I am currently staying in North London, so imagining that I am perhaps with relatives in Archway I set out on the two hour journey south. I took the underground to Highbury and Islington, before transferring to the Overground, simply because it was the most obvious option when looking at the underground map, without an in depth knowledge of bus routes and suburban rail systems. Croydon is an obscure location for such an important body, and even though the TFL website offered shorter ways of getting there than the one I took, every option involved at least three interchanges. By Shadwell the east London hipsters had mostly disappeared, the city scape became suburban, and then almost rural. Eventually the glass and concrete of Croydon's infamy poked into view.
I've never been to Croydon before. Emerging from the station and walking past the bus terminal it appeared to have the feel of a slightly wild boarder town. Many tongues and ethinicities crowded the narrow pavements, and grubby cafes sold the world's foods amongst cheap ikea furniture. I rounded the corner on to Wellesley Road, which sprang like up like a grey Soviet vision of Las Vegas.
The UK Border Agency building was the first on the opposite side of the road. I ducked through the underpass and found myself in front of Lunar House. I often wonder at the logic of naming these buildings. Why Lunar? Was it a reference to the sheer greyness of the place, or an attempt at a playful pun on it being the potential gateway for it's visitors to a new and distant world.
I realised I had forgotten my camera, but then reassessed this as perhaps a good thing as I surreptitiously snapped away with my phone (though what if it had been some essential piece of documentation or ID I had forgotten for my one chance meeting). The entrance lobby was small, and a security guard stood on the door asking those that attempted to enter what they were doing there. The centre largely requires an appointment, though they do allow walk-ups as well but from their advice on the website you would be risking a wasted journey to rely on it. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get in on the basis of "observing for a play I'm writing," and I wasn't sure what I'd have done had I gained access. I strolled round the the building, taking in it's various brutalist aspects, though wasn't witness to anything more alarming than a postal van.
Having completed my circuit I settled on an anti-barrage block the surrounded the plaza outside. A handful of families and couples of various nationalities stood around clutching pieces of legal paper and entertaining the children (who are also required to come for the screening interview). The atmosphere seemed calm, and there were no signs of the group4 vans ready to carry applicants off to detention the second their claim had been made (as happened to one of my interviewees), which would occur if the decision to "fast track" was taken.
I wondered what to do next. Helpfully a game solicitor, her client and an interpreter rocked up next to me and began loudly discussing their case. The solicitor was warm and supportive, and actual sounded excited about the imminent arrival of some new medical documents. I took in the applicants face; it seemed placid at first, passive in a system that was too big for her and she stared out calmly into the traffic. Again there was no anguish, but then it stuck me; this is the screening centre, the journey for this woman was just beginning and it was in fact the dreamy face of hope. Again a pre-conception was shattered; the building was drab and imposing, but for those make their journey here it was the beginning of a new life, full of potential and freedom.
The trio broke up and moved on. I decided to get a closer look inside the building, so did a few fly pasts peering in at the reception area. It was clean and brightly lit, with cordons to manage the queues, and looked like security or immigration at any standard airport. Two doors led away from the reception area, the one on the right channelling "Temporary and permanent immigration" and the one on the left for "Protection," the door through which any asylum seeker applying in country would have to pass. It is perhaps however because all immigration is handled from here, including spousal immigration, etc (the right hand door) that explains the clean corporate acceptability of the place.
I knew there was a second UKBA building on the road, this time called "Electric House," and a quick Google search on my mobile revealed it to be the local sign in centre for applicant and failed asylum seekers. One of my interviewees had brought up this aspect of the process as one of the most frightening of his time as a claimant, as could have been snatched up and detained any time he went report. I made my way back through the underpass, bought a ropey lunch in the Sainsbury's on the other side of the road and went to seek it out.
The building was older and shabbier, with the world "Electricity" emblazoned across the top like an old cinema or ballroom. Grim faced UKBA staff in black uniforms drew on tabs outside looking like smokers at a gangsters funeral. I took a seat on the steps, a rather strange picnic location over looking the duel carriage way, but a good place to observe.
An agency man walked past me, the whole way he carried himself and even held his can of energy drink was stiff with machismo, he looked like a bouncer in at a nightclub you wouldn't want to go into. Indeed all the staff that gathered had a tired, unbending, brittleness to their movements; slow, self-righteous and cynical. But then these are the people for whom the idea of protecting our boarders often overwhelms the idea of humanitarian protection. Whilst lefty do-gooders like me write plays, run inclusive community projects and tut over The Guardian, the dull form reading, interrogation and rubber stamping is left to those who happen to have fallen into the job or have developed a personal mandate to restrict and control immigration. The gloom that hovered over the building was in stark contrast to the screening unit over the road.
I trotted round to the public entrance. Tatty signs were stuck to the window with yellowing sellotape informing reportees that they will not be allowed access if they have forgotten their papers, and the guards standing round the metal detectors were quick to launch suspicious looks in my direction. If Lunar House represents the new hope of an arrival before they had been turned into an "asylum seeker" this place represented the grinding system that attempts to turn them into a helpless, social pariah and Daily Mail bate.
I turned the corner expecting to have seen the last of what I could gain access to, but there remained one last sight; a large gate in the side of the building that was clearly designed for vehicle access to a central court area. However the gate was blocked by an "airlock" similar to prisons. Beyond the gate to the street was a massive black panel door topped with rows of jagged spikes.
This was the gate that those who had been caught at the sign in would be passed through on the way to detention or enforced deportation. Maybe some of my interviewees who had been detained in London had passed through it. I walk quickly past having taken a photo, but then something caught me, and I returned back down the street. I looked up at those fists of black spikes that protruded from the lintel, and suddenly felt quite emotional. It is one of the thesis of the play that the threat of deportation to a country where violence maybe carried out against a person, is in fact a continuation of that system of violence. Those spikes may never have touched human flesh but they were potent symbols of pain, torture and persecution.
No one can pretend that people don't fake asylum claims. It was an interesting feature of the interviews I carried out that many harbour a greater resentment to those fakers than they do to the UKBA as they justify their processes. But according to the website the UKBA accept on average 19 out of every 100 applications, which for all the troubles in the world seems a remarkably small number. The first paragraph on the asylum homepage reads;
The UK has a proud tradition of providing a place of safety for genuine refugees. However, we are determined to refuse protection to those who do not need it, and will take steps to remove those who are found to have made false claims.
Which is almost like receiving a party invitation that reads;
You are invited to the house warming party of Adam and Jane Smith. However, those who get drunk, turn up with out a gift or in any other way behave inappropriately will be immediately ejected.
What a welcome! The website continues down a warren of interlinked pages regarding process, rights and documentation all with a sensible officialdom but belying a steely inhumanity eg;
If we provide your housing, you will not be able to choose where you live. You will be sent to wherever suitable housing is available in the UK.
The whole system is designed to be as inflexible, inconvenient and depressing as possible and it is known from experience that the UKBA send people back to face hostile circumstances in their home country. The asylum mechanism is deeply flawed, as is so much in society, on the basis of simply not listening to each other and bending to the pressure of the ill informed, self interest of the media and the politically manipulative. What excites me about this production is that it allows a little space to hear those voices, and I hope that those who may come to the production with certain pre-concived ideas based on reportage of the issues, will come to some understanding of the humanity that lies behind them.
I returned to the station and for all that my time in Croydon was very brief the images of a hopeful face and a black gate, fortified with the instruments of torture, created a powerful juxtaposition that seemed to symbolise the entire asylum system itself.
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