|
CARF |
Racism And The Press In Blair's Britain (CARF 48, February / March 1999) IN the summer and autumn of last year a few hundred refugees fleeing the conflict in Kosovo arrived in Kent. This is the story of how a local newspaper in Dover instigated a campaign of racist resentment towards the refugees which was then picked up by the national press, in particular the one national paper which has taken a lead in defining a new middle England agenda on race, the Daily Mail . The result was a media-orchestrated campaign of hostility against asylum-seekers which led to violent attacks against them and the creation of a climate in which the government's asylum reforms package could be presented as a firm and fair response. Sanctuary by stealth The present government likes to be all things to all people. On the one hand it has been talking tough to the press on immigration since coming into office. Meanwhile, to stem criticism from human rights groups, it has been quietly increasing the proportion of applicants given refugee status or exceptional leave to remain. But this delicate balancing act could not last long. It was only a matter of time before the press started to get mileage out of making the government live up to its tough talk. By the end of 1997, the arrival of Roma refugees fleeing racist persecution in the Czech Republic and Slovakia brought a wave of media attacks on so-called 'bogus' asylum-seekers. Then, last autumn, with the arrival of more Roma and Kosovan refugees, a renewed and more vicious attack began, first with a brutish editorial in the Dover Express and later with an ongoing campaign by the Daily Mail . The government then found itself faced with daily calls from the tabloids to stop the 'madness' and 'send asylum spongers packing'. In response the Home Office went into fast spin mode in an attempt to wash away tabloid criticism. Jack Straw announced in his News of the World column that the government was bringing in reforms to address the problem of 'bogus' asylum-seekers. And with so much press attention focused on this issue, the policy of 'sanctuary by stealth' came to an end. The Dover Express campaign On 1 October 1998, the Dover Express ran an editorial headed 'We want to wash dross down drain'. Directly addressing the Home Office, the editorial spoke of 'illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers (when they get to asylum are they happy?), bootleggers (who take many guises) and the scum of the earth drug smugglers who have targeted our beloved coastline We are left with the backdraft of a nation's human sewage and no cash to wash it down the drain'. Editor Nick Hudson, formerly of the Sunday Sport , claimed he was 'reflecting his mailbag'. As the weeks went by the Dover Express continued to promote the views of local racists, so that by November an atmosphere of bitterness and animosity had been built up in the area against refugees. A public meeting was organised by local racists and leaflets were printed listing 33 reasons why 'we should send them back and close the door'. The leaflets, which were displayed in shops, distributed on doorsteps and handed out in the town centre, included the ludicrous claims that 'an epidemic of venereal diseases will undoubtedly become rife' and that the local hospital had 'advised against any blood contact with refugees'. The leaflet ended with a warning to the Labour government that it deserves to fail because 'it just isn't helping the people who put them there in the first place'. At the same time, in a long-standing tradition of extreme right-wing agitation, residents in Folkestone received a hoax letter, claiming to be from an imaginary United Nations Worldwide Asylum Seekers Association, informing them that they were to have a Slovakian family staying in their home for six months. In December the National Front, capitalising on the situation, organised a march through Dover. Meanwhile asylum-seekers faced a sharp rise in racist violence following the October editorial in the Dover Express . Families of refugees had lighted rags and fireworks pushed through their letter boxes and bottles thrown through their windows. The words 'we will burn you out' were painted on one house. The Daily Mail - voice of suburbia The '80s was the decade of the Sun , which more than any other daily paper articulated Thatcherism into a working-class identity, and entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with the Thatcher government, boosting sales for the paper and votes for the government. A crucial part of this process was the championing by the Sun and the government of little-Englander racism and attacks on the anti-racist movement and 'loony lefties'. Recent years have seen the circulation of the tabloids, including the Sun , decline steeply, suggesting to many of their editors that their '80s style may be out of favour. But sales of the Daily Mail the archetypal tabloid of middle England have been steadily increasing and the talk among tabloid editors is of moving 'upmarket' in a bid to emulate the Mail 's success. In the late '90s the Daily Mail has entered into an analogous relationship with Blairism as the Sun had to Thatcherism, coming to define the middle ground of the New Britain. The middle classes are on the move, and the Daily Mail and New Labour have been able to tap into that movement and catch history on the wing. Labour's wooing of 'middle England' has given the middle classes a stronger political weight and, at the same time, middle-class attitudes are reflecting the new mood of Blair's Britain. Blair himself, of course, thinks that we can all be middle-class now. And just like the Labour government itself, middle England now wants to present itself as inclusive, multi-cultural, touchy-feely and caring in a Princess Diana sort of way. A crucial index of this new mood is the question of racism. In the '80s the Daily Mail made a name for itself with its racist reporting of crime and policing and trumpeted a simplistic 'get tough' stance on law and order with scant regard for accountability. In fact it helped to establish a climate in which police indifference to racial violence was allowed to go unchecked. The paper's offices were picketed by the Working Group Against Daily Mail Racism, an organisation established in response to a series of offensive articles in 1985. Anti-racism Daily Mail style But in February 1997, the paper uncharacteristically took a stand on the Stephen Lawrence murder, famously printing the faces of the five white racists who were widely believed to have been guilty, but whom the criminal justice system seemed unable to convict. The move by the Daily Mail opened up the process by which anti-racism in the form of the Lawrence family campaign has now become palatable to a middle England keen to demonstrate its new-found caring side. Since then the Mail has also given sympathetic coverage to other cases such as Michael Menson, running a two-page spread of Michael's sister's own account of the racist murder. But on closer examination, of course, the limits to the Mail 's stance are clear. Every mention of the Lawrence case points out Stephen's great 'promise' as a student and how 'respectable' his family is, as if the murder would have been less wrong were these not the case. Met chief Paul Condon is given absolute support as a supposedly 'decent' figure and Condon's own refusal to accept institutional racism is thereby supported. And it is on the question of institutional racism that the contradiction at the heart of the Mail 's new anti-racism is most pronounced. Its image of the new Britain is of a meritocracy in which everyone has the opportunity to get on and, therefore, the Mail cannot acknowledge the reality of institutional racism. Hence the current attacks on the Commission for Racial Equality (see right), an organisation which has regularly pointed to systematic racial discrimination in most areas of British life. Hence also the Mail 's penchant for articles celebrating ethnic minority business or academic success. Implicit in this is a Victorian distinction between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor which, when applied to asylum, becomes 'bogus' and 'genuine' asylum-seekers. And, for the Mail , the majority of asylum-seekers are, like the poor, only interested in getting their hands on state benefits. Therefore, even as the Mail has been condemning racist violence against black UK residents, it has also been contributing, through a series of misleading reports last autumn, to the atmosphere of hostility towards asylum-seekers in Kent and once again fanning the flames of racist violence. The nationals pick up the story Five days after the Dover Express published its 'human sewage' editorial in October, the Mail picked up the story and published its own 'investigation into Britain's immigration crisis' headed 'The good life on asylum alley'. Focusing on the situation in Dover, the Mail asked how the government would 'stem the tide' of Gypsy migrants, the majority of whom, the Mail claimed, are 'playing the asylum appeals process' as a tactic to milk state benefits. Little mention was made of the well-documented racism against Roma in eastern Europe while the refugees' own stories of anti-Roma racism in Slovakia were dismissed. In spite of distancing itself from what it saw as 'xenophobic' remarks made about the hygiene of refugees by Dover locals, the article nevertheless began by printing the address of one asylum-seeking family in Dover. This led to the family's home being attacked and windows smashed. As the Mail followed up its 'investigation' through October and November with more virulent attacks on refugees (accusing the Home Office of operating a 'virtual open door policy' and of 'going soft' in the 'war against bogus asylum-seekers'), the level of harassment and verbal abuse which asylum-seekers were facing on the Kent coast increased. With local tensions rising, one local anti-racist commented: 'It's starting to feel like Montgomery, Alabama down here.'  By 28 November the Daily Mail was revelling in having taken the government to task for its sanctuary by stealth policy. Under the headline 'And still they flood in' the Mail revealed how there had been 'a 50 percent increase in successful applications since Jack Straw became home secretary'. Then two days later the paper launched its most vicious assault yet, with a story headlined 'Brutal crimes of the asylum-seekers'. This piece claimed that asylum-seekers were having a 'devastating impact' on crime in London. From a 'dossier' of just 44 cases, the Mail called, once again, for an end to the government's supposed 'open door' policy on asylum. Through December and January the question of asylum became an obsession for the Daily Mail . We read about 'Kosovo-on-Sea, Devon' where 'old folk must quit resort homes to let in asylum-seekers'. Later we had 'Suburbia's little Somalia' about Somali asylum-seekers who had settled in 'affluent, middle-class Ealing thousands of miles from the dusty plains of East Africa'. Meanwhile other papers began to jump on the Mail 's bandwagon. The Sun reported on a Dartford hospital which had been reopened to house Romanian refugees and called on the government to 'harden its heart'. Two days later the story was followed up with 'Inn-sane: refugees move from hospital to a 65-a-night luxury hotel'. Reporting on the same hospital the Mail headlined 'They couldn't find my dying granny a bed but they open the wards for gipsies'. Kent Social Services was then forced to move Romanian women with new-born children to a third secret location due to harassment from racists (including the NF) every time the papers ran a story. Among the tabloids only the News of the World offered an alternative view with a more sympathetic report on 'innocent families fleeing hell of war-torn Kosovo Behind the headlines are stories to tear at the heart.' The asylum issue also kept the columnists busy in December, with articles by Lynda-Lee Potter and Simon Heffer in the Mail , Jane Moore in the Sun , Tony Parsons in the Mirror , Peter Hitchens in the Express and Carol Sarler in the Sunday People . It was with the columnists that New Britain's post-Diana caring side found expression with some attempts at showing understanding. 'Don't blame them for seeking a better life I understand why they tried to flee,' said Carol Sarler. Or as Tony Parsons put it: 'I don't blame them for coming. But that doesn't mean they have the right to be here.' But having stated that they 'had nothing against foreigners' (Tony Parsons again), the columnists were united in their demands that the 'gypsies must go'. Labour spins itself round The story of how national newspapers responded to the so-called 'asylum crisis' is telling. It reveals a curious relationship between the Labour government and the press, whereby a campaign by the Daily Mail , the flagship tabloid of middle England, can force the home secretary to abandon his sanctuary by stealth policy. From October through to December, Jack Straw brought in a series of new measures to deal with the asylum problem: fines on lorry drivers who carry refugees, the ending of social security benefits for asylum-seekers and their replacement with a voucher system and smart cards, a new Europe-wide database of fingerprints and new visa requirements for Slovaks entering the UK. The government could no longer afford to risk criticism by quietly giving more asylum-seekers permission to stay. Rather they embarked on an attempt to minimise criticism from selected newspapers, and implicitly conceded the Mail 's contention that all asylum-seekers should be assumed to be 'bogus'. It also reveals
the privileged position of a newspaper which, placing itself
between its readers and the government, claims to speak for
middle England. And the government chooses to listen.
For more information about anti-racist activities in Dover, contact: Dover Residents Against Racism c/o Refugee Link, PO Box 417, Folkestone, Kent CT19 4GT. Website: http://www.canterbury.u-net.com/Dover.html. |
