Ukip’s ‘ban’ of migrants from state schools sounds like segregation
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Version 0 of 1. About seven years ago my neighbourhood underwent a sudden and dramatic change. This particular corner of south Manchester has never really known a stable population. The redbrick terraces were originally built to house the Irish navvies who arrived to build the canals, or the newly urbanised poor who worked the mills in the city’s glory days. They would later be adopted as home by generations of migrants from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. By and large the various communities muddled along just fine together, cocking a merry Mancunian snook at cynics who insist multiculturalism cannot and could not work. In 2008 that cosy tradition was stretched almost to breaking point. The expansion of the EU to eastern Europe enabled some of Europe’s most deprived and oppressed people to seek a new life in the more affluent west. Different communities followed different paths, and one such path led directly to our dirt-cheap rented terraces. Related: Gillian Duffy: a lifelong Labour voter who may bring down the PM It is estimated that around 150 east European Roma families, each comprising around seven to 10 adults and children, moved into a few condensed streets on the Longsight-Levenshulme border within the Gorton South ward in 2008/9. The character, the colour, the sound of the area changed overnight. Many of the existing locals, irrespective of ethnic background, were stressed, scared and confused. When the Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy asked Gordon Brown “Where are all these eastern Europeans coming from?”, she was echoing many of my own neighbours at the time. Skip forward to 2015 and, barring the occasional grumble, things have settled down, tensions have dissipated. In response to community complaints, the council eventually took several steps to allay concerns and address some real problems. Of those, by far the most significant was sending out officers to identify the newly arrived children and enrol them into schools. It is easy sport for a commentator to pick apart the ill-informed stupidity of the Ukip website. Even Nigel Farage seems reluctant to fully endorse it. However the suggestion that Ukip would seek to ban new immigrants from accessing free state education for five years really does raise the bar for unmitigated idiocy. I cannot imagine a policy that would be more corrosive to community relations, more obstructive to integration, or more pernicious in its effects on vulnerable individuals. I cannot imagine a policy that would be more corrosive to community relations, more obstructive to integration In the first few months after our Roma population arrived, children would play in the streets all day, and without any reason to get up in the morning, often late into the night as well. Those children were the most visible signifier of a divided community, different cultures living different lives. Getting them into school changed everything. Children from different backgrounds began to befriend each other. As the terms went by at the primary school gates, we parents went from averted gazes to nods of acknowledgement, smiles and handshakes. It is hard to hate or fear someone after you have sat next to them through an infants’ nativity play. The children, meanwhile, quickly learned English – often becoming the only member of their household to do so fluently. As an Ofsted report last year made clear, after starting from a very low (often non-existent) educational level, Roma populations still drag behind others in attainment. Nonetheless, some of those enrolled into primary schools in 2008/9 are now sitting GCSEs and A-levels; doubtless some will soon move on to college and university – productive, educated members of British society who, if Ukip had its way, would instead have been roaming the streets for five long years of childhood. Whatever one’s stance on the benefits or otherwise of immigration, the suggestion that children’s right to education be used as a policy pawn is simply appalling. Our atomised, fractured modern lives are largely bereft of true community. We have too few hubs, too few shared experiences. Our schools, particularly our primary schools, now stand as our last remaining points of contact for too many of us. Generations of migrant families have settled into British life through shared state schooling – a huge achievement that should be recognised, applauded and supported. Those who would segregate and separate our children, whether through exclusive faith schools and free schools or through the half-baked anti-immigrant rhetoric of Ukip, are not the defenders of community cohesion, but its worst enemies. |