In today’s social media age, one version of events spreads like wildfire. So it is fast becoming accepted in the national conversation that all men risking life and limb to cross the Channel in flimsy vessels are dangerous people who are likely to abuse women and girls. The leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, went so far as to say that, because of rising numbers coming in small boats, women had “stopped jogging in the park because there are men lurking in bushes”.
As the political rhetoric has become more toxic, and especially this week, the real-world consequences for those inside the hotels and for organisations like my own and many others in the charity and statutory sector become more dire.
The plight of the asylum seekers themselves must stay front and centre. On the street they have faced verbal abuse and hostility. Shouts of “Go home, scumbag” and more hate-filled language are not uncommon. I met an African man in his 60s living in the north-east recently who in May, not long after the prime minister told the country “we risk becoming an island of strangers”, was set upon by a group of men and suffered a broken arm. He was so terrified he didn’t want to leave his accommodation for weeks on end.
But the threats are not just aimed at them; also being targeted are those who seek to help them. Thinking about personal safety at work has become part and parcel of the job. I am now even being advised to consider my own home security. This was unimaginable nearly five years ago, when I started my role.
At the Refugee Council we work in communities with refugees including on some allotments, where they love to grow food. In one northern town, well before the riots last summer that saw asylum seekers burned out of a Rotherham hotel, ours was the only allotment patch that was firebombed one night. We now tell staff not to wear their lanyards, so they’re not visible when out and about as they’ve had abusive comments.
We aren’t alone. Far-right influencers are targeting the refugee sector, posting pictures of chief executives and naming them. Leaders in recent weeks have had to come to terms with a new normal whereby they have to think about their and their staff’s safety both on and offline.
Some of the organisations targeted are small and community-rooted without the capability and infrastructure of larger organisations to put in place sophisticated risk assessments and security procedures.
And then there are the lone individuals who want to threaten and scare us. I know of leaders not just in the charity sector but also in the statutory sector who have received threatening handwritten messages saying they and their families aren’t safe.
Those who have worked with refugees for decades tell me they have never known a time when the hostility has been so strong and the environment so toxic. And it ripples out so that support which would be in place is withdrawn. I’ve been told about food banks that did provide assistance to any person who needed it turning away people they believe to be “foreigners” with no right to be in the UK.
Hidden from public view, the poisoned political environment on asylum is having consequences not seen before. The narrative that refugees and migrants are the root of all our problems means that they and those who work with them are firmly in the line of fire, seen as legitimate daily targets of hate.
It is not too late, however, to pull back from the brink. There is a role for government: to try to neutralise the toxicity by not only focusing on fixing the dysfunctional and costly asylum system, but also by articulating a pride in Britain that celebrates our diversity and integration story. One that saw Mo Farah, himself a victim of trafficking who was given safety in our country, proudly wrap himself in the union jack every time he won one of his Olympic gold medals.
We have a choice. As a nation, we can drift further into a world of division and hate. Or we can celebrate British values of fairness, tolerance and compassion, and focus on the importance of a shared community that so many Britons believe in.
The direction of travel our prime minister and his government choose to take feels more important than it has ever been in the seven decades of the Refugee Council’s history. We look to our political leaders to do far more to bring an end to the division and hate and say clearly: this is not who we are.
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