Today OurKingdom publishes Clare Sambrook’s damning indictment of the UK Border Agency’s systematic failure to protect some of the most vulnerable children in Britain – children whose parents have survived imprisonment, torture and rape in the countries they have fled only to find themselves under lock and key for failing to persuade the Home Office [...]
G4S who manage the Pease Pottage ‘pre-departure accommodation centre’ where families are forcibly held for up to a week prior to enforced removal by the UK Border Agency have refused to allow Santa to deliver Christmas gifts to the children held behind the 2.5m security fence. The Eastbourne branch of the Lush cosmetic chain had [...]
Despite coalition government pledges that the new ‘pre-departure accommodation’ in the Sussex village of Pease Pottage would be used as a ‘last resort’ and that children would normally be held for less than 72 hours, a Freedom of Information request from the campaign group ‘No-Deportations’ discovered that of the 11 children who entered Cedars pre-departure [...]
ESMÉ MADILL & SIMON PARKER, THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN OPENDEMOCRACY ON 27 SEPTEMBER 2011 Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told his fellow Liberal Democrats at the party’s conference in Birmingham to “hold your heads up and look our critics squarely in the eye”. Among the many things that Liberal Democrats can be [...]
TOM SANDERSON, THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN OPENDEMOCRACY ON 26 SEPTEMBER 2011. The companies managing UK immigration have come in for criticism once again, in new research — ‘Is that what you call good service?’ — by pressure group Ethical Consumer. The report scrutinises the environmental and ethical records of twenty of the companies now [...]
Alida Alisis, this article originally appeared in openDemocracy on 8 August 2011. Back in March, almost a year after the government had promised to end what Nick Clegg called the “shameful practice” of locking up asylum seeking families in conditions known to harm their mental health, Barnardo’s stunned children’s advocates by revealing that it had [...]
Croydon No Borders are organising a demonstration against the opening of a new family immigration prison (euphemistically referred to by the Home Office as ‘pre-departure accommodation’) on Saturday 30th July, 1pm at Muster Green park, Hayward’s Heath. Hayward’s Heath is where Mid Sussex District Council, the local authority which approved planning permission for the new [...]
Simon Parker (This article originally appeared in openDemocracy on 11 May 2011) A year ago, the coalition pledged to halt all child detention by this very day. Yet the recent news that six children were held in three separate detention facilities by the UK Border Agency in March comes as no surprise to campaigners who [...]
Campaigners against the opening of new family detention facilities which are to be jointly provided by the global security and prisons corporation G4S and the UK children’s charity Barnardo’s have announced a BARNADO’S TELETHON for Tuesday 26 April 2011. London NoBorders are urging opponents of Barnardo’s involvement in the brand new detention facility at Pease [...]
Syd Bolton, Solicitor, Children’s Legal Centre* *This is the text of the speech that Syd Bolton gave to the End Child Detention Now/Shpresa Keep Your Promise campaign launch, Oxford House, Bethnal Green, London, 26th March 2011. Thank you all for being part of this campaign and for inviting me to take part in this important [...]
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