Psychobabble 7 June 25
Refugees
This morning, one of the BBC’s headlines on its news page – which I tend to have a look at most mornings - is ‘Government struggles to cut foreign aid spent on asylum hotels.’
Even putting aside the BBC’s recent almost gleefully unbalanced reports on the latest deaths in Gaza – no wonder it has been repeatedly found to have adopted an antisemitic approach to its news, and apologised only barely, falsely, disingenuously - this is another awful example of the BBC trying to make and steer the news, rather than report it. This was a dog-whistle headline straight of the Farage/Badenoch playbooks, which are these days equally xenophobic and racist.
For a start, the headline presupposes that spending money on asylum-seekers is wrong – and (like Badenoch and Farage’s odious crew) appeals to the sadly easy target of those seeking, wholly inaccurately, to blame any of our countries financial problems on asylum-seekers and immigration in general. (True culprits – Brexit; Ukraine War; Truss and Co’s far-right economics, all examples of conflict rather than cooperation.) This is the well-recognised psychological process, as seen in bullies, racists or all colours, and many more extreme and populist politicians of displacing or projecting our own difficulties into others, rather than facing them in ourselves.
As for the money, well, we are about to experience a substantial increase in our defence budget, because of the perceived, probably real, increased threat of wars. It is not, as they say, rocket science to realise this is not a result of being generous, friendly and cooperative, qualities with have been crucial to human advancement over the millenia; but a result of isolationism, populist leaders, building walls rather than bridges.
Also, the headline is a direct, useless, inaccurate attack on the government of the day – you would almost think that the BBC is continuing in its role of Tory mouthpiece.
More importantly though it seeks to demonise asylum-seekers in themselves and inflame those who wish to think like that.
How many of us in this country really know what it is like to be a refugee, to seek asylum? Millions of us in fact are the descendants of those seeking refuge, but few of us, almost none of the white British population, or later immigration descendants, actually have experienced this. I haven’t either - although two or three generations ago, many of my ancestors were fleeing from pogroms in Russia and eastern Europe, and some from Nazi Germany, and some other family members never made it and were murdered in concentration camps.
But in my professional life, and sometimes socially, I have worked with and met families, mostly children, who have been true refugees from wars and persecutions. Mostly, in my work, from Kosovo or other countries caught up in the Balkan wars of the 90’s; from Eritrea and Sudan, often with a history of being forced to be child soldiers, carrying guns from the age of 8 or 9; or from India and Sri Lanka, as a result of civil wars and internecine disputes in both countries.
I can truly say that the stories these children and their parents have told me, have been amongst the most horrendous I have ever heard. (The only remotely comparable tales have been those surviving multiple-casualty terrorist attacks, or the worst of the sexually abused.) Children and their families seeing their parents, brothers and sisters, friends, shot or otherwise killed in front of their eyes, and/or the bloody aftermath. Experiences when they were sure they were about to die themselves, or were told they were about to be shot but it didn’t happen. Being made – aged 8, 9, 10 - to carry guns, learn to shoot them, and to shoot others, or risk being killed themselves. Being placed in temporary accommodations in their home countries, not protected, vulnerable to and in many cases abused by adults around them, or seeing this happen, or seeing friends and relatives trying to kill themselves because of the horror and hopelessness of their experiences.
Yes, some people claim asylum dishonestly, or try to trick the system, but that does not matter to these refugees and should not matter to how we treat them. We – individually, as families, as politicians – should put ourselves in their shoes before we pass any sort of judgment. Despite all the awfulness here, we mostly have privileged lives. (And more broadly, it’s important, necessary, not to conflate concerns about people who might flout a system – benefits, healthcare, special education needs – with the needs of the invariably many multiples more who need those areas of help.)
I’ve read a few amazing poems about refugees today, thinking about this little essay – W. H. Auden’s 1939 ‘Refugee Blues’; ‘Home’, by Warsan Shire; Benjamin Zephaniah’s ‘We Refugees’, and recommend them all. But I’ll finish by unapologetically (unless i have breached copyright; but it seems to be in the public realm) copying out ‘Refugees’ by Brian Bilston, which my stepmother showed me recently, and if you choose to read it, ensure once read, that you follow its instruction to start again at the bottom and read it upwards….
They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or I
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(Now read from bottom to top.)