20 March 2000 – Roy Greenslade, Media Correspondent of The Guardian, has joined the PressWise crusade against the rabble-rousing tactics of the British tabloids in response to the influx of refugees from Eastern Europe. (See our RAM Project).
Writing in today’s Media section, Greenslade singles out the Daily Mail and The Sun for especial criticism. He writes: “Let’s play that simple psychological test known as word association. I’ll save you the trouble of replying by supplying the answers, imagining I am a Daily Mail or Sun reader. Asylum-seekers: scroungers. Gypsies: wily scroungers. Romanians: ungrateful scroungers. Albanians: dirty scroungers. Beggars: rich scroungers.
“Of course, there will be Mail and Sun readers who think otherwise. But not too many, to judge by the readers’ letter pages. These, and other newspapers, are evidently pressing just the right buttons with their audiences in their increasingly hysterical daily assaults on East European beggars.”
Greenslade goes on: “The first wave of headlines about ‘the mounting menace of gypsy spongers’ (the Sun) appeared after several women appeared in court begging, usually with their babies, on London’s tube trains and stations.
“Then papers latched on to a report by Lord Gardiner about the ‘hidden economy’ to suggest – improbably and without any evidence – that this was linked to the sudden arrival of people from Eastern Europe.
“Both the Sun and The Times presented their front page articles on the Gardiner report next to pictures of gypsy beggars and the Sun’s splash was unequivocal: ‘Crooks, dole cheats and illegal immigrants pocket £80 billion a year through the black economy.’
The fact that most of the report dealt largely with the activities of people born or long settled in Britain was irrelevant to papers which had set their sights on fomenting prejudice in general against ‘the asylum flood’ (the Mail) and specifically against ‘cadgers’ (The Times).”
Only the Mirror is singled out for trying to find a middle road on the issue. “Its most important leader on the subject,” says Greenslade, “pointed out that most asylum-seekers have arrived in Britain after suffering from horrendous persecution and argued: ‘it would be shameful if Britain, with its unrivalled record for helping the world’s refugees, now turned its back on them.'” Though he points out that even the Mirror called for ‘tight rules’ on immigration.
“My week travelling through Brighton and Victoria stations,” Greenslade concludes, “revealed that indigenous beggars still far outnumber the Roma women and their children. What links all of them, Scots and Slovaks, Geordies and gypsies, is the humiliation they suffer by needing to do it.
“Our society is rich enough to bear beggary. Our people, if their papers didn’t take a racist, negative view, are generous enough to tolerate it. Why must rightwing papers always play the xenophobic card?”
To which PressWise can only echo: hear, hear.
(Bulletin No 11)