Mar
11
2008
It Could Happen To You – an interview with Christine Bacon
Posted by Chris Cleave in Background to the novelsIn researching my new novel (THE OTHER HAND in the UK and Australia and LITTLE BEE in the US and Canada) I conducted many interviews and I’m publishing the best on this site.
(Christine Bacon photo by Chris Cleave)
Christine Bacon campaigns on behalf of asylum seekers in the UK and Australia. With a master’s degree in Refugee Studies from the University of Oxford, she works as a volunteer with the Actors for Refugees project. Actors for Refugees stages the Asylum Monologues around the UK, dramatising issues faced by asylum seekers. I went to meet her at her gloriously underfunded office in London’s Toynbee Hall.
Chris Cleave: Why should ordinary members of the public care about the plight of asylum seekers who come to this country?
Christine Bacon: Because it could happen to them! My own family are Irish. They thought my views on asylum were a load of bollocks until they put it into the context of their own history. Many Irish people were expelled from their own country. They had foreign occupation. They lost their language and their land rights. And now the Irish diaspora is everywhere you look around the world. This is what happened to our people! And had it not been for other countries accepting us and giving us safety, we would not have survived as a nation or a race. Until you put it in personal terms like that, there’s no reason people should understand or care. I never blame people for not knowing about what we do to asylum seekers, or for believing what they read in the press. You don’t know until something brings it home to you.
CC: And you bring it home through Actors for Refugees?
CB: Sure. There needs to be a counterweight to the negative portrayal of asylum seekers. There’s a huge governmental and media machine drawing the false picture, and nothing working to address that misinformation. Most refugee agencies work on the front line, trying to get housing, jobs and legal advice for refugees. They don’t have the resources to run a public education campaign to address the misinformation that’s put out in the tabloids. So that’s what we do. We try to bring the issues home to people.
CC: Issues like what?
CB: Issues like the detention of entire families. It was only recently that “family rooms” were provided in detention centres. It’s extremely lucrative for the private companies that run them. The contractors get paid per person per day – so if you detain a family, that’s four birds with one stone. It maximises occupancy of the detention facilities. It’s a money-making scheme – that’s my perspective on it anyway*. Detaining families was an entrepreneurial idea that the security firms sold to policy makers in such a way as to make it fit with government policy. They use the argument that it’s undesirable to split up families. These companies have very successful lobbyists who are very well connected at very high levels of government. Don’t forget that these are security companies, who supply a huge range of security services to the government, from prisons to personal protection. There is a very close relationship between the government and the private sector in this area. It is in the security firms’ contracts with the government that they must be allowed to make profits above cost. So the Home Office needs to fill the detention centres – that’s one of the government’s contractual obligations. Therefore, if there’s a spare bed anywhere in the system, immigration officials want to fill it. In fact, one of the best pieces of advice for asylum seekers lining up to go through immigration at the airport is to be at the back of the queue, because once the detention centre rooms are filled up, you’re much less likely to be detained.
CC: Why do you use actors, rather than refugees themselves, to make these points?
CB: We use actors because firstly it is traumatic for actual refugees to relive their experiences in public, time and time again. Second, what refugees say is often unstructured. Finally, by using actors we can play to hostile or partially hostile audiences, to which it would not be appropriate to expose a refugee. We like to play to a variety of audiences because we are out to change opinion – we don’t want to play to people who are already on-side. But we never fictionalise what the refugees said. The Asylum Monologues contain the real words of asylum seekers. We don’t even fix the grammar. We report the truth, in a concise and structured way.
CC: Can’t people get the truth from the established media?
CB: The tabloid press is the problem. Practically every day there’s something derogatory said about asylum seekers. There’s never a positive story about an asylum seeker making a positive contribution.
CC: Joseph Conrad, Lou Grade, Albert Einstein…
CB: Exactly. And there’s never anything about the local communities who want a particular asylum seeker to stay, and who are campaigning for them. All you get is negative stereotypes, and that becomes embedded in the reader’s mind through daily exposure. And the government only gives half of the argument. They talk about the cost of hosting asylum seekers. And if that’s all you hear from your elected representatives, that begins to seem like the whole truth.
CC: Is the UK government responding to public antipathy, or creating it?
CB: Both. There is real public concern about immigration, but that tends to get confused with the issue of asylum seekers, who represent less than five percent of total immigration to this country. “Foreigners” and “asylum seekers” have become mixed up in the public mind. Misperceptions like that need to be cleared up. And once that’s done, I am hopeful that British public opinion can change. I am optimistic. I met a person recently who said she was against asylum seekers, and who it later turned out was giving meals to a Camerounian woman who lived next door. And this person was like “Oh, that’s different – she was in real trouble, she’s a genuine asylum seeker!” So I have real faith in the humanitarian tradition that is very strong in this country. There are a huge number of very well-meaning people. Given the right information, they might be moved to change their perspective. But it has to be done in the right way. You don’t want to shout at them and you don’t want to tell them they’re idiots, because they’re not. You have to give them the truth and let them weigh it up for themselves.
CC: What can people do if they want to see a performance of the Asylum Monologues?
CB: Take a look at our website for dates and places. We perform in public places wherever possible. Wherever people ask us to come, we will come. After each performance there’s a question-and-answer session. We also give people examples of things they can do if they are moved to take further action. It’s non-confrontational. We try to attract an audience who would not normally go to rallies or policy events. We don’t just want to talk to people who are on-side. I’d say to people, please come, enjoy the evening, and make up your own mind.
CC: Christine Bacon, thank you very much.
* Author’s note: In this interview Christine Bacon voices some personal opinions about the UK Home Office’s relationship with private security contractors. I wanted to give the Home Office the opportunity to respond to these points, as there are clearly alternative explanations for the policy of family detention. I asked the Home Office repeatedly for an interview during August and September 2006. I was told by their press office that they would “see what they can do”. 18 months later, I’m still waiting. If anyone at the UK Home Office would like to respond to the allegations contained in the above piece, I will publish their comments here in full.
CHRISTINE BACON FACTFILE
Occupation: Organiser, Actors for Refugees
Interviewed by: Chris Cleave, at Toynbee Hall, London, August 2006
Links
- Actors for Refugees
- The Evolution of Immigration Detention in the UK: The Involvement of Private Prison Companies. A thesis by Christine Bacon (PDF file)
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