Some events are important but don’t really offer a great deal for the photographer to work with. On Saturday lunchtime at the Angel in Islington I went to a demonstration against the shameful way that we treat people who want to come and live in this country and to contribute to our economy. Some come seeking asylum, some for other reasons, but whatever restrictions we have on immigration, we should treat people fairly and humanely. At the moment it is only too clear that we do not.
We have policies that stop people from working but fail to provide proper support. That imprison people who have committed no crime (and set up special prisons for the purpose, run for profit by companies that are apparently without morals.) We have a Borders Agency that seems to take delight in operating procedures that deny people proper legal representation and that appears to be institutionally racist. A government that seems determined to outflank the racists on the right hand side in an attempt to gain electoral advantage.
The people in the background of this picture are from the Suarez family. One of their young members who grew up in this country – where all his family now live – faces deportation because of a juvenile offence. He’s one of the successes of our system in that since then he hasn’t been in trouble again. But a few years later he is threatened with deportation to a country he left when he was six and has no family. His case has gone to the European Court of Human Rights, but our immigration officers don’t care about that – they tried to deport him without waiting for the legal process to take its course. He’s still here only because all his family turned up at Heathrow to protest when they tried to put him on a plane. They will probably try again and hope they can get away with it without the family noticing.
But it was Christina who made me thing and feel most at the event. Nineteen years old, her husband is in Campsfield Detention Centre awaiting deportation, breaking up their young family. She had never spoken in public before, and broke down in tears. It was hard to keep on photographing, but I felt I had to, to do what little I could for her case – and to put the pictures and her story on news sites as soon as possible.
More about the event, the cases and more pictures on My London Diary.