JEAN MARIE-BLUNKETT
Education and health services in Britain are in danger of being 'swamped' by asylum seekers according to British Home Secretary David Blunkett - echoing the infamous speech by Tory leader Margaret Thatcher that Britain was in danger of being swamped by immigrants, before her election in 1979. Tellingly, Blunkett apologised for his use of language - as if the issue was merely one of offence - but not the content of his proposal: that migrants and their families should be housed in transit camps - complete with separate schools and other social services - while their applications for asylum are processed.
Not surprisingly, the leader of the far right Front Nationale Jean-Marie Le Pen was quick to defend himself against charges of xenophobia by saying that all he wanted was 'transit camps' on the lines proposed by the British government.
Critics of the government have accused Blunkett of 'pandering' to a racist electorate - but rather it is Blunkett that is introducing the racial component of British politics. It is the government's own prejudice that sees the voters in Oldham and Burnley as being hostile to immigrants, and, fearing that they will lose the initiative to the far-right British National Party, who are standing in local elections, plays the race card. If the people of Oldham are tempted to frame their frustrations in the language of race it is not because of the negligible influence of the British National Party. Rather, it is the government, both at national and local level, which has racialised the allocation of resources. School places, social housing, grants to voluntary organisations are all distributed along lines designed to connect to communities conceived principally in ethnic terms. Blunkett's asylum ghettoes are only the end result of that policy.
DAMILOLA TAYLOR
Newspapers attached the acquittal of the unnamed youths charged with the killing of the Nigerian ten year-old in Peckham South London, prompting Prime Minister Tony Blair to plead that people should not jump to judge the police and justice system. But it was Detective Inspector Trevor Sheppard, along with the media and Blair's own government who jumped to the conclusion that Damilola Taylor was a victim of a 'youth crime wave'.
Following changes in the law that lower the age of criminal responsibility successive Home Secretaries have been trying to fill the children's' prisons that they have built around the country - the accused themselves were investigated while at Feltham Young Offenders Institute, on other 'charges'. Imposing the criminal law upon playground fights and truants acts of petty vandalism has had a perverse effect. Reforms to rules on criminal evidence mean that children's testimony, too, is now admissible in criminal cases. At the Damilola Taylor trial, the accused and all the chief witnesses were children. When one 'eye-witness' was asked about the many presents given her by the police - from pets, to holidays and pocket-money - she ran out of the court crying. Other 'witnesses' were themselves inmates, telling tales on the accused to win favours with the grown-up prison warders.
With such poor evidence it was not surprising the jury threw out the charges. But the most striking evidence was that Taylor's injuries were not even necessarily the result of an attack, but could just as easily have been caused by falling on a bottle. Rather than questioning their own prejudice that child-gangs hold South London hostage, the police pursued a prosecution without any real evidence that a crime had taken place. Adding to the police's determination was the grief of Damilola's parents - which the police ought to have assuaged by telling them that it was just a terrible accident. Instead they paraded the Taylors' grief, holding out a false promise of satisfaction in court. It was the adults who acted like children, throughout.
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