Do you have a story to share about Windrush? We would like to hear from you.

From Learning Through the Arts

We are collecting stories of Windrush Migrants and their descendants with a connection to Brent. If you have a story you would like to share, please contact us by August: events@learningthroughthearts.co.uk  //  07510 917517.  In collaboration with Brent Museum & Archives and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Deanna Christou

Arts and Heritage Officer

Help empower Brent migrants by becoming a volunteer English teacher

Celebrate the contribution of migrants to the UK - Feb 20th 'One day without us'

'Bridges Not Walls' - some of the banners dropped across London this morning

'Bridges Not Walls' banners were dropped from bridges in London and the rest of the UK and internationally to make Donald Trump's inauguration:

Embed from Getty Images

Upcoming Pupil Census raises vital issues for schools and parents

'Against Borders for Children' will be holding a conference on January 14th to discuss the government's use of the annual school census to create a 'hostile environment' for migrants by requesting birth and nationality information from parents.

This is a particular issue for Brent schools where many children are from a migrant background and where families, after Brexit and a rise in hostility, are anxious about the future.

ABC is a coalition of parents, teachers, schools and campaigners. This is what they say about their campaign:

Our aim is to reverse the Department of Education’s (DfE) policy, effective from September 2016, to collect country of birth and nationality information on 8 million children in England in order to ‘create a hostile environment’ for migrant children in schools.

This new immigration data will be collected through the School Census and then permanently stored on the National Pupil Database. These censuses happen every year and every academic term respectively. The next happens in Spring 2017.

Providing this data is optional and does not affect school funding.

This means parents and schools can legally work together to withhold this information from DfE.

Education officials have an agreement to share the personal details of up to 1,500 schoolchildren a month with the Home Office, The Guardian reports.

The agreement, which has been in place since June 2015, is outlined in a memorandum of understanding between the Department for Education (DfE) and the Home Office. This step is a diluted form of Theresa May’s 2015 stated goal of having schools check passports before accepting new pupils and withdrawing and deprioritising places for migrant children.

As well as using the data to target individual children and families, we are concerned that members of the public, journalists, government departments, and other organisations will also be able to access schools’ immigration numbers. With a huge rise in racist hate crime since the Brexit vote, we fear for the safety of schoolchildren nationwide.

So we are organising a national boycott until the Department of Education reverses this policy and commits to safeguarding children from the stigma of anti-immigrant rhetoric and the violence that accompanies it.

Update: The campaign has won a concession to exclude collecting nationality data in the Early Years census that concerns toddlers.

What you can do:

If you are a parent, you can learn more about how to protect your child’s data.
If you are a teacher, learn how you can get involved.
For more questions, please contact us.

Supporting organisations

Over 20 organisations signed our letter to Justine Greening, calling on the Secretary of State for Education to reverse the policy and to commit to protecting all children from stigma, xenophobia, and violence. They are:

• Zita Holbourne, Co-Founder / National Co-Chair, Black Activists Rising Against Cuts
• Sabir Zazai, Chair of Trustees, City of Sanctuary
• The Children’s Society
• Jen Persson, Coordinator, defenddigitalme
• Remi Joseph-Salisbury,  Founding Member, Critical Race and Ethnicities Network
• Nick Dearden, Director, Global Justice Now
• Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race Relations
• Rizwan Hussain, Founder and Director, Jawaab
• Saira Grant, Chief Executive, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
• Carolina Gottardo, Director, Latin American Women’s Rights Service
• Bella Sankey, Director of Policy, Liberty
• Stephanie O’Connor, Chair, London Campaign Against Police and State Violence
• Wayne Myslik, Director, Migrants Resource Centre
• Don Flynn, Director, Migrants’ Rights Network
• Malia Bouattia, President, National Union of Students
• Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
• Gus Hosein, Executive Director, Privacy International
• Jabeer Butt, Deputy Chief Executive, Race Equality Foundation
• Rita Chadha, Chief Executive, RAMFEL
• Maurice Wren, Chief Executive, Refugee Council
• Lisa Matthews, Coordinator, Right to Remain
• Pragna Patel, Director, Southall Black Sisters
• Suresh Grover, Director, The Monitoring Group

ABC have published resources for parents and schools, including model letters refusing data, on their website HERE

The human rights organisation Liberty said:

Foreign worker lists? This is a foreign children list

It bears a striking resemblance to the Home Secretary’s recent suggestion that companies will be forced to reveal the number of non-UK workers they employ which was widely decried as toxic and xenophobic.

However, the schools policy goes even further, establishing a national register of non-national children linked to their name, address, and other sensitive personal data.

This register will be accessible by multiple third parties with opaque and minimal oversight.

Border controls in our classrooms

This is a dangerous expansion of border control powers into children’s school lives. We now know that Theresa May's Home Office had plans to 'deprioritise' children of illegal immigrants on lists for school places.

With high levels of hate crime reported since the Brexit referendum, measures such as these risk victimising children in schools, a place where they should feel free and safe to learn and grow – rather than be a source of information on their parents or a target for immigration enforcement.

Already there have been reports of non-white children being asked to produce immigration documents at school.

The National Union of Teachers has published advice for members and guidelines for a school policy on the issue that can be put to governing bodies HERE 

The story of one of Brent's migrant underclass who is likely to be sleeping rough tonight

Mohammed S Mamdani of Sufra NW Foodbank has sent this out to supporters. I am posting it with his permission.

Not a small proportion of food bank users these days are EU migrants. The kind of people who come to this country to work. Work that people like you and I can’t do, or won’t do. Most probably, both.

Alejandro is a 29-year-old migrant from Spain who came to this country over a year ago. He arrived at the food bank last Friday, peered through the office door and asked if I could help. He spoke impeccable English, so there was no need for me to test out my GCSE Spanish. He says that he has no food or electricity at home and then takes out a bunch of papers – bank statements, bills and his employment contract.

Like so many migrant workers, Alejandro is employed on a zero-hours contract washing pots at a restaurant in Central London. He has not been given any work for the last 2 weeks, and he’s unable to go elsewhere, as he’s obliged to be available for work at the whims of his employer. Whilst some employers will see this as a flexible working arrangement akin to the Uber mantra, it’s just another way to cut costs and deny holiday or sick pay.

Alejandro has responsibilities and commitments. He cares for his boyfriend who has HIV and recently contracted TB. Back in March 2016 he had to spend over a month in hospital with Alejandro caring for him by his side. This morning, he is in court contesting his eviction notice as he can’t afford to pay the rent.

Without any doubt, Alejandro and his bed ridden boyfriend will be sleeping rough tonight. The complexities of our benefit system mean that despite their EU status they are in fact ineligible for housing benefit.

I don’t want to come across as a left-wing liberal or trade unionist whinging about zero-hour contracts (although you’re probably right about the whinging). I cannot believe that even the most right-wing conservative would fail to comprehend the injustice of Alejandro’s situation.

Crudely speaking, Alejandro came to this country for work (in a labour market where we struggle to fill these jobs) to shovel our shit. Mind the French.

In recent weeks the BBC broadcast a new documentary series entitled “Britain’s Hardest Workers: Inside the Low Wage Economy”. After watching the first episode, you quickly realise that Britain’s workers are not British at all. They’re people like our Spanish immigrant, Alejandro.

In the first episode, presented by the gorgeous Anita Rani, we learn the seedy side of hotel room cleaning. At a luxury hotel in Leeds, workers are expected to clean a hotel room in 24 minutes, regardless of the state left by the previous occupier. Apart from wiping pools of urine off the bathroom floor, the towels must be folded perfectly, the lamp shades need to be dusted and the bed linen spotless. If you can’t do that in 24 minutes, you can wave goodbye to the paltry wage of £21.60 for a three-hour shift (in which you’re expected to clean an average of 7/8 hotel rooms). Even if you were offered more hours, you just couldn’t keep up. I’m ashamed to say, but I couldn’t do it.

Hearing the stories of food bank users like Alejandro makes you quickly realise that this great country with its glorious tradition of democracy and human rights, has an underclass of migrant labours who are exploited, abused and then vilified by the tabloid press. Our condemnation of the treatment afforded to migrant workers in other parts of the world such as rich Gulf states betrays a dirty secret much closer to home.

Next time you’re dining at a swanky restaurant or lying down to rest in a 5-star hotel, think about how much of your final bill actually went to those who cooked, served and cleaned for you.

What does this mean for Alejandro? I’m not quite sure. We’re looking for work so that he can quit his zero-hours contract but that’s easier said than done. Especially when you don’t have the money to get on a bus to a job interview. And who wants to give a job to someone who is street homeless, and has nowhere to wash before work? The cliché rings true. It’s a vicious cycle.

There’s someone else peering through the office door and beckoning for help. Better get going.

How should the community respond to 'Operation Skybreaker'? Brent Against Racism meeting tomorrow

Notice from Brent Against Racism Campaign (BARC)

Brent is one of 5 London boroughs currently being targeted in a new Home Office immigration operation, called Operation Skybreaker. This operation will see aggressive and heavy-handed raids on homes and businesses aimed at driving migrants out of the country. It is likely to result in racial profiling (i.e., stopping anyone who looks like they might be a migrant) and a number of “fishing raids” (random raids not based on specific intelligence).

Brent Anti-Racism Campaign will host a meeting with guests from RAMFEL (Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London) and the Anti Raids Network to discuss the community response to this. 

Please join us on Wednesday 13 August, 7pm at Brent Trades Hall (Apollo Club), 375 High Road, London NW10 2JR (next to Willesden bus garage, 5 mins from Dollis Hill tube)

More info from brentantiracismcampaign@gmail.com or info@ramfel.org.uk. Facebook: Brent Anti Racism Campaign Twitter: @BrentAntiRacism

Jean Lambert welcomes scrapping of racist van campaign

Speaking after Home Secretary Theresa May announced the government would be scrapping the use of an advertising campaign condemned as racist and misleading, London's Green MEP Jean Lambert said:

It's to be welcomed that the Government has, eventually, agreed to scrap the much-criticised and xenophobic campaign telling undocumented migrants in London to 'go home or face arrest'.

The call to 'go home' is an ugly reference to a traditional racist taunt, and given that some of London's foreign-born population have fled regimes threatening therm with arrest for their racial, sexual, religious or national identity, deeply offensive.

In July two advertising vans drove around the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Barnet, Brent, Ealing and Hounslow, some of the most diverse areas of the capital, displaying a picture of handcuffs and the slogan: "In the UK illegally?... GO HOME OR FACE ARREST."

The advert said there had been 106 arrests in the area in the past week and encouraged illegal immigrants to contact immigration officials for information on how they could be helped to leave the country.

The adverts were widely condemned as offensive and racist at the time, and the Advertising Standards Authority, which condemned the ad-vans as 'misleading' earlier this month, received more than 200 complaints about their use.

Jean Lambert, who is the Green Party's spokesperson on immigration, said:

I know from discussing the campaign with some of London's migrants and bodies working on their behalf that it has caused real stress to Londoners

I'm only sorry it took criticism from the advertising watchdog finally to persuade the coalition government to scrap the use of the ad-vans, which were deployed across London earlier this year - mainly in areas with a high proportion foreign-born residents.

I would argue that it was not  the ASA who forced the government to abandon its plans but the huge campaign against it launched on Twitter and then taken up by organisations, campaigns, councils and local activists.

Cupcakes challenge Coalitions's divide and rule tactics

 

Incensed by the UKBA's recent raid on Kensal Green station. when officers appeared to be stopping and questioning commuters on the basis of their race and ethnicity, local residents today set up a free cupcake stall with a message.

Cakes bearing the slogans 'UKBA sucks' and 'I love Immigrants' were give out along with leaflets and cards informing people of their rights if stopped by the UKBA.

The unique protest soon gained customers, once they had got over the initial shock of something being given away AND being warmly greeted.

Underlying the fun and sugar rush was a serious message:

This community will not standby while people are stereotyped, scapegoated, bullied and victimised.

We will not allow the Coalition, competing with UKIP for the racist vote, to divide and rule us.