CAP in Sheffield and asylum

Early in 2004, Sheffield CAP became disturbed by the way the government was treating asylum-seekers and our Chair, Father Shaun Smith, wrote to all Sheffield MPs, warning them of rising destitution among asylum-seekers in the city.

In March 2005, we made asylum the theme of our annual Civic Breakfast, attended by Sheffield’s Great and Good including the Lord Mayor, the Master Cutler and the two Bishops. We wrote about asylum to all 18 Parliamentary candidates for Sheffield Constituencies in the 2005 General Election.

Revd Inderjit Bhogal, who had himself benefited as a boy from the generous asylum policies of the Heath government, spoke at our AGM in April 2005, calling for Sheffield to become a "City of Sanctuary". Soon after this, he founded the City of Sanctuary organisation in Sheffield, which is now supported by 70 organisations, including the City Council. Its message is spreading to other towns.

We strongly supported CAP’s Living Ghosts campaign, launched in 2005. Our concerns related in part to destitution but also to the whole asylum system. Thus when we visited Holy Family Church, Arbourthorne, we felt overwhelmed by the distress of some 40 asylum-seekers, at the way they were being treated. This and other experiences led to us organising a two-hour public demonstration outside the Town Hall, in June 2006, opened and closed by the Anglican and Roman Catholic Bishops. We then asked Sheffield City Council to pass a motion calling on Government to change its policies, but the Labour majority on the Council did not take this up.

Early in 2007, we discussed the proposal from London Citizens for turning "strangers into citizens". Some of us joined in the huge demonstration in Trafalgar Square in support of this proposal. This led to us thinking of ways to broaden our campaigning in Sheffield. We joined up with Jim Steinke of the Northern Refugee Centre and various other concerned people to form the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG). SYMAAG organised a three day march from Sheffield to Lindholme Detention Centre and is lobbying all South Yorkshire MPs.

We have now been campaigning about asylum for four years and cannot claim great success. In our opinion, the government takes far too much notice of misleading media coverage. But we in Sheffield CAP will continue to challenge the inhumanity of the present system.

David Price