29 June 06: Report on Unity demo at Parliament

Asylum seekers from Glasgow called for the right to work and an end to detentions outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 29th June. About 150 people, mostly asylum seekers - with about 20 supporters, some of whom had travelled from Newcastle to join the protest – gathered to hold an up-beat, noisy, protest outside the Parliament during the last First Minister’s question time before the Parliament shuts for the summer.

About ninety people travelled by train from Glasgow and held an impromptu procession from the station led by the Unity banner. Protesters met up with supporters and friends from Edinburgh. Others came by coach organised by a local church in the East End of Glasgow.

Chanting “Stop Dawn Raids!”, “No More Deportations!” and “We belong to Scotland!” the group spent three hours outside the Parliament taking turns to speak and lead the chanting. Speakers called for the right to be treated with dignity and respect and for asylum seekers to be given the right to work so they were no longer dependent on benefits.

Several speakers also mentioned the recent campaign against removals to the YMCA but called for continued vigilance against possible future attempts to move families and for the importance of solidarity and unity by asylum seekers.

Several MSPs, Rosie Kane, Sandra White, Colin Fox, Tommy Sheridan and Mark Ballard, joined the protesters for a shortwhile. Asylum seekers had been due to have a meeting inside the Parliament with MSPs but due to the size of the crowd the room booked was not big enough and it was decided to continue the meeting outside.

During a picnic lunch whilst children played on the grass outside the Parliament many asylum seekers however took the opportunity to be shown round the Parliament by SSP MSP Rosie Kane.

For many asylum seekers present it was the first time they had been at the Parliament (or in Edinburgh) and although we may not have made the impact we would have wished, many felt the day had been great fun and very successful!

One asylum seeker commented that the day was the first time that he had felt that he really had a right to live in Scotland.

27/6/06: Victory in fight against forced relocations!

Following an upsurge in resistance to the plans to uproot dozens of families from their homes and communities in Pollokshaws in the south side of Glasgow, the Home Office has caved in to demands that people be found homes nearby.

Under the privatisation of asylum seeker housing in Glasgow, around 1000 people seeking refuge from political and religious persecution, war, torture and rape, currently housed by the council in flats leased from Glasgow Housing Association Ltd, are to be given a new private landlord.

The Council has been secretly working with the Home Office and YMCA Glasgow to get around guidelines which state that families should be rehoused within 3 miles of their current home, in an effort to move families out of GHA blocks scheduled for demolition, and into the YMCA mega-hostel on the other side of the city. Most families have refused to move away from their area and into a block that is totally inappropriate for families with children.

Now the council has pulled out of the unholy alliance, forcing the Home Office to extend the relocation process and allowing time for landlords to find accommodation in the local area. Until now, they had all been adamant that there are no family-sized flats in the south side of Glasgow, a claim derided as ludicrious by the community activists who live there, and who have been supporting their asylum seeking friends and neighbours.

The families have been receiving support from their local communities, and from UNITY, the Union of Asylum Seekers in Scotland, who have organised protests and a solidarity presence that has prevented some planned evictions. Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees and local community activists organised a public meeting in Pollokshaws Burgh Hall last night, attended by around 300 people.

Speakers from Glasgow's refugee communities told of their fears of being relocated to another housing scheme and how they want to have a proper flat in their own area, not live in a hostel. One family told how their son was badly beaten by local youths twice within two days of moving. Positive Action In Housing called for equal treatment for all families being moved out of the flats - why should asylum seeking families be denied rehousing in their area, have their kids moved to a new school and get no help with removals?

The meeting also heard that this is only a temporary reprieve, and that there are other vulnerable families across the city being moved by the private landlords - YMCA and Angel Group - from their homes to isolation in areas with no other refugees or support networks.

However, the mood of the meeting was upbeat. This was another small victory against the brutal Home Office machine. Earlier this year direct action and public protests led by the "Glasgow Girls" campaign forced the Home Office to halt the terrifying dawn raids on at least families with children studying for exams. The UNITY vigils and blockades of Brand Street Immigration Reporting Centre have resulted in families only having to sign monthly instead of every week. And now refugees with solidarity from their Scottish neighbours have won against a powerful coalition of Home Office, Council, YMCA and private landlords. No other city in Britain has won against the asylum system. Perhaps no other city has united in this way, the settled community alongside refugees, fighting back against the system.

The struggle continues!

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Positive Action In Housing press release. 27 June 06

NASS forced removals to YMCA halted - temporarily - but the asylum communities' fight to remain in Pollokshaws continues.

Further to this morning’s press conference to highlight the plight of asylum seekers who are being forced to move 10 miles away to YMCA hostel accommodation in Red Road, Springburn, as a result of Glasgow’s demolition programme, we are pleased that NASS has put an immediate hold on moves to the YMCA for three months. We understand that a private company, the Angel Group has been asked to procure more properties in the Pollokshaws area, where asylum seekers are currently being accommodated with the aim of rehousing families in the local area, allowing children to remain at their current school.

Robina Qureshi, director, Positive Action in Housing, said:

“We welcome NASS’s decision to put a freeze on forced removals of asylum seekers to the YMCA for three months. It’s an utter disgrace that they would to try to forcibly uproot whole families into what was effectively designed as hostel accommodation while at the same time their indigenous Scottish neighbours were given choice in the local community.

“YMCA’s role in all this is utterly objectionable, they were set up to address social need yet they appear to be cashing in on the plight of vulnerable families as well as cooperating in sending families back. How much are they exactly making out of asylum families moved to the YMCA in Red road? And if they think the hostel accommodation with its archaic communal laundry – four washing machines serving 30 storeys – is so good perhaps they should set the example and move their own families in.

“NASS and the Council should remember that these families are not outsiders they have been here for several years and are part and parcel of the Southside community. If NASS try to forcibly remove the asylum families in Pollokshaws then they will have to deal with the growing discontent of the rest of the local communities as well.

“There is no ‘them and us’ here. The asylum families now have three months before the forced removals start again, this is the time to build their campaign to ensure that when the new school term starts in august 2006, their children are going to the same schools like other Scottish kids. We will assist them and so will other charities, churches and trade unions as well as ordinary decent Scottish citizens. Forced removals have no place in a decent civilised society and we aim to make sure it doesn’t happen at all. The campaign starts now.”

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Glasgow City Council press statement, 27 June 06:

There follows a brief statement from Councillor Irene Graham, Glasgow City Council's Equalities Spokesperson.

"We have been working closely with our partner agencies and NASS to minimise any disruption due to the scheduled demolition of properties used under the dispersal programme."NASS has agreed to a three-month extension for the transition process,which means we can put an immediate hold on moves to YMCA properties.

The Angel Group has been asked to procure more properties in the Pollokshaws area, where asylum seekers are currently being accommodated. Our ultimate aim is to re-house as many families in the local area as possible, allowing children to reamin at their current school."Glasgow welcomes asylum seekers and refugees and across our communities, they continue to make a positive contribution to the life of the city."

Notes to Editors:Previously, the Council was the only provider of housing under the dispersal programme, as agreed with NASS. The new contract sees the Council retain 80% of the provision, with 20% disposed between Angel Group and the YMCA. If Angel Group cannot secure enough properties in the area, then there can be no guarantee that asylum seekers will not need to move to alternative accommodation. However, partner agencies are working to ensure this is notthe case. Most NASS-contracted properties have been sub-let to the Council by GHA. Under its refurbishment programme, a number of GHA properties have been scheduled for demolition. Where this is the case, alternative accommodation must be sought for asylum and refugee inhabitants, as well as the indigenous population.

Refugee Week on Indymedia

From Indymedia Refugee Week feature...

Refugee Week: Smile for the week and to hell with you for the rest of the year!

At a time when enforced deportations are at their highest rate ever and corporate-run detention centres are packed with thousands of people, whose only crime was to seek refuge in this country; when dawn raids and the weekly reporting are constant nightmares for many asylum seekers; when the government is introducing increasingly more restrictive and racist immigration controls every day (asylum quotas, immigration point system etc.); comes Refugee Week (19-25 June) to "promote understanding and to celebrate the cultural contributions of refugees."

While the "nationwide festival" is, indeed, an opportunity for refugees and immigrants to make their voices heard, faced with all the "asylum madness" of mainstream media, there are many reasons to assume that the event is essentially a cheap public-relations exercise, both for the government and for some of the organisations and corporations involved.

The events appear to be designed to deliberately hide the real issues surrounding asylum and immigration. Serious political content is systematically suppressed. Besides the Home Office, some events -for example, Birmingham's Celebrating Sanctuary - are partly funded by such dodgy asylum profiteers as the Angel Group. Furthermore, the way in which things are organised mirrors much of Labour's discredited multi-cultural policies in terms of dividing refugees along ethnic lines.

18 June 06: forced relocations in Glasgow

Below are details of a public meeting, and a statement from Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees in response to the forced relocation of hundreds of asylum seeking families in Glasgow. The Campaign has called a public meeting on Tuesday 27th June, 7pm-9:30pm in Pollokshaws Burgh Hall, and has launched a petition calling on the Home Office, the Council and the new private landlords to find decent housing in the areas where asylum seeking families want to stay.

For copies of the petition to print out, fill in and return, send an email to glascamref@hotmail.com or noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

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Keep our communities together!

Public meeting:

Tuesday 27 June at 7pm.

Pollokshaws Burgh Halls

2025 Pollokshaws Road

Speakers in support of keeping asylum seeking members of our communities in their own neighbourhoods:

Jock Morris, Chair, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees

Councillor Stephen Curran (Ward 71 Pollokshaws)

Bill Spiers, Scottish Trades Union Congress

Robina Qureshi, Positive Action In Housing
Others being invited

Buses: Numbers 45, 47, 57 and Barrhead & Thornliebank buses to the doorTrain: to Pollokshaws West from Central Station.
For more information, phone Jock on 07896 877 315 or Colin on 0141 632 5811

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Keeping Communities Together

The insistence of the Home Office in including a 19% private element in the housing arrangements for asylum-seekers in Glasgow is causing great distress and disruption for asylum-seeker families.

Approximately 300 families have to change to a private landlord and for most, this will mean leaving the homes they have occupied for up to five years. Rather than being found accommodation in their own area, most families are being told they must move or have their financial support cut off. They are to be separated from their local support networks and their children moved from schools in which they are happy. Their communities will lose the friendship and integrated neighbourliness many local people have worked so hard to achieve.

Roughly half the families are being dispersed about the city by the Angel group and the other half are being sent to the YMCA's tower block hostel in the Red Road in Springburn. While the working class people of Glasgow strive to support their new friends and neighbours, the Young Men's Christian Association is intent on establishing an asylum-seeker ghetto in one tower block. In spite of being invited to state reasons why this accommodation is unsuitable, the first of these families has already been refused by the Home Office and told that they must move to the YMCA in Red Road.

The buildings that most of these families live in are due for demolition at some time in the future but none of them for at least two years. There need be no hurry to move these families and there are alternative empty houses in their areas.

We call upon the Home Office, Glasgow City Council, the Angel group and the YMCA to treat our asylum-seeker friends and neighbours with respect and dignity, to take due regard of their rights and needs and, where they choose, to delay their moving home and seek alternative accommodation for them in the neighbourhoods where they are established.

Signed:
Jock Morris, Chair, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
Colin Deans, Chair, Pollokshaws Burgh Halls

*To add your name, or your organisation's, contact the Campaign at glascamref@hotmail.com

or via noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

15 June 06. YMCA and NASS: What a mess!

More information is coming out about how the YMCA in Glasgow is poorly treating asylum seekers.
Last night, 14th June, about 40 people, mainly asylum seekers, crammed themselves into
the community rooms in Pollokshaws for an emergency meeting. In an at times heated and emotional meeting, at least 15 families pledged not to move to the YMCA in any circumstances. At the same time friends and neighbours of the families pledged to do what they could to support them.

This angry rebellion is due to recent changes to how asylum seekers are housed in Glasgow. For the last five years all asylum seeker families were housed in Glasgow Housing Association flats rented by Glasgow City Council who had the contract from the National Asylum Support Scheme to accommodate them. In January this year fifty per cent of the contract was supposed to be 'privatised’ and Glasgow YMCA and a company called Angel, won part of the NASS contract.

Under GCC families were housed in mainly old tower blocks in housing schemes around Glasgow, some of whom are due for demolition in the next two to five years.

A month ago in mid May, the larger asylum seeker families received letters telling them they would have to move to the YMCA. They could appeal this decision using the ‘pink form’ and families with children studying for exams, for example, would not be moved. Alarm was immediately raised, as it seemed that only Congolese families received letters but since then they’ve been sent to a wider range of families.

Shortly after, within weeks, YMCA staff began to visit people in their homes and telling them they were due to move into the YMCA hostel only one or two weeks later. People due to move were told that they couldn’t take any of the larger items of furniture they had managed to acquire, nor have washing machines in their new flats or telephone lines and that the YMCA would only help to move smaller items.

Many of the families, have struggled against quite unbelievable odds to make safe and secure homes for them and their children and have built up strong connections in the areas they were ‘dispersed’ to. They are, understandably, reluctant to take children out of schools where they had settled and move to new and unfamiliar areas where they did not know anybody and so on. As a result a full-scale rebellion against moving to the YMCA has been brewing over the last fortnight as one by one, families have refused to move from their existing flats.

At last night’s meeting more information came out about the depths the YMCA has sunk to in its efforts to get families to move to inappropriate accommodation in the tower block hostel on the edge of the Red Road housing scheme. As a result of the YMCA’s failure to persuade the families that they can provide appropriate accommodation for them, the YMCA has colluded with NASS resulting in the cutting off of all financial support for families refusing to move.

Several families reported that they had been unable to collect their weekly NASS benefits – a meagre 70 per cent of regular state benefits. This was despite the fact that all the families affected are still waiting to hear the results of their appeal about the decision to move to the YMCA using the ‘pink appeal form’.

In a mean-spirited manoeuvre that could possibly be illegal, NASS and the YMCA are collaborating to stop families getting their benefits. The NASS office informs the YMCA which family should be moved to their hostel. The YMCA then gives the family a date to move and inform NASS of that date. NASS then cancels benefits for the family at their old address and issues a new benefits letter for the family to take to the post-office in Springburn, which is then sent to the ‘new’ address at the YMCA hostel and completely out of reach of the family. As a result families refusing to move, at least until they have had a formal response to their appeal about the decision to move them, have had their benefits simply and immediately stopped leaving families of four, five or six people with nothing to live on.

In effect the YMCA are saying starve or move to the YMCA. And that choice has come out of the blue for most families, who have had less than a month to prepare for it.

Determined efforts by some families with help from the Scottish Refugee Council had managed to get NASS to reissue letters to the existing addresses that they refuse to leave but it is unsure how long the families can keep this up.

What is shocking is that the YMCA is a Christian charity – or rather claims to be. The ruthlessness in which they are behaving is the sort of thing you would expect from only the most ruthless of greedy, profiteering landlords. What is also alarming is that the families affected in this way could very well lose their current homes as well as a result of losing their NASS benefits. Not bad for a charity best known (apart from the disco song) for its work with vulnerable Homeless people!

It gets worse. The YMCA’s behaviour is in stark contrast to the way in which Angel, the other company that also got part of the NASS contract in Glasgow, is behaving.

“Don’t like the flat we’re offering you?’ Angel say” Well if you can find one yourself that costs less than £450 a month to rent, then we’ll pay that for you.”

Unity has heard of at least three families this has happened to. With Angel, families have been given two or three weeks to find their own flats on the private market as an alternative to the ones Angel are offering them.

Are Angel a charity like the YMCA, we hear you ask? No, we reply. Do they claim to have an explicitly ‘Christian’ approach to everything they do? No, we tell you. Angel is providing accommodation for asylum seekers purely to make profit. Angel is an out and out capitalist company and has the charitable conscience of a worm.

As a small organisation that relies on donations for its survival, we at Unity understand the pressures that exist within charities and non-governmental organisations to maximise returns on your activities where possible. But the extent to which the YMCA seem to prepared to go in order to force asylum seekers to move to the YMCA without an alternative so the YMCA can get their hands on the dosh has made even the most cynical and hard-bitten atheists amongst us choke.

If Angel can find it profitable to give families the choice of flats and the opportunity to find flats for themselves, why can’t the alleged caring, compassionate, ‘Christian’ YMCA?

To give them some credit the YMCA have attempted to improve conditions. They have sent out new letters explaining that they have now put the locks back on the doors of the flats the families are being “invited” to move into. And they also say that the oppressive regime requiring everyone to sign-in and out every time they go outside of their home has been suspended for these families.

But that isn’t good enough, the damage has been done.

The YMCA has got to prove that they can provide appropriate accommodation. That they are prepared to give families a choice. Why can’t families have washing machines in their flats? Surely that is an essential for large families, especially those with small children. Does the YMCA really believe token operated communal washing machines shared by hundreds of people is reasonable?

Why can’t families have telephone lines into their flats? At least two of the 15 or so families refusing to move to the YMCA have children studying at university who depend on having Internet access at home. (Imagine that – studying for a degree at university when English is not your first language, without being able to receive any financial support, and then being told you can only use the Internet in the computer room for half an hour at a time.)

These are asylum seekers for goodness sake! Does the YMCA not realise how important it is that these families should be able to keep in touch with friends and families in their home countries?

Maybe it is due to the attitudes of the staff at the YMCA. Ignoring the several complaints of racist and hostile behaviour by some members of staff at the YMCA that we have heard, Unity has been told, “These families are only here temporarily” and that “It’s not our fault, we’re only following
the NASS contract.”

Well, first of all, most of the families involved have lived in Glasgow for four or five years. Most are still fighting complex legal battles with the Home Office to get permission to stay in the UK. In the last three months, of the dozen or so families that we know have been detained for forced removal, nine have managed to get released and have returned to safety in Glasgow. Out of the 1,800 asylum seeker families living in Glasgow, only 72 people have taken the £3,000 bribe by the IOM –the International Organisation of Migration - to voluntarily return to their home country. [The YMCA is a partner with the IOM for this scheme, incidentally.]

And secondly if both Glasgow City Council were able to get concessions out of NASS under the original contract and Angel seem to be able to behave more humanely with the new NASS contract then why can’t the YMCA?

We estimate that the YMCA hopes to fill at least forty of their three-bedroom flats with the largest asylum seeker families. With the current poor success record that the Home Office have in removing asylum seeker families from Glasgow either by bribes or by dawn raids (a failure
that we hope will continue and get worse, incidentally) it is likely that many of the asylum seeker families the YMCA are dealing with could be in Glasgow for much longer than a year. Much, much longer.

Unless of course the YMCA knows something that we don’t. In which case every family refusing to move to the YMCA are quite right not to go anywhere near the place.

This situation requires urgent action by anyone appalled that a supposed Christian charity has made such a mess of things. We urge anyone who has any influence with the YMCA to use it to get them to radically change what they are doing. At the same time we need people to contact NASS and Glasgow City Council to alert them to the crisis that is developing.

It is not good enough that families, some with very young children, should face having their limited financial support being taken away and homelessness because a charity has failed to adequately consult their future tenants about what would be appropriate accommodation for them.

The Unity Centre
30 Ibrox Street
Glasgow
G51 1AQ
0141 427 7992
theunitycentre [at] btconnect.com

You can contact the Glasgow YMCA on 0141 557 2355

The YMCA movement throughout the world has a [supposed] commitment to social justice and citizenship expressed through the Kampala Principles adopted in 1973. These commit the YMCA:

1. to work for equal opportunity and justice for all.
2. to work for and maintain an environment in which relationships among people are characterised by love and understanding.
3. to work for and maintain conditions within the YMCA and in society, its organisations and institutions, which allow for honesty, depth and creativity.
4. to develop and maintain leadership and programme patterns which exemplify the varieties and depth of christian experience.
5. to work for the development of the whole person.

http://www.ymcaglasgow.org

Protest at the Parliament, Thurs 29 June

Come to the Scottish Parliament!

Come and protest outside the Parliament and meet MSPs inside to campaign for an amnesty, the right to work and the end to dawn raids and deportations!

On THURSDAY 29th JUNE Unity has organised train tickets from Glasgow Central for £4 return. Please buy your tickets first from the Unity Centre before Saturday 24th June so we know if we need to arrange more tickets.

Meet at GLASGOW CENTRAL at 9.30am. Train leaves at 10.00am and arrives in Edinburgh at 11.00am - please come early.

We will meet outside the Scottish Parliament at 11.30 in time for the First Minister's Question Time when First Minister Jack McConnell will be present. A meeting inside the Parliament with MSPs is being organised - if you wish to take part in this meeting the Unity Centre needs to know your name and address by Saturday 24th June. Tell your friends, family and neighbours! Leaflets about the protest are in the Unity Centre - come and take some to give out.

Unity Centre

30 Ibrox Street

Glasgow G52 1AQ
0141 427 7992
theunitycentre@btconnect.com