At seven o’clock on Sunday 26th November, in the Plean Street tower block complex on the west of Glasgow, ten immigration ‘enforcers’ and Strathclyde Police officers tried to smash open the door of a single mother from Uganda and her three year old twins. Fortunately Mary was not in the flat when they eventually managed to break the door open. The police then tried to force her Scottish neighbours, living next-door, to let them in to their flat so they could search for Mary and her children. Despite being threatened through the letter-box and their door being repeatedly thumped by the insistent police, Mary’s neighbour, Linda, 45, refused to let the dawn raid team in.
Whilst this was happening on the 12th floor, neighbours, friends, church ministers and supporters from the Kingsway flats arrived outside the tower block but were stopped by the concierge as he claimed they would “disturb people living in the flats” (unlike the thugs wearing black, in body armour and trying to break someone’s door open, of course.). As the crowd grew, the police abandoned their attempts to take Mary and her children and departed in the dawn raid van, leaving only a sergeant from Strathclyde Police and an immigration official to wait for Mary’s front door to be sealed by a council carpenter. The BBC reported that the First Minister was “expected to raise concerns about the use of dawn raids”.
Eventually the police left. Mary’s courage, the bravery of her neighbour Linda Keily and the quick response by local people and supporters stopped this dawn raid. However, later on Sunday afternoon, Linda, 45, who has lived in Plean Street, Yoker for 16 years received a visit from a police officer. She told us:
“About lunch time a policeman or an immigration official came to the door saying what I had done was wrong and that I put Mary’s benefits into jeopardy. I told him her benefits wouldn’t be in jeopardy if you didn’t remove her the way you did. He then said I could be prosecuted, that what I did was wrong, and its against the law to give refuge to asylum seekers. He asked me would I do it again, I said I would do it again for anyone because they’re not criminals, they didn’t have to be removed that way. I told him I don’t agree with the brutal force with which they remove people from the house, especially women and children, and what was the government doing to stop this. He was saying that they could of got a warrant they would of enforced it and broken down my door as well. I told him, I’m a UK citizen; you’re not going through my door. Then he said I was obstructing the course of justice. I said so what? And slammed the door in his face”.
If ordinary people like Linda can stand up for what’s right then surely the First Minister of Scotland can defend Scotland’s interests and the human rights of Scottish asylum families, many of whom have been here for as long as six years.
After all, this is no small issue, 1,000 asylum families in Glasgow are affected. Scotland’s future lifeblood is being forcibly sent back because of a Westminster dictated asylum policy.
In October 2006, Scottish protests forced a four week suspension of enforced removals. Some senior police officers had voiced disquiet about involving their officers in the raids. Raids had had to be abandoned because of protests. As a result of the suspension, children as young as eight no longer kept watch at their windows for the dawn raid vans from six o clock onwards till it was time to go to school. Asylum families could sleep in relative peace. A few days later, Home Office minister Liam Byrne visited Scotland. He announced that two new specialist asylum teams would deal with cases in Scotland to reduce the need for dawn raids against ‘failed’ asylum seekers. He claimed faster decisions were fairer decisions and that “a case owner” would “build up a relationship with the individual and the family.” There was talk of close consultation with health and education officials to protect children and avoid dawn raids.
On the day of his visit, Mr Byrne was met with protests at the Scottish Parliament, Glasgow City chambers and then at the home Office’s reporting centre in Brand Street, Govan. He left Scotland in no doubt that Scottish asylum families are needed and wanted here but that the policy of enforced removals is not.
Publicly, the Scottish executive looked like they had done their bit. The BBC reported that the First Minister was “expected to raise concerns about the use of dawn raids”. Publicly it looked like Byrne had intervened to make dawn raids less likely.
Not quite. As soon as Byrne left Scottish soil, the Glasgow Immigration Enforcement Team resumed its brutal practise of raiding people’s homes in the early hours of the following Monday morning.
So where was the consultation with health and education to protect the interests of children? These alongside the Scottish Executive’s ‘concerns’ seemed to have evaporated. Instead it was business as usual for the snatch squads. Dragging sleeping children from their beds, handcuffing their parents, terrifying neighbours at dawn against a back drop of growing protests in local communities where asylum seekers have become over the years part and parcel of the life of Scottish communities.
Positive Action in Housing predicted one year ago that communities would resist these tactics on their own doorsteps. One year on that is exactly what is happening in Kingsway, and Yoker, Northwest of Glasgow. Members of the local community now carry out dawn patrols on the look out for dawn raid vans in their community. If the vans are seen residents are alerted and people gather outside to peacefully protest. These protests have often led to dawn raids being abandoned. Scottish tenants are now at the forefront of the campaign to end dawn raids. Long may it continue until this brutal practice stops for good. The pressure must grow
