Is the British Government Afraid of it’s Own History
It is often said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it but what if you wanted that to happen?
Between 2012 and 2018 the British Home Office wrongfully detained 850 people as illegal migrants. This was as part of the ‘hostile environment’ approach to reducing UK immigration. The aim was to make the UK a less appealing destination by use of threats, intimidation, and over zealous border security.
In late 2017 evidence came to light that the Home Office and Border Force had been targeting older British Caribbean people who had either entered the country as minors or been born to migrant parents. Specifically those who had arrived or been born before 1973; when immigration rules were changed for the UK entry into the EC (precursor of the EU). This came to be known as the Windrush Scandal after the passenger liner Empire Windrush a passenger liner from Kingston to Tilbury which carried a number of migrants to the UK in 1948. While only a few hundred Caribbean people travelled on that voyage a major, and let’s just say racist, political reaction made the ship an icon of West Indian migration to the British Isles. As such these early post-war migrants are often called the Windrush Generation.
One of the things that makes the Windrush Generation distinct is that they arrived before there were any laws limiting migration from the British Commonwealth. In fact the 1948 British Nationality Act had created the category of Commonwealth and UK Citizen (CUKC) which granted equal civil rights to UK residents and colonial subjects. Ironically this was probably designed to discourage migration and maintain a white ruling class in former imperial domains. Instead it allowed large numbers of black Caribbean people to migrate to the British Isles.
Although there was nothing about their journey which could be described as illegal, the Commonwealth migrants who arrived before 1962 did not require permits. As such they were, in a very particular way, undocumented. Well not totally undocumented. Landing cards issued to some migrants on arrival in the UK had been accepted by immigration authorities as evidence of legal arrival and proof of long term residence in the UK. However these records were destroyed in 2010 at the behest of the British Government leaving many with no evidence of their passage. It was only after this policy of erasing records that the Home Office seemed to launch its concerted campaign against British Caribbean people. A particularly vindictive policy as the Home Office knew they were targeting long term residents but placing on them the burden of proving that they were.
In order to stop something like this from happening again the Home Office embarked on a new staff training program that would teach the history of the British Empire and race relations in the UK. Coventry University were given a £600,000 contract to create the course which they delivered in 2021. Professor Paul Noon gave assurances that this would be a rigorous and independent process and that the Home Office were ready to “engage with these challenging and sensitive subjects.” However the Home Office has delayed putting any staff through the course as they feel some elements are too controversial. In the summer of this year the Home Office intended to begin the course in late 2022. It is now December and there has been no further news of progress.
The Home Office has not been clear which elements of the course they object to. Academics involved in creating the program have suggested that the Home Office don’t want to address the negative legacy of the British Empire and racist immigration policies enacted in the past. If that’s true it would seem that the Home Office are using ignorance as a tool. Perhaps they’re afraid that if border agents understood how the British Empire displaced and distributed people around the globe, often intentionally cutting those people off from their cultures and ancestral homes, then they would be less enthusiastic about sending people back where they came from. Perhaps people would start to wonder if this was less about national security and more about preserving imperial practices of social engineering that guarantee white supremacy.
Even if that isn’t the case, it might be enough to know that civil servants want to change the content of the training course at all. Coventry University were promised academic independence when they designed the course and clearly this was never intended. Despite warnings to the contrary this was indeed a simple box ticking exercise.
Speaking of box ticking exercises the Home Office has been running a history course for the last ten years but not for its staff. The “Life In The UK” test was introduced in 2002 as part of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. Passing this test is a requirement for gaining British citizenship or Indefinite Leave to Remain. From 2013 British history has been a major component of the test.
Questions are multiple choice and answers must be given in agreement with the chapter A Long and Illustrious History; included in the textbook Life in the UK: A Guide for New Residents. I have found and read a pdf of the third edition of this guidebook. In my opinion it contains numerous errors and oversights yet giving an answer, a correct answer, that deviates from the words of the textbook will jeopardize a citizenship application. Access to human rights is restricted to only those willing to endorse the official government positions on the history of the British Isles.
I’ve decided not to give a greatest hits of all the errors in the textbook. After all it’s an old version, errors could be corrected, and that it’s wrong in places is besides the point. I think the omissions are more telling. The British Empire in India is almost entirely glossed over and I didn’t find any mention of British involvement in the Middle East. The Boer Wars are mentioned as if they are an anomaly with no time devoted to wars between the British Empire and various African nations. Neither is their much reference to any of the indigenous people who resisted colonization in the Americas or the Pacific.
Also while the arrival of Jewish people in the UK during the modern era is included there is no explanation of the Edict of Expulsion; the reason there was no Jewish community in England since the time of King Edward I. Similarly the Atlantic slave trade gets three paragraphs of which the largest is devoted to abolitionism and interdiction of slave ships by the Royal Navy. What happened to the slaves ‘freed’ by the West Africa Squadron is left entirely to the imagination. If you’re curious many of them died in captivity or while waiting to be returned home, some were recruited into the army or navy, and some were transported to the Americas anyway to work as ‘apprentices’. A safe return home was very much the exception.
Of course the Life in the UK test is not a quiz about life in the UK at all. A study at Essex University found that the pass rate for a random selection of British residents (mostly UK citizens) was close to 33% which is on a par with applicants from Laos. I don’t think the people in the study were given access to the textbook so they probably did particularly badly (excluding a few who confessed to cheating and had their results removed from the survey). That said, you would think that British citizens would excel at a test about how to be a British citizen. The actual pass rate for UK nationals is 69% which is just below the 70% average for all nationalities and well below the 86% average for EU countries.
There is a notable disparity in the pass rate depending on national origin. More than 95% of migrants from Australia, Canada, and the United States pass the test. Compared to less than 50% of applicants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Somalia, and Thailand. Applicants from India, by far the largest cohort of applicants, pass at a rate of 74%. Note that this is not the average test score but the raw average pass rate. With limited information it’s hard to say exactly what causes some countries to have more success than others. To illustrate the point broadly I’ve opted to do a geography and colour in a map.
As a rule the better off, European, and majority white countries have more success. And sure, the map is not the territory. The map doesn’t account for things like migrant numbers, numbers of tests taken, numbers of tests taken as a share of migrants from that region, and so on. Also I’m obviously trying to influence your reading of it by colouring low pass rates in red as if their high failure rate must be a bad thing. I think it is bad because it indicates institutional racism. I assume from the Home Office perspective this map shows a great success. The countries doing badly are in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Places from where the UK government has always aimed to stifle immigration.
Life in the UK tests hardly seem consistent with their own professed British values of justice, individual liberty, and respect for different beliefs. Rather it seems something authoritarian, fearful of challenging ideas, and demonstrably unfair and discriminatory. The test is designed to be obtuse and difficult so that it puts people off applying for citizenship or leave to remain. It all factors into the hostile environment approach. The testing process is designed to remind you that your situation is precarious and ideally to keep it that way by denying leave to remain. It’s simply another tool to make migrants feel unwelcome. The cruelty is the point.
The Home Office knows they’re in an information war. The last thing they want is their staffers seeing a different point of view. I suppose I have to give credit to Coventry University for creating a course that is totally unacceptable to the government even if it never sees the light of day. However it’s going to take more than honesty to change things. The Home Office can continue to bury historical facts and destroy records. They can, and do, use their power and influence to create their own facts and their own version of history so they can continue to lie and intimidate innocent people with impunity. They can claim, without having actually done anything, that they’ve changed and can act appalled when the next scandal comes around. The only small victory here is the proof that the UK Home Office are clearly ashamed of what they are and afraid of being found out.
Thanks for reading
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Links and Sources
Windrush Scandal Explained from JCWI
Home Office tried to ‘sanitise’ staff education module on colonialism
Windrush scandal: Home Office showed ‘ignorance’ of race
Priti Patel’s broken Windrush promises
Life in the UK Test Pass Rates from Garuda Publications (pdf)
