ‘causing racism’.

A spokeswoman for NAAR asked: ‘Why aren’t these people reporting the vicious racist attacks in areas liker Greenwich & Lewisham where groups like BNP are active?’

A UNISON spokeswoman said it was appalling to read such blatant racism in a national newspaper. ‘It is likely to whip up feelings against AS who are seeking shelter from oppression.’

Searchlight (Nov 00)

British public opinion based on disinformation [from tabloids & politicians]

A Readers Digest survey (Oct 00) found that most British adults seriously overestimate the help that refugees receive in Britain. 63% of the 2118 people questioned thought that too much was done to assist AS arriving in Britain. Most of this view were aged 65+ and Conservative supporters. Respondents assumed that on average refugees received £113 in benefits. The true average figure is about £36, received in vouchers. Only £10 of this can be converted into cash.

Two-thirds thought there were too many immigrants. Most respondents thought ethnic minorities made up 26% of he population. The true figure is about 7%.

Nick Hardwick of the Refugee Council said: “it is clear that the public are badly informed… fed on a constant diet of prejudice, it is not surprising that people are hostile towards refugees & AS.”

CARF, June 2000

The Return of Powellism

The capitalist class has created massive inequalities. Their millionaire owned media deflects the anger and frustration of the poor and deprived from the true causes of their condition to foreign looking people (minorities and refugees) by depicting them as scroungers, lazy and criminal.

In 2000, William Hague had become Conservative leader and the tabloids and rightwing broadsheets began grooming him to be tough on asylum seekers. The Sun urged him to stop being nervous about being 'branded jingoist or racist' and to speak out on the 'real issues that engage voters'. Two months later, Hague had been transformed and recommended the detention of all new refugees in secure units and to have a special agency to get rid of rejected ones.

The Telegraph welcomed the speech. The Daily Mail said that Hague was 'at one with the people' while the Sun said he 'got it dead right'. Tory press hounds have been unleashed on the 'race relations industry' to hunt down those bodies that threaten freedom of speech with the 'bogus language of anti-racism'.

How can we be racist, asks the Sun, when most refugees are white? The papers have focused constantly on the asylum scroungers, from the 71 Kosovan refugees returning from Leeds Bradford airport to the immigrants like the Albanians who 'rip off millions in benefits' to the ungrateful refugees at Angel Heights, Newcastle who dared to protest. And behind these refugees is the 'multicultural priesthood' made up of the UNHCR, Refugee Council, BBC, CRE. the 'more inflammable bishops', judges who are making 'Britain the Costa del Dole for bogus refugees' and 'the entire industry of left wing lawyers'.

Each time the Tories plays the numbers game, Labour responds with numbers of its own. On 11 April 00, a Blair spokesman said: 'if you take Kosovo out of the equation, then on the latest evidence around 70-80% of asylum seekers are not genuine.'

Searchlight (May 2000)

“Clamp them at Calais”  (Sunday People, 24 Jan 1999)

“Some supposed AS repay our generosity by cheating the benefit system … begging and thieving in town & city centres; and even setting up criminal networks” (Daily Mail, Mar 00)

“Handouts to refugees are robbing the British poor” (Evening Standard, April 00)

“Beggars build mansions with OUR handouts” (Sun, 14 Mar 00)

“Time to kick the scroungers out” (Sun, i17 Mar 00)

 “AS caught begging will be kicked out in a month. This announcement is a victory for Sun readers who have urged Jack Straw to get tough on refugee scroungers.”  (Sun, 20 Mar 00)

 “Refugees get flats with Jacuzzi, sunbeds and… a sauna” (Daily Star, 25 March 00)

“We’ll lock up all asylum seekers, promise Tories” (Express, 30 March 00)

The Barking & Dagenham Post headlined: “Refugees renting out their rooms.”

This sweeping statement followed the discovery of just one Kosovan family living in a squalid council flat. They moved into one room so as to sublet the other two. The article implied this was typical regugee practice. Letters in local papers are full of this type of hearsay, all sure of their ‘facts’ and demanding they go home.

With such inflammatory headlines, it is little wonder that racism against AS has exploded in recent months. Lost amid the racist barrage are the poverty and exploitation that AS face. Refugees have found themselves victims of unscrupulous landlords who let sub-standard housing. CARF reported that refugees dispersed to Everton and Liverpool are housed in semi-derelict estates in the worst areas. In some parts of Liverpool, 18-storey blocks are without central heating, filthy, have broken lifts and are subject to flea and mosquito outbreaks.

Leafleting – common device by fascist parties

BNP responded to the presence of about 400 refugees by leafleting the Moss Park and Sight Hill estates in Govan, Glasgow.

Inflammatory headlines & leaflets in Redbridge: Hijack a plane, get a house.

Leaflet in Barking & Dagenham: We’ve already given away hundreds of millions of pounds and thousands of dream homes … popular destinations are the white cliffs of Dover, historic Bedfordshire and Croydon. Everyone’s a winner when they play asylum.”

Socialist Worker (27 May 00)

‘Politicians’ poison is fuel for racism’

In the House of Commons, shadow Home Sec Ann Widdecombe urged the government to throw out more AS. She demanded to know how many of the 37 Afghans asylum applicants are still in Britain. New Labour minister Barbara Roach boasted that 11,340 AS were deported in March 00. This type of debate has boosted the confidence of racists.

BNP leader Nick Griffin told the Guardian a week ago: “The AS issue has been great for us. We have had a phenomenal growth in membership. It’s fun to watch the government ministers and the Tories play the race card in far cruder terms than we would ever use. IT legitimises us.”

Police figures show that race incidents in London doubled in the 12 moths to April 00. Trade Union leader Bill Morris slammed Labour in April 00 saying that the witch-hunt against refugees ‘has given life to racists.”

CARF 55 (April 00)

In the UK, the principal generators of inflammatory comments on race and asylum are the politicians and the media. Particularly virulent is the influence of the rightwing tabloids like the Sun (owner: Rupert Murdoch) and the Daily Mail (owner: Lord Rothermere), both billionaires. They can target Afghan hijackers one day, Roma beggars the next but on asylum seekers there is no let up, divide communities and create a climate of intolerance and hate. As a result, there are appalling unprovoked attacks by the unthinking mobs (usually packs of youth) on blacks, Asians and anyone perceived to be different. A more recent tabloid to join in the racist campaign is the Express, now under a new owner, Richard Desmond, a millionaire porn merchant. 

The government of the day, New Labour, is afraid of the popular press and usually gives in to their agenda. No establishment figure (whether government, police or church spokesman), will publicly defend the asylum seekers or denounce the racist press. The rest of the press remains silent too. No public figure will attend the funeral of victims of racist attacks. So the rightwing press is left free to weave its racist fabric. Xenophobia does not arise from an inborn fear of strangers but rather from this section of the press manipulating people prejudices. Xenophobia has become a fundamentalist crusade against difference. This xenophobia easily spills over and mixes with the colour-based racism that established minorities have put up for decades.
 

Socialist Worker (1 April 2000)

In the last week of March 2000, the Sun headlined:

“Fury as ‘refugee’ beasts rape girl”

“Police appealed for calm last night after a young woman was raped by 3 suspected AS.”

The town is Hastings. Yet there is not a shred of evidence to back up this claim. The police said: “We cannot assume the race or status of the men” responsible for the rape. The Sun did not tell its readers that Hastings has a small refugee presence and is popular with European students who come here to learn English.

The Daily Telegraph repeated the same lie: “Gang rape by AS”.

Disgracefully, the Labour leader of Hastings council, Richard Stevens, demanded that AS be shipped out of the area.

The National Union of Journalists and several other organisations issued a statement:

“We the undersigned protest at the torrent of abuse currently being aimed at the asylum seekers by sections of the national press. The most vulnerable group of people, fleeing persecution, oppression and war, is being falsely blamed for all the ills of British society.

The UN Commissioner for Refugees has rightly condemned the Tories for playing the race card in the run-up to the local elections. AS have become the targets for a new racism… Racist sentiment is being inflamed by terms such as ‘flood’ and ‘tidal wave’ are used to describe relatively small numbers of AS arriving here…

We not only condemn those newspapers that present lies and myths as the truth to their readers but also those politicians, Tory & Labour, who are urging them on. AS deserve our compassion and help. WE call on everyone who is sickened by the witch-hunt against AS to make their voices heard.”

Searchlight ( April 2000)

[Editorial] The hysterical racist campaign in the newspapers against AS is a national disgrace and can only lead to a growth in racial intolerance. When racist attacks occur, the journalists and editorial staff who have carried out an evil and untruthful campaign against some of the weakest in our society bear a measure of responsibility.

The Labour government and Tories have also been playing to the tabloid gallery by not speaking out  against the racism but instead very publicly encouraging the rounding up of ‘beggars’ in London. The attitude of this media-conscious government is all the more disgraceful.

Socialist Worker (18 March 2000)

Romanian women refugees have been reduced to begging on the London Underground.

That was enough provocation for the millionaire-owned tabloids. The Daily Mail whipped up a witch hunt.

It editorialised: “the time has come to get the beggars off the streets.” (Mar 00). On a Monday of March 00, Mail journalists stalked refugees from 10am to 4pm, photographing them begging.

Some headlines: “Threat to jail baby beggars” (Evening Standard, 8 Mar 00),

“FLEECED – Scandal of Britain’s scroungers and dole cheats raking in £80 billion a year “(Sun, 9 Mar 00);

“Awayday beggars – another lucrative day for the scroungers of Victoria Station”, (Daily Mail, 10 Mar 00);

“2 WIVES, 2 HOMES 15 KIDS – Refugee milks us of £32,000 a year”, (Sun, 13 Mar 00)

The press singled out Romanian gypsy Maria Nistor. She, her husband and 3 children shared a house with another refugee family of 2 adults and 3 children. Maria’s entire family have to live on £117.50 a week. Yet the Mail kept harassing her wherever she went. She was forced to move house.

At least 20 people each week are convicted for begging at London’s Horseferry Road magistrates’ court. Magistrate Roger Davies warned: “Mothers and children are pouring into London, begging … People are fed up of it… If they come before me they’ll go to prison.” Compare this statement with that of Herbert Metcalfe in Aug 38: “The way stateless Jews are pouring in from every port is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest.”

Why are Roma Gypsies forced to flee?

At the moment, 1 in 3 live below the poverty line in Romania. Their country has been wrecked by the economic ‘reforms’ imposed by the WB and IMF following the downfall of dictator Ceausescu in Dec 1989. Millions of workers lost their jobs. Papers like the Daily Mail appealed for financial help to Romanian children. Minorities are scapegoated, esp the Roma Gypsies who are of Indian origin and dark skinned. They suffer intense racism and are labelled blacks and niggers. They are shut out of jobs and social provision.