The new centre is like Fort Knox. Its barred windows and security checkpoints make it clear that if they don’t want you to get out, you won’t. Many from Nottingham have been told to attend Nottingham with no indication of whether they can claim the fare back. Little or no information has been given about how to get to Loughborough, when the switch would be made, and how to get more information about it. One of the first asylum seekers to be transferred to the new office was told to sign on the fifth of every month! What if it’s a weekend? Who would invent such a system except an idiot; or a sadist trying to prevent A-S having any identity except one of dependency on the system.

But A-S are not taking this lying down. In Glasgow a meeting of 200 hundred established UNITY -Scottish Asylum Seekers Union and already has an advice shop opposite the Glasgow HO office. Campaigning is being done thee on issues such as the right to employment. They are being supported in this by anarchists and other activists on the non-authoritarian left. On Merseyside too a group has been set up by A-S, called Voice of Asylum Seekers (Liverpool), which recently organised a series of demonstrations, leaflets and a workshops in conjunction with the Student Action for Refugees.

The initial response in Nottingham at a meeting called to discuss the Loughborough problem was the understandable suggestion to refuse to report to the new centre. But such defiance is difficult if you are entirely dependent on the state for what little you have, which they will take away from you if you don’t report. Media coverage of the issue has been effective, and a street protest meeting took place outside St. Peter’s Church on Saturday September 9th. Asylum Seekers and activists from the Notts and Nottingham Refugee Forum Campaign Group organised the rally. Leafleting resulted in the first sixty signatures on a petition, and public responses were almost all favourable to the position Asylum Seekers find themselves in; in most cases because of the stupidity and indignity of the situation but also, in one case, in response to the case that taxes are being wasted if the pittance the government gives AS gets given to private bus companies!