Thread by @WindrushLives

It is ten years today since @theresa_may coined 'hostile environment' in an interview with the Telegraph. In (dis)honour, a 🧵on how *we* have enabled the Hostile Environment to hit this milestone + what comes next:
(Article by @Nadine_Writes) [1/13]
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

As @GlendaCaesar's recent experience demonstrates, Black and brown people (and migrants) exist in this country at the mercy of the government. Their rights and safeties get whisked away as swiftly and lightly as they are given. [2/13]

https://twitter.com/GlendaCaesar/status/1526498804995919873?s=20&t=ekkGkC9znmSys-Yu5TTVqg

The Home Office now calls this portfolio of policies the 'compliant environment'. But it has nothing to do with compliance with law - if it did, it wouldn't give rise to illegal acts, such as arrest of refugees for steering boats *last Nov*, pre #NationalityAndBordersBill. [3/13]

It is, and has always been, a programme of aggression and exclusion rooted in racism and xenophobia - a set of measures bluntly designed to operate PoC and migrants as levers that can be worked in response to govt failings in *other* areas, most importantly the economy. [4/13]

Until we acknowledge that - that govts will *always* default to blaming migrants and marginalised communities to draw the eye away from their own failures, bc it provides something tangible for (some) people to hate - WE enable the Hostile Environment. We are complicit. [5/13]

IMHO, the only way to dismantle this structure is through civil resistance, including physical acts, i.e. direct action - protests. Short of sweeping electoral reform, FPTP will live on; while that is the case, voting *alone* is insufficient (but please still vote). [6/13]

We need a *coordinated*, ground-up campaign led by the victims of the Home Office and their allies: migrants, Windrush victims, migrant rights charities and think tanks, EU citizens whose lives have now been upended, Deliveroo drivers who are ceaselessly persecuted, [7/13]

the businesses who employ them, refugees, lawyers and campaigners who support these communities, protestors of all stripes - all of whom are set to lose some of their vital rights, the GRT community, faith organisations representing minority ethnicities. [8/13]

Protest is only part of the equation. Lots of normal citizens support Hostile Environment policies. They must be persuaded not to.

Some of them - many, maybe - will be lost causes. Others will respond to reason and clarity of thought. We need to do that (tiresome) work. [9/13]

The Hostile Environment is also championed by politicians, including leadership and senior members of @UKLabour.

Whatever your basic political allegiance - I am NOT making a case for any party - the substantive *issue* needs to come first. [10/13]

https://twitter.com/JosieLong/status/1529176665561223173?s=20&t=ekkGkC9znmSys-Yu5TTVqg

That might mean pressing aggressively for change within those party structures. It might be drawing a hard red line and forcefully telling your tribe that the Hostile Environment is not consistent with the basic tenets of equality or justice. [11/13]

We *all* need to be more proactive and dynamic about this, to the best of our individual capabilities. If the Partygate/Sue Gray saga shows us anything, it is that the status quo is self-propagating. Without a sharp, forceful shock from the outside, this will never end. [12/13]

The Hostile Environment can only be interrupted outside of our existing procedures - we can't rely solely on petitions, judicial reviews, report-writing. That isn't to say we must abandon those methods - but we have to look beyond them. Incremental change won't fix this. [13/13]

Post-script: Here's a worked example. If you work for @ukhomeoffice (or @metpoliceuk) and you GENUINELY feel this way - QUIT. There are no excuses. You are part of a racist, xenophobic machine, and you have a choice to make - be the problem, or get out.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/m…

PS #2: @JacquiMckenzie6 rightly points out that the first use of 'hostile environment' predates May's usage. As above, our opposition parties are culpable to a significant degree, and we cannot lose sight of that, while holding THIS govt to account. birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-…

In this thread, I've used May's 2012 use of the phrase as the starting point. However, the attitude and policies that typify the Hostile Environment begin much earlier - the narrative of exclusion and blaming outsiders underlies the Commonwealth Migrants Act 1962, for example.

Here's a bit more on the term itself: fullfact.org/immigration/mi…