It is five years this summer since the Home Office commissioned a poster van reading ‘In the country illegally? Go Home or Face arrest’ to drive through the streets of diverse areas of London, between 22 July and 22 August 2013. The vans episode was part of a wider campaign Operation Vaken. Responding to this as researchers, we kick-started a group research project that culminated in the publication of the book Go Home: The Politics of Immigration Controversies. [...]
Five years later, the vans are back in the news again. But this time, they’re being mentioned in relation to the ongoing Windrush scandal. The vans have become symbols of the cruelty and the whipping up of anti-immigrant sentiment which mark the hostile environment. The newspapers are filling up with the heart-breaking stories of Paulette Wilson, Anthony Bryan, Michael Braithwaite and others. They came to the UK as British citizens many years ago and have now found themselves on the wrong side of a system in which NHS staff, landlords, teachers and others are acting as proxy border agents. The term ‘hostile environment’ itself has now become toxic; the newly appointed Home Secretary Sajid Javid has replaced it with the euphemistic ‘compliant environment’. [...]
This shift happened very quickly; even as the news was breaking, PM Theresa May initially refused to discuss the situation of the Windrush generation with Caribbean diplomats. Is it because the hostile environment now touches a generation which was integral to the building of Britain’s post-war welfare state (and therefore more difficult to scapegoat as scroungers or job-stealers)? Is it because (to a limited extent) the Windrush has become memorialised as part of Britain’s official history – and related to this, Britain’s self-perception as fair and decent? Is it because taking away the rights of British citizens is unacceptable but taking away the rights of migrant workers, international students or refugees is perceived as a necessary evil to keep immigration under control? What is crucial is how much the shift in attitudes will be limited to compensation for the Windrush generation, or how much it will involve a wider critique of the hostile environment.[...]
Finally, the study we conducted revealed re/newed forms of community activism at play. People who had never been political or never marched, took to the streets and protested against the vans, the raids and the profiling being done both in London and throughout the UK. Such community-driven activism was a key element of the action against the Windrush scandal (for example, Wales Solidarity with the Windrush Generation and their Families, Bristol Solidarity with the Windrush Generation and their Families) and a UK Government petition for amnesty for anyone who was a minor that arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1971. The petition garnered 179,952 signatures, and the outcome of the subsequent debate was that “the Government is clear that an amnesty for this group is not required because these people do not require amnesty: they already have the right to remain here”.
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