Steven Baxter

Patrolling the murkier waters of the mainstream media

Britain: You're not welcome

Tougher immigration checks have made travelling to and from the UK a drag for everyone.

By Steven Baxter Published 30 April 2012 12:56

Passengers queue at Heathrow airport. Photo: Getty Images

My memory plays tricks, but I’m pretty sure one of the first things I saw when I arrived back home at Stansted Airport the other day was a poster with the slogan “Britain: You’re welcome”.

It’s a lie in two fundamental ways. Firstly, it implies the kind of cheerful customer service that doesn’t exist in Britain, where you’re generally regarded with hatred, suspicion and withering contempt if you dare to offer money in the hope of obtaining a product or service.

Secondly, you’re not welcome. That much is made clear when you head towards the baggage reclaim area and arrive in the now familiar queues at border control. You’re not welcome: you might be a potential TERRORIST or CRIMINAL. You need to be shunted into queues in a drab, joyless expanse of grey carpet, and made to stand and wait, and wait, and wait. You need to stand and watch as the ultra-expensive biometric passport scanners fail to work, again. You need to be made to feel like a piece of crap, for having the nerve to want to enter Britain in the first place.

The queues experienced by a long line of miserable passengers at Heathrow recently might be explained away as exceptional, unfortunate, whatever – but they are just an extreme example of something that has been happening for a long time.

This has been coming for a while. “Tougher checks take longer,” mewl the electronic displays as you stand in the seemingly endless queue at whatever airport you’ve decided to come to. As if it’s your fault, as if you somehow demanded tougher checks at some point. Do you remember doing that? I don’t. I don’t recall thinking what a wonderful idea it would be to make the experience of entering the country a miserable, tedious and loathsome one. If I wanted to be treated like scum for crossing a border, I’d go to the United States. I don’t want it here.

But then this is the state that New Labour made, attempting to portray itself as being ‘tough’ on immigration, a war it would never win against tabloids who were desperate to portray the former Government as deliberately opening the borders to all kinds of undesirables, tapping into their readers’ spectrum of opinions ranging between mild xenophobia and out-and-out racism.

It was Labour, too, who snipped back all kinds of civil liberties, with the simple explanation of “Because of terrorism” every single time. The balaclava-clad paramilitary special forces who took to the streets the other day during a bomb alert were part of the same legacy, as is the ultra security lockdown of London ahead of the Olympics, including missiles on tower blocks.

To scare us, our leaders talk of “heightened” terror threats, of “Cobra” and “Gold Command”, things that sound like they should be in the kind of books read by sad men who dress in camouflage gear in their bedrooms and have a hard-on for Guns-and-Ammo type magazines. Our lawmakers are so terrified of being blamed for another terror atrocity, of letting someone slip through the net, they find themselves buying into all this macho garbage.

Which means, when you come to Britain, you’re not welcome. You’re made to stand in a queue snaking around a tiny room, or one of many queues in a space especially reserved for queuing misery. The Tories won’t dismantle it, even though they try to vaporise as many public-sector workers as possible – so the end result is even longer queues, meaning even more travellers get their first impression of Britain as a place that couldn’t run a hot bath, let alone a border control.

For those of us who live here, and who have the misfortune of having to go through Britain’s border every now and then, it’s becoming more and more tedious. And it’s just for show: it doesn’t stop home-grown terrorism; it doesn’t prevent criminality; it doesn’t do anything other to show that it’s there, to be seen to be doing something. It’s a great waste of time, money, resources and workers, and it makes Britain look hateful and incompetent.

“You’re welcome,” says the sign. Not any time soon, you’re not.

Tags: Immigration civil liberties

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7 comments

Tue, 2012-10-09 11:26 — roger555 (not verified)

This is quite a good article. Many new questions emerge to the surface, all you need do is to read further information about the issues. Only then one can form a final view on a particular subject. Otherwise everything is seen only in the dimension of black and white. The natural logic of evaluating things before they were properly cognitively processed is a horrible mistake, made by those less intelligent. People should not throw away their common sense easily. Anything and everything deserves appropriate time for making judgements.

Wed, 2012-07-18 01:07 — hesham15 (not verified)

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Thu, 2012-05-03 14:44 — Security Guard (not verified)

I really impressed with Steven Baxter its show the meaningful post and tells how people problem in travelling due some bad person.

Security in London

Wed, 2012-05-02 14:32 — Malc (not verified)

Incidentally, (warming to my theme) If you want to see a naked display of arrogance and xenophobia you only need to travel through the various customs ports at Heathrow to see how foreigners are treated by Brit customs workers of every colour and ethnic background. Six months ago I witnessed travellers being unduly stressed and intimidated by overly officious workers who, knowing full well that one checker could not possibly process the number of bags present in good time, nevertheless allowed those bags to pile up as nervous and fretful passengers, running late as a result of delayed flights, endeavoured to make their connecting flights. One Customs guy, who wore a Sikh turban, resorted to loud whistling to advertise his devil-may-care attitude, whilst a large, bald colleague berated passengers with "well you should be here earlier, shouldn't you?" Quite the double act. Not that I'd pay to see it, but unfortunately Britain IS paying, as passengers take their tales of bad treatment home and abroad.

Wed, 2012-05-02 13:31 — Malc (not verified)

Welcome To Britain, but not VERY if you're British but happen to be travelling on an Aussie passport. On arrival at Newcastle you will be consigned to a queue on the side which will not move, will not be processed, will not dwindle, until all the British passport holders have gone. Then a frosty faced servant of the Crown will reluctantly look through your foreign passport and permit you into Britain with a mumbled "ok". Just to be mischievous I put my British passport on top of my Australian one when I was eventually allowed to approach the desk. "Yes, I'm British" I said. "My Brit passport was out of date. Cheaper to renew in Britain than Oz". His demeanour changed. I was one of us. Us and Them. Still the prevailing attitude, even among those who deal with Us and Them every day, but you'll see it more succinctly displayed in the provinces. Welcome to Newcastle. Welcome to Britain.

Tue, 2012-05-01 11:11 — Robert Taggart

Sounds like a neat ruse - to discourage immigration ?!

Mon, 2012-04-30 16:56 — Oliver_112 (not verified)

Steven Baxter! I believe we met on the sun loungers around the pool in Tenerife a few years back? It was such a delightful holiday and both me and my wife were remarking about how charming you were. Just the other day we were having dinner and she mentioned you, so I thought I'd run you into the old Search Engine and see what it ran up the flagpole. And lo and behold, here you are writing for the old New Statesman. Well, good luck to you, I say. I'm more a Telegraph man myself, but each to their own, that's what I say.

Anyway, I do hope things are well in your part of the world. Would you like to drop by ours next time you're in South London? We tend to have some exciting "dinner parties" - I'll load a joint of meat in the oven, the wife will put some champagne on to chill, and we'll have a good old catch up. Can't remember if you were into the swinging circle at all, but both myself and my wife are very open minded, so if you're up for a bit of consenting adult entertainment after dinner, do give me the nod. We're very discrete.

Anyway, wishing you all the best, and it'd be good to catch up again. It's been too long!

Yours,

Oliver