By Glyn Robbins

I don’t usually share this story. But, on the day the Labour government (“a Labour government”) introduces laws that, when I was growing up in multi-ethnic East London, were the preserve of the National Front, I feel compelled.

In late 2010, I was asked (via the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign) if I knew of anyone with a spare room for a Syrian asylum seeker who was homeless and sleeping on the floor of a Brick Lane restaurant. At the time, my mum was living alone in my three-bedroom childhood home. She was also beginning to struggle more with Alzheimer’s, to the point where I was resigned to her probably needing to go into care, because I couldn’t provide it adequately.

After some initial sounding out, I made what some might see as a leap of faith and agreed to the Syrian man moving in with my mum. I’d explained the situation to him, but he was pretty desperate and gladly exchanged looking after my mum for a home. I’ve often wondered how many other people, facing the same predicament as we were, would do the same. But of course, that would require tuning-out the relentless messages of racist distrust and fear now routinely broadcast by most mainstream politicians and media, perfectly illustrated by the whipped-up “single Muslim men” neurosis displayed outside hotels.

Within weeks, it was clear we’d made the right decision. I’ll never forget the sight of my mum walking happily along the high street, arm-in-arm with the Syrian man, a display of closeness I rarely shared with her. I felt quite jealous!

Getting to know this man was to enter a world I knew nothing about before. Some of the most basic administrative and bureaucratic hurdles took weeks and months to get over. Fundamentally, this was about him being subject to institutional mistrust (and again, racism) as part of Theresa May’s “hostile environment”.

The biggest challenges were, first, getting his asylum claim accepted (refused initially, but won on appeal), then making the case for his wife and two young daughters to get out of Syria, where their lives were in danger. On an evening in late 2011 I can’t recall without tears, they arrived safely in East London and the family was reunited.

Since then, our two families have become one. The Syrian branch looked after my mum with a love, care and compassion that no amount of money could buy. This was no saintly gesture on my part. Letting the family live with mum, for a pepper-corn rent, saved me tens of thousands of pounds, and maybe salved the conscience of a neglectful son a bit. But there has been a richness to our East London-Middle East fusion that can’t be reduced to monetary calculations.

Among the repellent aspects of what the government is doing today is the notion that people who want to live here have to pass some kind of ‘contribution to the community’ test. When tax-avoiding billionaires are asked to do the same, I might listen. The family that became our family don’t need to justify themselves. But that said, as well as looking after my mum, the dad has been a brilliant (and often unappreciated) teacher, both the daughters have completed university degrees, their mum has cared for them all, and others. One daughter is now a bio-medical engineer (or something I don’t quite understand), the other recently qualified as an architect. Her first big job is working on designing new council housing, which obviously makes her uncle (me!) particularly happy.

Along the way, we’ve all had to make some cultural adjustments. Among the ones I find most moving has been the way other members of my wider family have adopted their new Syrian relatives. Despite our East End and left-leaning roots, the truth is none of us really knew much about Islam and I think we all had a degree of prejudice about it. I suspect some of this was mutual. I imagine our Syrian relatives found pie and mash booze-ups difficult. Some of our family rituals have changed a bit accordingly, but only for the best. We respect each other.

I sit and think about this truncated tale and consider how different – or indeed, non-existent – it would have been had Shabana Mahmood had her way. We can all see what she’s doing and why. In this sense, her own background is irrelevant, as she desperately panders to Reform. She’s not the first beneficiary of immigration to deny it to others. She won’t read this, of course, but I’d like to think that stories like it – and there are many others – would make her reflect on the basic inhumanity of what she’s doing and realise that no amount of concessions will be enough for the forces of reaction.

My mum died in 2019. But her memory and that of my dad, live on in the home they loved and the principles of humanity they believed in. Our Syrian family will live there as long as they want to. We won’t be reviewing their status.

Glyn Robbins is a Senior Lecturer in Community Development and Leadership at the School of Social Sciences and Professions, London Metropolitan University. He has written extensively on housing, including There’s No Place: The American Housing Crisis and What It Means for the UK (Red Roof 2017). This article is adapted from a Facebook post.

Image: c/o the author.