Your country needs you... but not you: Soldiers' mother faces deportation
One of the easiest ways for a Labour Home Secretary to appeal to the right wing in this country is to claim that he is being tough on immigration. Since Blair came to power almost every Labour Home Secretary has been more right wing than any previous Tory Home Secretary would have dared to be. Nothing pleases the rabid readers of The Daily Mail more than to know that immigrants are being "sent back where they belong".
The current labour Home Secretary, John Reid, even went as far as to recently refer to asylum seekers as "scroungers", an insult that brought to mind Thatcher's famous reference to the unemployed as "Social Security scroungers." I never thought I would hear a Labour politician use that sort of language to describe poor people who have merely sought a better life.
Reid has been accused of going after soft targets, of deporting people simply so that he can provide lists and numbers of deportees that prove to the right wing that "something is being done".
Surely though, even he has gone too far when he is proposing deporting the mother of two young Jamaicans who have both served with the British forces in Iraq? Her sons were considered British enough to serve in the Army but now we are told that she is not British enough to remain in the UK.
This is little short of a disgrace.
Indeed, it appears that both of these young men's service to this country does count for nothing. It certainly would appear to count for nothing as far as the Home Office is concerned.Mrs Bowman, 49, who fled from an abusive husband in Jamaica six years ago, is due to be taken from her home in Newcastle upon Tyne's Benwell district today to a detention centre at Heathrow, where she is scheduled to be on a 12.40pm flight tomorrow to Jamaica - where domestic violence is a source of concern to Amnesty International.
Mrs Bowman's sons, whose army service brings an entitlement to British citizenship, said their mother had inspired them to join the forces. "I was proud to serve my country and the Government was happy enough for me to risk my life fighting in Iraq," said Leven Bowman, 28, who depended on letters, protein drinks and sun cream that his mother dispatched during his six months' service in Basra. "I can't understand how they can now threaten to deport my mother."
Damian Bowman, 24, a lorry driver in Northampton, added: "My mum wants to be a good citizen and to help people. It seems as though our service for this country counts for nothing."
One of the reasons that I campaigned for the Labour Party for so many years was because I had hoped that we would enjoy a government that advocated more humane policies than the ones I had witnessed the Tories employing for eighteen years.The Refugee Council said the removal of a woman who had played a full role in British society reflected the Home Office practice of removing soft targets. "The Government is so focused on returns - and in many cases those who are less deserving of this outcome," said a spokeswoman.
Mr Clelland (Mrs Bowman's Labour MP) said he hoped there could be "flexibility". "Joy's sons' role for this country is a factor which can play a part in her case."
Part of my profound disappointment in Tony Blair has been his wish to appeal to the readers of the Daily Mail, and the way that this wish to appeal to the most rabid of the right wing - or, at the very least, not to offend them - has led him to offering policies that are, in effect, Tory Lite.
But when we now find ourselves deporting the mother of two young men who have served our country in a war zone, we are no longer even Tory Lite. Indeed, it is hard to think that even the Tories would engage in an action this stupid and reprehensible. They at least recognise the potential sacrifice that anyone who serves this country on a battlefield makes.
Only a Labour government, pretending to be right wing, could score an own goal of this propensity. It's simply scandalous. And it's wrong, wrong, wrong.
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