Democracy in Britain II

Britain is guilty of a shameful
attack on the free exchange
of ideas

Alf Young

As we all fretted over loved ones stranded around the world by the Icelandic volcano's dust cloud and the subsequent shutdown of much of European air space, one reaction from within the government machine prompted, in me, a wry smile. Now that bedraggled travellers in their tens of thousands will be flooding every airport arrival hall and every other port of entry, the UK Border Agency will be 'manning as many passport desks as possible...to speed the onward journey'.
     The body responsible for securing our borders and controlling immigration into this country clearly wants to be seen to be doing its bit to get life back to normal. But there will still be queues, it warns, as it pursues its mission to make Britain's borders among the most secure in the world. I recently witnessed that more muscular face of the UK Border Agency in hard-faced action. It scared me rigid. And I wasn't even going anywhere.
    
On the last Sunday in March, my wife and I were sharing a light lunch in a cafe in Fife. Carol's mobile rang. It was a frontline official from the UK Border Agency at Glasgow Airport. Was Carol expecting a visit from a Dr Amy Canevello? She was. Amy, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan, was coming to speak at an event organised for the following Tuesday by the centre Carol runs in Glasgow. Four hundred and fifty people had signed up to hear her and the other speakers. There was even a waiting list.
     But there was, said this woman from the Border Agency, a problem. Amy was coming here to work. She had no visa, no clearance under the UK's new points-based immigration system, introduced in 2008. The Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing was not registered as a sponsor for foreign labour. Carol didn't hold Amy's biometric details. It looked like the only onward journey Amy, a first time visitor to Britain, would be making was straight back whence she came. The caller, who would only identify herself by a number, would call back when a final decision had been made.
     Within the hour a second call confirmed that Amy and her partner Andy were to be deported the next day. As a visitor, with no speech to make, he was offered entry but chose to be treated like his partner. There was no appeal process. Having been finger-printed and their passports stamped 'Barred from Entry', she could have been held in a police cell. As an act of small mercy the pair would be released, minus passports, to their hotel. But they had to report back to Glasgow Airport by 4am the next morning to be put back on a flight to Amsterdam and onwards to Detroit.
     Carol asked to speak to a more senior Border Agency official. She pointed out that her centre is a charitable organisation. That the event – Self-Esteem, the facts, the myths, the challenges, the alternatives – was supported financially by the Scottish government, but was free to attendees. That it had attracted a large number of practitioners, policy-makers, teachers, parents and others. That, in no meaningful sense, was she Amy's employer or was Amy coming here to work. That she was due to go home in any case that Friday.
     The rules are the rules, Carol was told. And even an American academic coming here to deliver a one-hour lecture in return for a modest fee out of which she had to fund her own travel costs was in breach of the the UK's much vaunted new points-based system. 'There is no room for discretion, nor should there be,' ventured this local voice of UK border control.
     We drove back home. While a member of the centre's staff went to the hotel to try and make Amy's brief sojourn in Scotland as enjoyable as possible, we embarked, via the internet, on a crash course in how Britain has stooped so low in its bid to make our borders safe by clamping down on artists, musicians, dancers, writers and academics coming here from outside the European Union for concerts, temporary exhibitions, book launches or lectures.
     I'm ashamed to admit that, before that Sunday call from Glasgow Airport, I had never heard of the Manifesto Club or its damning dossier – 'UK Arts and Culture: Cancelled, by Order of the Home Office'. I vaguely remembered a band from Pakistan being refused entry for the World Pipe Band Championships on Glasgow Green. But I knew nothing of the scores of others refused the new visas or heavy-handedly detained at points of entry because they didn't have one.
     Days before Amy was detained, the Manifesto Club delivered a 10,000-plus petition to Downing Street decrying the impact of these new restrictions on cultural, intellectual and civic life in the UK. I'd go further. It is a shameful attack on the free exchange of ideas. Those who profess to be protecting us from terrorism by securing our borders risk trashing our hard-won international reputation as a haven for free speech and free thought. The mindset now controlling entry to this country appears to believe that every visitor to these shores from beyond the EU is potentially up to no good unless they can prove otherwise.
     Carol spent that Sunday afternoon on the phone trying to get through to the UK government what damage would be done if a speaker to a Scottish government-sponsored event was indeed deported back to America by a UK government agency before 450 people got to hear what she had to say on an important aspect of public policy. Explaining the research on self-esteem she and her colleagues at Michigan were conducting couldn't, after all, be done by anyone living and working here.
    
I spent those same hours trying to better understand the immigration rules under which Amy was being refused entry. I eventually discovered that frontline UK Border Agency staff don't even understand their own voluminous guidelines. As a US citizen planning to stay in the UK for less – a lot less – than six months, Dr Amy Canevello was perfectly entitled to come here without a visa. We still have, despite our new points-based system covering those who want to come and work here, a visa waiver agreement with the United States for visitors, whether tourists or here on business.
     And included in a list of what the Home Office regards as 'permissible activities' for business visitors to the UK is the following: 'Speaking at a conference where this is not run as a commercial concern (organisers not making a profit) and the conference is a 'one-off'.' Precisely what Amy Canevello was in Scotland to do.
     Eventually, around 8pm that Sunday evening, the decision to deport Amy was revoked, without prejudice. It says so on her passport. She got to deliver her lecture and she and Andy saw a little of a more welcoming Scotland. When the new system for selective migration was introduced in 2008, the immigration minister Phil Woolas claimed it would 'create a fairer Britain with fair treatment for those who play by the rules but tough action against those who break the law'.
     Amy Canevello was playing by the Home Office's explicitly stated rules for a business visitor to these shores but was met by tough action – some might say rough justice – by a UK Border Agency official who didn't understand her own rules. Amy could have been dishonest and told passport control she was simply here as a tourist. By telling the truth about the purpose of her visit she was treated, for a few hours, like a common criminal. Had we not strained every sinew to get that original decision overturned Amy would have joined that growing list of victims of a draconian system. To the UK's shame, the main casualty could again have been the free exchange of ideas, a trade which, in a democracy, no border should ever be allowed to police.

Alf Young is an award-winning Scottish journalist who writes regularly
for the Scottish Review