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Andrew Anthony Tuesday August 26, 2003 The Guardian As the last rays of a splendid summer head south, having delivered a carbon-emissions-assisted Mediterranean climate, it seems an appropriate moment to ask if Britain has become a warmer environment in other ways. Is it a more welcoming place, more relaxed, more attractive? Is it somewhere that, if you didn't already live here, you might wish to come? After extensive research into the matter, including reading several newspapers and magazines, I can reveal that opinions are divided. Broadly speaking, though, the current consensus appears to be that Britain is a good place to be if you are a tourist but a bad place to find yourself if you are an asylum seeker (note: the Daily Mail did not form part of the research material). This summer the tourist industry has been spreading the word that Britain is a cool location in which to take a break. That's cool as in hip, rather than cool as in chilly and unwelcoming. In this respect, perhaps in keeping with this apparent spirit of hospitality, newspaper travel pages have also been remarkably accommodating. The Sunday Times was not untypical when it announced back in July: "Suddenly our seaside towns are the places to be. Santorini is out. Scarborough is in." Meanwhile, anyone who saw Stephen Frears's film Dirty Pretty Things, will know what is on offer for impoverished migrants looking to settle in Britain: a choice between working all hours or selling a vital organ and, either way, being hassled round-the-clock by sinister customs officials. This, the progressive liberal line, was echoed recently by Darcus Howe writing in the New Statesman about Idi Amin's mid-70s expulsion of Asians. "Just like their present equivalents - the asylum seekers - the Asians from Uganda came to what can only be described as the most inhospitable place on Earth." He was referring, of course, to this country. Now, what is wrong with these two views? The answer is nothing really. They are perfectly reasonable opinions, except - and please excuse the pedantry - that they only bear the slightest and most tangential relationship to reality. Let's start with the proposition that Britain is the "most inhospitable place on earth". Is it a failure of imagination on my part, or would I be correct in pointing out that Uganda, the country that threw out the Asians and confiscated their property and life savings, might be considered marginally less hospitable than Britain, at least from the perspective of the expelled Asians? And if Britain continues to be the very worst place on earth for asylum seekers, why do people attach themselves to the bottom of 200mph trains in an effort to flee France to get here? As far as I am aware, no one is queuing up to risk the return journey so as to be able to luxuriate in the tender embrace of a Gallic bienvenue. The sad truth is that there is no place on the planet that is particularly welcoming to immigrants. It is a ludicrous myth that Britain, or the west in general, has a monopoly on xenophobia. That is a global story. Alas, a human story. You can't expel racism overnight, in the way that Amin kicked out the Asians, but in its relatively brief history of mass immigration, Britain has undoubtedly become a more tolerant society. In no small part that is due to the armies of people working to make the country a more open, multiracial society. To pretend otherwise is not only an insult to those efforts but it also implies there is no such thing as social change. And, if you think about it, only the most illiberal of minds would want to play host to that idea. That said, only the softest of brains could entertain the notion that Britain has become more attractive for the holidaymaker. A couple of months ago, I was asked to write a piece celebrating Britain's renaissance as a tourist destination. I declined on the grounds that if I wanted to write fiction I would prefer to work on a novel. The pieces that did appear reminded me of when I worked for a London listings magazine. Each year we were duty-bound to run a feature documenting the capital's thriving, 24-hour lifestyle. And annually, by the time we got to 2am, all that was open was a bagel shop in Brick Lane and a fish 'n' chip joint in Finsbury Park that - New York and Barcelona hide yourselves in shame - sold beer. London: the city that ever sleeps. Similarly, as excellent as they are, Rick Stein's restaurant in Padstow and a renovated oyster warehouse in Whitstable do not a cultural revolution make. By and large, the tourist business still operates as if Basil Fawlty were running it: transport is an endurance challenge; hotels plumb the depths but seldom the showers; and despite the hype, the seaside, like most of the food sold there, remains depressingly battered. The reason why Britain is such an awful place to visit is, paradoxically, the same reason why it is not such a bad place to stay: tolerance. One of the most appealing characteristics of modern British culture is that it can't be bothered with a socially rigid image of itself, in the way that, arguably, French and, say, Italian culture can. Here, for instance, you may dress how you like and nobody takes a great deal of notice. But while tolerance of a wealth of lifestyles should be encouraged, tolerance of poor practices must not. Let's welcome the third world but say goodbye to the third-rate. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Refugees_in_Britain/Story/0,2763,1029410,00. html |
