What makes people English? Many people claim it is a cultural thing and many others claim it is an ethnic thing. But it is not just that. Just as every nation has its stereotypes (Roman noses for Italians, blonde hair for Germans, big stomachs for Americans) every nation has its purely civic definition of nationality.
So if you don’t have, for example, a Lancashire accent, if you’re not white, if you’re not an agnostic Christian, if you don’t think pantomime is the purest form of comedy, you are still English.
But no-one’s told the (typically useless) Home Office that. They thought that someone with a Lancashire accent, a Blackburn birth certificate and a European Union, United Kingdom passport was more than likely Pakistani. You can see why: they had a Lancashire accent and everyone knows that’s the one you learn when you join Pakistani spy school; they had a British passport, and we all know how trustworthy government databases and identity-verification documents are… So why not think that?
But then thinking that someone’s from a different country is a bit different to trying to deport them. Worse, imrprisoning them for two months while you try to find evidence that said English person is actually Pakistani.
I think the Guardian, in their low-key article a couple of months ago has done an injustice to this story. If we cannot trust our governors in this case not to abuse their powers when it comes to depriving people of their liberty, why do we entrust them with so much power?
And if this was an isolated case it would be slightly more tolerable, but the Guardian reassures us that it is not!
I have just one question: Why did the Guardian say “British Asian”? Surely the fact that he was British was key? The British Asian label is as bad as saying ‘nigger’ in my opinion. The relevance is clearly there — and could be highlighted in the story — but the fundamental point of this whole story is that the government is imprisoning its own people without justification.
The fact that his parents (or, by the “British Asian” definition that, frankly, the BNP would be pleased with, any one of his earlier ancestors) were Pakistani must not take away any of the horror or shock that any reader of that article should feel.
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