In HD (Trafficked women) Nigeria CG [2016] UKUT 00454 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal considered the position of victims of trafficking returning to Nigeria. Under the previous country guidance case, PO (trafficked women) Nigeria [2009] UKAIT 00046, in order to demonstrate a real risk of persecution on return to Nigeria, a victim of trafficking needed to […]
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We went on a walk last Sunday, along with about 130 others.
It started in the cold, grey and wet, at a time when many of us would still be, if not in bed, certainly doing nothing much more energetic than turning the pages of a Sunday paper and slurping coffee. It ended in glorious early-evening light, with a rainbow over the Serpentine and, if not actual gold at the end of the rainbow, then the next best thing – cakes and prosecco.
Somewhere over the rainbow … Looking east from the Lido café in Hyde Park, the end-point of our Imprints walk. © Faiza Mahmood
It started in Greenwich, where so many migrant stories have started in the past – George I prominently among them, borne to his disembarkation at the Old Royal Naval College aboard the ship Peregrine, but also, though much less regally, Ignatius Sancho, born on a slave ship and later a lobbyist for the abolition of the slave trade. It ended in Hyde Park, just short of the Albert Memorial, flamboyant statue to one of the most-loved migrants of the nineteenth century and the inspiration for the cluster of museums and institutions – Albertopolis – that now draw so many visitors to our capital.
The outline of the route the Imprints walk took through London. © Brandingbygarden
Not all migrants migrate from east to west of the city, of course, but it's a useful hook to hang an event of this kind on. It's certainly a long walk, that walk from arrival to establishment, and not all migrants make it with equal success, happiness and good fortune. And it was a long walk, literally, on Sunday, a full 15 miles and counting, which not all participants made with equal success, happiness and comfort of foot. But the overwhelming majority of those who started the walk completed it, and there was a sense of euphoric satisfaction in Hyde Park at the end of the day that may have had something to do with the prosecco on offer, or possibly with the sheer relief of the walk now being at an end – but which was mostly down to the sense of fulfilment and enjoyment of a day spent in good company, learning something about the myriad migration stories that make up the history of London, and of the multiple layers that make each street and region a palimpsest of the migratory experience: whether it's the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid mosque, in a building that had previously been a synagogue and was, before that, a Huguenot chapel; or the building in Old Jewry, now housing the visa office for the People's Republic of China but almost eight hundred years previously the site of the first synagogue in this country; or 25 Brook Street, home to George Frideric Handel in the 1700s and the more raucous stomping ground of Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s.
The Jamme Masjid mosque in Brick Lane – previously a synagogue and, before that, a Huguenot chapel. Spectacular minaret sadly not shown. © Aditi Anand
Divided into groups of 10 to 15, each led by an incredibly well-versed volunteer guide and supported by one of our magnificent volunteers, we walked along the south bank of the Thames to Tower Bridge, meandered through the East End, Brick Lane and Spitalfields, wandered through empty and storm-soaked streets in the City, rising again into Clerkenwell and Holborn – passing through the world of clockmakers, jewellers, lawyers and artists, before moving westwards through Covent Garden, Soho, Kensington and Mayfair. In Postman's Park, Bill Bingham (our very own Ian McKellen) appeared out of nowhere, surprising us with a rendition of Shakespeare's Thomas More speech ('Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise / Hath chid down all the majesty of England … '), delivered (in theory) in the early 1600s to quell riotous discontent at the arrival of the Huguenots. We stopped along the way to hear the story behind particular buildings, or about individuals who had lived in that area, or whole movements of people; and in-between we talked to each other about our own stories, about plans for the Migration Museum Project, about how our country would change in the wake of the recent referendum decisions.
Emily Miller, the MMP's education manager, in Chinatown with Isabel Morrison. © David Wigram
We liked it so much we are already planning to do it again next year – at least once more in full length, and maybe on a number of other occasions, in a shorter form. And already we're thinking, if this works so well in London, why wouldn't it work just as well in any number of other cities: Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast, Bristol, Leicester? Get in touch with us if you want to help us plan how to extend it.
Oh, and we raised hugely important funds for the MMP's work, too. Our target was to raise £20,000 to enable us to continue delivering exhibitions, events and education work in schools as we build the case for a permanent Migration Museum for Britain. At the time of writing, we are still a little short of our target – the equivalent of finding ourselves in Regent Street, when we need to be in Hyde Park. If you would like to help us reach our target or destination, please go to our MyDonate page.
And, just in case you can't quite take our word for it, have a look at what some of the walkers had to say about the experience:
Epic day with informed guides – great fun despite the rain!
What a fab day! Like walking through a spread of London's amazing history!
A wonderful way to explore London and discover how migration is a fundamental part of the city's identity.
Amazing experience, informative and enlightening. Highly recommend it
I enjoyed seeing so much of London in one go, and learning about all the little histories and significances that would have gone unknown otherwise.
I loved the content and it's great to have the map as a momento. Lots of highlights that I have been boring my nearest and dearest with: Mayflower pub selling US stamps – Rotherhithe tunnel used to have shops! – De Hems pub history … and of course the wonderful performance in Postman's Park, a speech which I didn't know and now love.
Very interesting, and I learned lots! Like the fact that it was easier to be black than Catholic in Tudor England! It made me think about things in a totally new way – I hadn't thought of Paul Reuter as a German immigrant to London before!
We went on a walk last Sunday. It was a huge success, raising funds and fun in equal measure. Why don't you come on the next one we organise?
The first Imprints: London Migration Walk took place on Sunday 16 October 2016. Huge thanks to our team of volunteer guides, all of whom were mines of information, wit and inspiration – and to the volunteers who supported them. Without you, this project would be struggling! But the biggest thank you goes to the 130 participants who so good-naturedly and energetically gave up their Sunday to support us on the walk, and did so without complaint, even when the skies emptied their load on us in the early afternoon. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Here's to the next one!
Young people on the IWM Moving Stories Summer School interview Holocaust survivor Cirla Lewis about her experience of displacement as a result of the Second World War.
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Michael Rosen, compering the 'Poetry of Migration' event at Londonewcastle Project Space earlier this year, drawn by Nick Ellwood.
One of the first events we held in the course of our three-week residency at Londonewcastle this summer (where more than 4,000 people visited our exhibition Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond) was the 'Poetry of Migration' on Tuesday 6 June. Michael Rosen (distinguished poet, writer, entertainer – and distinguished friend of the Migration Museum Project) compered the event, at which Ruth Padel and Jackie Kay were fellow guest speakers.
When we'd advertised the event, we had also asked people to let us know if they would like to present their own poems, so the evening was less about studious, respectful listening to the panel poets – though it was that, too – and more about participation. People presented their poems from the floor – Sophie Herxheimer and Karen McCarthy Woolf, PJ Samuels, Antoine Cassar and Elizabeth-Jane Burnett among them – and the audience expressed the full range of response you might have expected from an evening of poetry based around the theme of migration: tears, laughter, some anger, some despair. As a curtain-raiser for the exhibition itself, it was perfectly judged.
Nick Ellwood, the artist behind the panel drawings of Jungle residents in the middle room, sat in the audience and drew portraits of some of the performers. We've reproduced his drawings in this blog, together with some of the poems read out by the people he was drawing. It's a rich combination: one of the artists we were privileged to work with for the exhibition producing beautiful sketch drawings of some of the incredibly talented writers we were thrilled to have perform at the event. We hope you enjoy this memento of the evening.
She has waited three years for this. Too ashamed
to even half-tell the young woman in spectacles
tapping a purple biro on a desk
exactly what the soldiers did to her, each versatile
in his turn, she gets wrong Date your mother was born
and sees a stamp the colour of desert night descend on her file.
She went looking for her daughter. How many
visit Hades and live? Your only hope
is the long labyrinth of Visa Application
interviews with a volunteer from a charity
you're not allowed to meet. You've been caught:
by a knock on the door at dawn
or hiding in a truck of toilet tissue
or just getting stuck in a turn-stile.
You're on Dead Island: the Detention Centre.
The Russian refugees who leaped from the fifteenth floor
of a Glasgow tower block to the Red Road
Springburn – Serge, Tatiana and their son,
who when the Immigration officers
were at the door, tied themselves together
before they jumped – knew what was coming.
Anyway you're here. Evidence of cigarette
burns all over your body has been dismissed
by the latest technology. You're dragged
from your room, denied medication
or a voice. You can't see your children,
they're behind bars somewhere else.
You go on hunger strike. You're locked
in a corridor for three days without water
then handcuffed through the biopsy
on your right breast. You've no choice
but to pray; and to walk the never-ending path
of meditation on not yet. Your nightmare
was home-grown; you're seeking sanctuary.
They say you don't belong. They give you
a broken finger, a punctured lung.
Ruth Padel, reading her poem 'Time to Fly', drawn by Nick Ellwood.
You go because you heard a cuckoo call. You go because
you've met someone, you made a vow, there are no more
grasshoppers. You go because the cold is coming, spring
is coming, soldiers are coming: plague, flood, an ice age,
a new religion, a new idea. You go because the world rotates,
because the world is changing and you've lost the key.
You go because you have the kingdom of heaven in your heart.
And the kingdom of hell has taken over someone else's heart.
You go because you have magnetite in your brain, thorax, tips
of your teeth. Because there's food over the hill
and there'll be gold, or more likely bauxite,
inside the hill. You go because your mother is dying
and only you can bring her the apples of the Hesperides.
You go because you need work.
You go because astrologers say so. Because the sea
is calling and your best friend bought a motorbike
in America last year. You go because the streets are paved
with gold and your father went when he was your age.
You go because you have seventeen children and the Lord will provide;
because your sixteen brothers have parcelled up the land
and there's none left for you. You go because the waters are rising,
an ice sheet is melting, the rivers are dry
there are no more fish in the sea. You go because God
has given you a sign – you had a dream – the potatoes are blighted.
Because it is too hot, too cold, you are on a quest for knowledge
and knowledge is always beyond. You go because it's destiny,
because Pharoah won't let you light candles at sundown on Friday.
Because you're looking for
an enchanted lake, the meaning of life, a tall tree to nest in.
You go because travel is holy, because your body
is wired to go, you'd have a quite different body and different brain
if you were the sort of bird that stayed. You go
because you can't pay the rent: creditors lie in wait for your children
after school. You go because Pharoah has hogged the oil,
electricity and paraffin so all you have on your table
are candles, when you can get them.
You go because there's nothing left to hope for;
because there's everything to hope for and all life is risk.
You go because someone put the evil eye on you
and barometric pressure is dropping. You go because
you can't cope with your gift – other people can't cope with your gift –
you have no gift and the barbarians are after you.
You go because the barbarians are gone, Herod
has turned off the internet and mobile phones, the modem
is useless and the eagles are coming. You go because the eagles
have died off with the vultures and the ancestors are angry
there's no one to clean the bones. You go in peace, you go in war.
Someone has offered you a job. You go because your dog
is going too. Because the Grand Vizier sent paramilitaries to your house last night
you have to go quick and leave the dog behind.
You go because you've eaten the dog and that's it, there's nothing else.
You go because you've given up and might as well. Because your love
is dead – because she laughed at you; because she's coming with you,
it will be a big adventure and you'll live happily ever after.
You go in hope, in faith, in haste, high spirits, deep sorrow, deep
snow, deep shit and without question.
You pause halfway to stoke up on Omega 3 and horseshoe crabs.
You go for phosphorus, myrtle-berries, salt. You go for oil
and pepper. It was your father's dying wish.
You go from pole to pole, you go because you can,
you have no feet, you sleep and mate on the wing.
Because you need a place to shed your skin
in safety. You go with a thousand questions but you are growing up,
growing old, moving on. Say goodbye to the might-have-beens –
you can't step into the same river twice.
You go because hope, need and escape
are names for the same god. You go because life
is sweet, life is cheap, life is flux
and you can't take it with you. You go because you're alive,
because you're dying, maybe dead already. You go because you must.
© Ruth Padel from The Mara Crossing, Chatto and Windus, 2012
Not zo mainy Dais zinz ve arrivink.
Zis grey iss like Bearlin, zis same grey Day
ve hef. Zis norzern Vezzer, oont ze demp Street.
A biet off Rain voant hurt, vill help ze Treez
on zis Hempstet Heese vee see in Fekt.
Vy shootd I mind zat?
I try viz ze Busses, Herr Kondooktor eskink
me … for vot? I don't eckzectly remempber;
Fess plees? To him, my Penny I hent ofa –
He notdz viz a keint Smile – Fanks Luv!
He sez. Oh! I em his Luff – turns Hentell
on Machine, out kurls a Tikett.
Zis is ven I know zat here to settle iss OK. Zis
City vill be Home, verr eefen on ze Buss is Luff.
Sophie Herxheimer, drawn in full flow when reading 'London', by Nick Ellwood.
Ze yunkest off my grayt grayt
Grent-Childtrenn is lynink up
her Dollse oont Behrs for Klarse.
Ven zay slump in rekggitt
Exhorstschon, she arraintches zem
to lean on ze Kupboart. Zit up ztrate!
She Kommarnts. If Enny Vun
off you nose ze Aanser, don't
schout out; poot up your Hendt!
Ze Svetter zat zis Teacher
vairs, looks ottley familiar.
Ze Vun Aunt Frieda sent from Vienna
for my Girl ven she voz small.
I see ze Vool still hess some Bountz.
Oont amazinkly, no Moss Holse!
Funny Frieda alvays sett she dittn't
leik to knit: I heffnt ze Payschunz,
she leidt. Zis Svetter hess en intrikett
Pettern off blue Skvairs, raist in a Ridch
ofa nice veit Stokkink Stitch –
I marfellt et it zen, ven it arrifte, springink
like a Lemm from stiff brown Paper.
Vizzin Veeks of zat, Frieda, leik zo Menny,
voz seeztd, imprissont, murdtert.
Now zis endurink Laybor off hurze
iss vorn ess a Keint off Uniform:
kommarntink All who are born, or eefen
stufft: Make Sinks. Make Sinks up! Play!
© Sophie Herxheimer
'London' first appeared as no.22 in a series of concrete poetry broadsides from Brazil, called POW, subsequently appearing in Jewish Quarterly and Long Poem Magazine, and was also made into a film.
'Vosch by Hendt, Learn by Hart' has just been published in the Vanguard Anthology.
When I wake up to the cloudy sky
Of London,
I feel overwhelmed:
A fit of yearning.
It is not that I want to go back,
but simply miss the way it was:
The sunny mornings,
The fresh smell of Cardamom
My mother used to make with tea
Or the smell of fresh bread,
When my father is back from the bakery …
Maybe I miss those Fridays,
When all the sisters gather around;
Voices of playing kids
Filling the air with delicious noise,
“the house can't take us all,”
I would say,
My mother would stop me…
She likes it when we're all there.
Maybe I miss dad's big smile:
when his granddaughters
Greet him with a kiss.
I miss watching all the girls
Working in the kitchen,
Or Sit to the table laughing loud …
Dad would come in, take a picture,
To remember those moments I miss!
© Nadia Faydh
Guest readers at the event – Nadia Faydh on the right – drawn by Nick Ellwood.
Mme Le Pen,
la raison pourquoi
on a donné une étoile jaune
à l'oncle et à la tante de mon père
la raison pourquoi
on a demand qu'ils devaient attacher
une affiche disante 'Enterprise juive'
à leur étal de marché
la raison pourquoi
ils ont fuit leur asile
dans la rue Mellaise à Niort
la raison pourquoi
ils se sont réfugiés à Nice
la raison pourquoi
on les a arrêtés et on les a transportés
à Paris, à Drancy, à Auschwitz et à leurs morts
est parce que
les officiers de Vichy
ont fait un 'Fishier juif' des juifs étrangers
et l'a donné aux Nazis au moment exacte
que la Résistance a dit bienvenu aux juifs
bienvenu aux étrangers
et c'est ça, la raison pourquoi
je vous dis ces choses
Mme Le Pen.
Michael Rosen, reciting his poem 'To Madame le Pen', drawn by Nick Ellwood.
Mme Le Pen,
the reason why
they gave a yellow star
to my father's uncle and aunt
the reason why
they told them they had to fix a sign
saying 'Jewish Business' on their market stall
the reason why
they fled from their refuge in the rue Mellaise
in Niort
the reason why
they took refuge in Nice
the reason why
they were arrested and transported
to Paris, to Drancy, to Auschwitz and to their death
is because the officials of Vichy
made a 'Jewish File' of foreign Jews
and gave it to the Nazis
at the exact moment
that the Resistance was welcoming
Jews and was welcoming foreigners
and that's the reason why
I am telling you these things
Mme Le Pen.
You Connie Ruby Isakofsky
From Globe Road in Bethnal Green
You Harold Rosen
From Nelson street, Whitechapel
You Connie with your mother and father
From Romania and Poland
You Harold with your family from Poland
You Connie
You Harold
your families working in the rag trade
Hats, caps, jackets and gowns
Hats, caps, jackets and gowns
You both saw Hitler on the Pathe News
You both saw Hitler Blaming the Jews
You both collected for Spain,
collecting for Spain
When Franco came
When round the tenements,
the whisper came
Mosley wants to march
Here, through the East End
So what should it be?
To Trafalgar Square to support Spain:
No pasaran?
Or to Gardiners Corner to support Whitechapel:
They shall not pass.
Round the tenements
The whisper came
Fight here in Whitechapel
The whisper came:
Winning here
We support
Spain there.
These are the streets where we live
These are the streets where we go to school
These are the streets where we work
They shall not pass.
You Connie
You Harold
Went to Gardiner's Corner
You went to Cable Street
You piled chairs on the barricades
The mounted police charged you
A stranger took you indoors
To escape a beating
And thousands
Hundreds of thousands came here
Fighting Mosley
Supporting Spain
Thinking of Germany
And
Mosley did not pass.
You Connie
You Harold
Said, today the bombs on Guernica in Spain
Tomorrow the bombs on London here.
And you were bombed
the same planes, the same bombs
landing in the same streets
where you had said
they shall not pass
And the bodies
piled up across the world
Million after million after million after million
You Connie, your cousins in Poland
Taken to camps
Wiped out
You Harold, your uncles and aunts in France and Poland
Taken to camps
Wiped out.
But you Connie, my mother
You Harold, my father
You survived
You lived
We were born
We grew
You mother
You father
told us these things
I write these things
And today,
I tell you these things
We remember here together
Thanks to you
And we say:
They shall not pass.
© Michael Rosen
