23 October 2000 – The current UK edition of The Reader’s Digest contains an article ‘Are We a Tolerant Nation?’ by Tim Bouquet and David Moller. It emphasises once again the extent to which the British public are being misled by the media about the extent of foreign migration to the UK, the costs incurred, and the supposed threat that this poses.

The PressWise Trust is doing what it can to re-educate the media and, through them, public opinion.

Are We a Tolerant Nation?
By Tim Bouquet and David Moller

The British public is deeply concerned about race and immigration issues, according to a MORI survey conducted exclusively for Reader’s Digest. In particular, people are worried about the numbers of refugees and immigrants coming to this country and the amount of assistance they are receiving.

A hefty 80 per cent of adults believe that refugees come to our shores because they regard Britain as a “soft touch”. Sixty-six per cent think there are too many immigrants in Britain. That’s an 11-percentage-point rise on the findings of a poll conducted by MORI last year.

Too much is done to help immigrants at present, say 63 per cent. Respondents overestimate the financial aid asylum seekers receive, believing on average that an asylum seeker is subsidized to the tune of £113 a week.

In fact, a single adult seeking asylum gets £36.54 a week in vouchers to be spent at designated shops. Just £10 of this may be converted to cash.

The poll also exposes widespread ignorance on numbers of immigrants. Respondents think that on average 20 per cent of the population are immigrants.

The real figure is just four per cent.

Respondents also believe that on average 26 per cent of the population belong to an ethnic minority.

Actually, it’s around seven per cent.

Thirty-seven per cent feel that there is more racial prejudice in Britain than five years ago and 38 per cent think it will grow worse in the next five years.

There are signs of tolerance. Eighty per cent say they wouldn’t be upset if their boss was Asian or Afro-Caribbean. Only 12 per cent would mind if a relative married somebody of Asian or Afro-Caribbean origin and only seven per cent would object to having neighbours from those ethnic groups.

Not all of Britain thinks in the same way. Seventy-five per cent of those living in the north-east believe that too much is done to help immigrants, compared with just 39 per cent of Londoners.

In fact, London has absorbed more immigrants and asylum seekers than most, yet was markedly more tolerant than areas which are home to far fewer.

MORI interviewed 2,118 adults (aged 15 plus) face to face in their homes between July 20 and 24.

The Press Gang

“Refugees are living in luxury flats in the Midlands at taxpayers’ expense,” the Birmingham Evening Mail screeched in March this year.

This was news to journalist and local councillor Terry Williams, who lives just up the road from the 15-storey tower block. “There’s no way these are luxury apartments. They are ex-council flats on which it is now impossible to get a mortgage because they have plummeted in value.”

The article goes on to tell of asylum seekers enjoying “unlimited use of Jacuzzi, sun beds, sauna and gym”. Not so, says local MP Peter Snape, who has been there. “These facilities are as tatty as the rest of the block and appear to be locked up most of the time.”

Sloppy reporting, or dishonest journalism whipping up hatred? Last year the Press Complaints Commission received 168 complaints of discriminatory reporting. That total had been matched by July this year.

The headlines are blatant: “Our land is being swamped by a flood of fiddlers stretching our resources – and our patience – to breaking point” (The Sun); “Hello Mr Sponger – Need Any Benefits?” (Daily Star).

But most rabid is the Daily Mail, which between September 7, 1999, and July 11 this year ran more than 200 stories about asylum seekers and refugees. The words “floodgates” and “swamped” appear frequently, as do “scroungers”, “soft touch” and “bogus”. Booms the Mail: “Scandal of how it costs nearly as much to keep an asylum seeker as a room at the Ritz.”

Nobody denies that the numbers of those fleeing economic catastrophe and persecution pose a massive problem for western Europe, particularly the UK and Germany, which are destinations for the greatest numbers. And certainly not all those seeking asylum here are genuine. But hysteria often fuels nationalism and Nimbyism, which obscure the facts.

Fact: Asylum seekers make up just 0.3 per cent of the UK population.

Fact: Of the 32,330 asylum applications processed last year, just 35 per cent were granted, with a further 11 per cent given exceptional leave to remain.

And the cost of a room at the Ritz? Singles start at £285 a night, plus VAT. That’s £2,344 a week, a cool £1,144 more than a typical detention centre. Hardly the Mail‘s “Good Life on Asylum Alley”.

“At least the Mail is consistent,” points out Professor Tony Kushner of the University of Southampton and co-author of the book, Refugees in an Age of Genocide (Frank Cass Publishers, £22.50). “In 1900, it described those fleeing Tsarist persecution as ‘so-called refugees’.”

But, the professor adds crucially, “What has changed in this country is a growth in respectability for intolerance in the press and mainstream politics, with now only a few degrees of shrillness between Tory and Labour.”

In an exclusive interview with Reader’s Digest, Tony Blair was critical of the irresponsible attitude of the press. “It is not true that Britain is a soft touch,” he said, “It is not true that Britain has had more applications for asylum than any other country in the past few years. It is not true that we are the only country with this level of asylum seeking.”

If anything, we are in danger of being swamped by a tidal wave of vile stereotypes. None more so than this, penned by Dover Express editor Nick Hudson, at a time when tension was high with rapidly growing numbers of asylum seekers arriving in the port: “We’re left with the backdraught of a nation’s human sewage and no cash to wash it down the drain.”

After a string of similar invective in the paper, eight people were slashed with razor blades in Dover during two nights of running violence between local youths and asylum seekers. Nick Hudson has since left his job.

There is a need for perspective. Yes, the UK took in 4,346 Kosovar refugees last year under a special programme – none was given permanent residence – but impoverished Albania took in 444,600. “It beggars belief that one of the richest countries in the world cannot deal with the tiny proportion of refugees who come to us without becoming hysterical,” says Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council. “We all have a responsibility to restore some sanity to the situation.”

A National Disease?

This has not been a good year for race relations in Britain. In March, Sunil Modi, a 32-year-old scriptwriter, was dragged from his car in Liverpool and, after a horrific attack, was left with a fractured nose and cheekbone, and eye injuries.

In April, Santokh Singh Sandhu, a 42-year-old shopkeeper, was on his way for an evening drink with a white friend in Port Talbot when he was attacked. He was left dying in the street with head injuries.

In August at the Notting Hill Carnival, graduate Abdul Bhatti, 28, died after a beating by a largely black gang who were throwing bottles and cans at Asian stallholders.

The number of racial attacks reported to police was up by 66 per cent in the last year. While this is due partly to improved reporting methods and a greater confidence that the police will take complaints seriously, the vicious details speak for themselves. It is clear that despite growing tolerance of ethnic groups that have become well established in Britain, a vicious minority have no compunction in turning on those they see as different.

“Poor education, poor housing and bleak jobs have too often led a few into venting their anger on ethnic minorities,” says Gurbux Singh, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. “But lenient sentences have not helped. They send out the message that it is all right to be racist, that the establishment does not care.”

Even the young are not spared. In Wheatley Hill, County Durham, three-year-old Amrin Shah suffered a fractured skull when a 16-year-old boy hurled a wooden stake at her.

In Plymouth, a 12-year-old black boy was sitting quietly in his mother’s car, when Colin Wilkinson, 21, first of all taunted him with racial abuse and then, reaching into the car, punched the youngster on the head five or six times.

But possibly the most poignant story concerns 14-year-old Christina Pasalbessi from Newport in south Wales. Five years ago, her mother died. Her stepfather, 48-year-old Jan Martin Pasalbessi, originally from Indonesia, looked after her devotedly. But racist taunts and constant bullying of Christina forced them to move house.

But they were not even safe in their new home. Christina was attacked and left with facial injuries. The very next day, in an attack which police are treating as racially motivated, Christina was robbed of her stepfather too. Jan Martin Pasalbessi was kicked and beaten viciously, dying 24 hours later from massive head injuries. Christina has now lost everyone who has been closest to her in her short life.

Tesfu Gessesse works for the Black Community Development Project in Edinburgh, where racial attacks have recently doubled. The Ethiopian-born father of two believes that only education will put an end to racism: “Law and order are all very well, but if people are not educated to accept ethnic minorities, then change will never occur. This is not simply a black or white problem. It’s everyone’s problem.”

(Bulletin No 32)