2nd opinion: The forgotten people

An MP once tOld me a story about the unjustified housing expectations of a Somali man, who came to her surgery demanding that his family go to the top of the list for the very limited supply of multi-bedroom properties in the borough.

The MP in question is deeply experienced in urban housing, has been a councillor and has worked tirelessly on behalf of asylum seekers and minority ethnic communities. It would be fatuous to suggest her exasperation with the man and his assumptions is in any way racist.

I can’t name her, because that would risk the tag of “racist”. Yet she has valid points to make about housing and asylum policy that would win the endorsement of many of her parliamentary colleagues.

They concern jobs, language, the geographical distribution of minority populations, differences of attitude and behaviour between incoming groups and, above all, the contradictions and failures of asylum policy and implementation in recent years.

Asylum, and all those conjoined issues of race, attitude and migration, don’t look like they are going to be front-line election issues, at least directly; people won’t choose between the parties on the basis of their policies on asylum.

Yet this clump of concerns are enervating background issues, affecting the way people feel about politics.

But do our public discussions ever really get to the heart of asylum issues? That would require a lot more listening to those most affected – those who live in the cities, neighbourhoods and streets where social and ethnic change is most immediate.

Asylum policy is done for those arriving in the UK with claims, but asylum and migration – they’re not that easily differentiated, in fact – are often done to people already established in their localities, especially those living in social housing.

You could call them the white working class. And there’s a sense that in recent years, they have been written out of the script. Culturally despised as yobs, non-achievers and the perpetrators of racism, they also are a species of victim.

That’s the premise of a new book that, in a confused and agonised way, tries to speak up for them.

The book’s author was born and grew up near Elephant & Castle in Southwark, south London. He sketches the history of Bermondsey and Walworth against recollections of his own family coming to terms with large-scale redevelopment, re-housing and marked changes in the ethnic composition of his neighbourhood.

Was there ever a moment when consent might have been sought from local communities for these changes? It certainly wasn’t. And that, Collins argues, has left a sense of “done to”, of victimisation and glowering resentment lasting long after the former inhabitants of Southwark have moved out to Eltham, Bexley and other districts that, since Stephen Lawrence was killed, have become bywords for bigotry.

Collins is a sentimentalist rather than a sociologist and his book would have been a lot better for more facts and hard-headed analysis of urban change.

Still, his is an important voice: he seeks to articulate something that has been pushed underground and needs to be opened for debate and disagreement.
Increasing asylum and migration are ineluctable facts of the 21st century but – especially in housing – those on whom they have an impact first and foremost deserve a hearing.