Gestapo-Free Zone

I wrote this in March 2014 after a visit to a friend’s birthday party in Newcastle. It could never happen in Newington Green, could it? I hope not. It could never have happened in Newington Green back there in the 50s and 60s, could it? No I don’t believe that it could. This is an illustration of Newington Green through what made it, and makes it, civilised in the nation, via a mechanism of comparison.

Bet It Wouldn’t Happen Where the Journalists Live – Newcastle, 22 March 2014

We went to Patricia’s birthday party. When we arrived at the Indian restaurant in smart West Jesmond in Newcastle shortly after 7 p.m. we found that in addition to our party of fifty-odd people the restaurant was full at its remaining tables on two floors and there was a constant milling around the bar-area of people ordering and collecting takeaways. It was busy.

And coming and going through and among this multitude, eight or ten po-faced men and women in blue onesies and bovver boots with a label on their jacket saying ‘Immigration and Border Control’, repeatedly walking up and down the stairs and asking things at the bar, giving the evening a kind of Gestapo flavour. It turned out that this was not a wheeze organised by Patricia, this was the authorities seeking out illegal immigrants.

Patricia found a moment to ask the owner of the restaurant, Ahmed, whom she knows quite well, about it. The heavies had been there since five o’clock, he said, opening every cupboard and fridge door, wanting to see into everything. It was difficult when the restaurant is so busy and he was having to apologise to everyone for slow service and what is more if they find anyone who is working there illegally he could be fined £10,000.

‘I do my best, but how can I know whether what someone tells me is true? How do I know if papers they show me are genuine or not?’ He seemed to be taking the stance that if you get caught then it’ll be a business expense of the type that is out of your control, a bit like something getting broken; and er. . . would he be able to claim tax relief on the expense? Looking this up it seems that he probably could if it came to it, though he may have to argue the case. And of course Ahmed the restaurant boss is right, if someone gives him a dodgy NI number he would not find out it was a made up one or one belonging to someone else for quite some time.

Anyway the Gestapo all marched out around 9 p.m., having found no Bangladeshis hiding in the fridge, and Ahmed shrugged his shoulders, it seems these days to be one of the things that, if you are of Bangladeshi origin in a town like Newcastle and running a restaurant, you have to put up with periodically.

I felt outraged. There is a French restaurant next door and an Italian one next door to that. Do they get raided? Admittedly French and Italian people can work here without needing anything more than an ID card, but the staff waiting on and in the kitchen – they could just as easily be Australian. Could it be the black faces that are the ones that get hassled?

It may be that the immigration officers raid Indian restaurants because there is a greater chance of finding illegal immigrants than there would be in an Italian restaurant, but then Ahmed is well known in the area, people know that he is running a successful restaurant and wants to stay on the side of the law and get on with running his business.

Patricia disagreed to some extent with my rantings, arguing that immigration needs to be controlled and by raiding a restaurant when it is busy they are more likely to find someone as all hands will be on deck. Which may well be so, but British policing has a tradition of of using low-key intelligence and focusing on identification of where the problems are, before charging in with metaphorical (or even real) truncheons flying. It all seems a bit too foreign for my liking.

And there is the cost-effectiveness. Eight people for four hours on a Saturday night – to arrest at most a cook and a waiter. And in reality no one at all. Taxpayers’ money. There may be a problem of illegal immigration but this sort of behaviour by the authorities gives the distinct impression that whatever problem it is they think they are tackling, it isn’t that one. Or perhaps I am wrong in my basic premise, perhaps the reality is a sideline, perhaps the intention is to give the impression through visible presence that the problem is being dealt with, a sop to what the authorities believe the people want to see, a political gesture. But if it is that then these authorities have bollocksed it up again as usual, as follows:

In Nazi Germany, when this sort of thing was more widespread, nastier and more extreme, one reads that the ordinary people mostly said: but what could we do? We did not see this most of the time! And tellingly this event was an example of that. Apart from Patricia and the staff of the restaurant, I did not find anyone who had seen any immigration officers. They just didn’t notice them! One man, a retired vet, when I pointed out who they were, said he had half registered them and guessed they might be VAT inspectors.

Extraordinarily, though raids such as this must be going on all over the place they seldom if ever seem to get reported. Is there a conspiracy going on among the press? Or is it just that journalists these days all live in chattering Islington and cannot in their wildest imaginings ever contemplate travelling north of Brent Cross?

Dave