THE PRESS AND REFUGEES

Over the last few years much of the British press has become obsessed with refugees. All sorts of negative things are suggested about them and their reasons for coming here.

It is usually denied that racism lies behind this. Hopefully this is true. But there do seem to be double standards being applied. On the one hand people who are not of British ethnic origin are strongly criticised for coming to Britain. But there is no criticism of British people going to other countries (and on many occasions taking over these countries and turning them into colonies ruled from London).

Here are some facts about British emigration. According to shipping records, between 1815 and 1870 7,013,637 people emigrated from Britain. That is a rate of 125,244 people per year. Between 1870 and 1913 emigration ran at about 100,000 per year. This added up to 13% of the population. Between the 1960s and 1998 the figure picked up again, averaging 124,000 per year, when another 3% of the population left. Despite this huge outflow, as the 2001 census shows, ethnic minorities (many of whom are not immigrants but were born here) form just 7.6% of the population.

Such numbers dwarf the asylum figures. And this emigration continued not for a few years, but every year for almost two centuries! British people moved abroad not because of persecution, murder or torture but as economic migrants. Yet there were no press scares about floods of emigrants emptying the land or about a haemorrhaging of population.

There could not be a greater contrast with the treatment of those coming in. We will now look at one British newspaper, the Daily Mail, though many others could have been chosen. Take one randomly chosen but typical week - the start of 2001. It began with the headline: 'Asylum cheats under fire. They are bogus and they should admit it'(1 January). Two days later it talked about the 'Balkan trail' claiming this allowed 'thousands of illegal immigrants' to reach Britain and made a connection with terrorism. The paper, it said, had 'repeatedly warned of the dangers of terrorists using the Balkan train to enter the West.'

Yet the Mail then started a campaign against the scandal of 'The cancer "timebomb" in Balkan war shells…'(9 January): 'Further evidence emerged yesterday of the health risks of the uranium ammunition blamed for mystery illnesses among soldiers serving in the Balkans'. These shells were fired by Nato forces during the Kosovo war. What about the effect of these shells on local residents?

Critical attitudes towards refugees are not new. How did the Daily Mail react when Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, driving socialists and Jews to flee from the concentration camps and murder campaigns of the Nazi regime? It was aware of the desperate situation. The day after the Nazi invasion its headline was '30,000 Swiss man frontier' adding that four other nations also 'bar way to Austrians' - Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Romania.'(14 March 1938)

After perilous journeys some refugees managed to reach Britain. What was the Mail's reaction? In an editorial entitled 'Refugees'(23 March 1938) it wrote: 'Many Austrians are arriving in this country, and in the majority of cases are being turned back. No-one with any sense of humanity can witness without compassion the sad plight of these and others who are fleeing from their own countries.' But it quickly put such compassionate feelings aside: 'Britain would be the first to give them all shelter if she could, but in this matter she owes a duty to herself'. This duty is to be cold-hearted and selfish. In bold letters it writes: 'THERE ARE OBVIOUS OBJECTIONS TO A POLICY OF INDISCRIMINATE ADMISSION'. What objections? Setting aside a possible 'charge on the public assistance funds' and the 'additional burden on our resources' the Mail draws this conclusion: 'Generous instinct may overrule even these serious setbacks if the invasion of refugees was restricted to well-defined limits. But once it was known that Britain offered sanctuary to all who care to come, the floodgates would be open and we should be inundated.'(23 March 1938).

In 1938 we also read: 'In a pitched battle last night on the shore of Lake Galilee between British troops and Arabs it was reported that 80 of the rebels had been killed, largely by British warplanes. Once the British government states a solution which is fair and final and states also that this country means to impose it without more nonsense from anybody, terrorism in Palestine will fade like a desert mirage.'(6 October 1838). Earlier the British soldier's role was described as this: he 'takes hold of the savages of the part he comes to and teaches them to march and shoot as he tells them, to obey him and believe in him and die for him and the Queen.'(23 June 1897)

Did the press treat refugees badly because they were perhaps unfamiliar and came from 'far away'? What about the Irish when Ireland was considered part of Britain? In the 1840s a devastating famine hit Ireland when the main food crop - the potato - was hit by disease. The population fell from 8 million before to 5 million after. Very few countries have suffered such a catastrophic famine.

But exactly the same language was applied to Irish refugees then. The Daily Mail had not been set up, but in 1846 the 'liberal' Daily News wrote that Irish 'periodical immigrations were bad for England'. It hoped famine would keep people in Ireland. Blaming the hunger on laziness it wrote: 'Let us hope that… the shock to selfishness which the present misery can hardly fail to give… may at least give Ireland the benefit of the industry of her sons.'(9 October 1846).

When unbelievable misery caused the Irish to seek refuge in Britain they were verbally attacked: 'The Irish people is infected… They seem to consider starvation as one evil, and work as another, and want the Government to relieve them of both… The chief lesson they have learnt from their betters is that JOHN BULL is a great milch cow.'(14 October) Another reason they came was the 'fatuitous attachment and attraction for the Irish peasant to the spot where his superiors meet…'(25 November)

Scottish Newspapers wrote in similar terms: 'the great mass of Irish peasantry are thoroughly mixed up with crimes of this nature. The lower Irish are sunk in an abyss of depravity. The swarms of Irish labourers who pour into this country bring with them a moral and social plague.'(Edinburgh Post, 1841).

Such press treatment can have dangerous consequences for refugees who are turned back or face persecution on arrival in Britain. But it can also affect the population here. In Germany the right wing media magnate Hugenberg gave favourable coverage to the Nazis in the early 1930s. Soon after Hitler came to power he recognised he had made 'the greatest mistake of my life'. But by that time it was too late. It is interesting to see the Daily Mail's attitude to Hitler at that time. It partly justified Hitler's anti-semitism. Shortly after he came to power the Mail explained that: 'The German nation was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements… Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine.'(10 July 1933) Fascism in Britain, Mosley's British Union of Fascists who wore black shirts met with sympathy. In 1934 the Mail had the headline 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' (15 January 1934).

So it is important that people think carefully and critically when reading the press, and do not believe everything that is presented just because it is in print.