‘The response is a beautiful thing’: how Glasgow is squaring up to Reform | Glasgow

S.Elina Hales has a thing for pineapples. He speaks in a quiet office, far from the noise of Refuweegee, the charity he founded 10 years ago, whose walls are adorned with tissue paper fruit, an international symbol of hospitality.

Refuweegee, whose name is a combination of the words “refugee” and the local Glaswegian slang “Weegee”, has expanded exponentially over the decade into an operation supporting hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees in the city every day. Back then, he had a simple idea to create welcome packs, each containing a handwritten letter from a Glasgow resident. “One of our favorite early letters said: “Welcome to Glasgow. I love pineapples. What would you like?”

Refuweegee has sent out more than 10,000 welcome packages, and these letters reflect the most important aspect of the city: opening its arms to strangers in need. Acts of generosity and resistance are embedded in the city’s collective memory: the Glasgow Girls fighting against the detention of their Kosovar classmate, the public outcry after the Park Inn tragedy, southbound residents surrounding an immigration control van on Kenmure Street.

However, the past year has seen a significant shift in Scottish public sentiment. Nigel Farage’s UK Reform party won 26% of the vote in the first Scottish parliament by-election, prompting protests outside asylum hotels and flags being raised in cities including Glasgow.

“Over the last 10 years, I’ve always felt like we were moving towards something positive,” Hales says. “But this is a scary moment.”

Visitors to Refuweegee’s downtown headquarters feel much less safe. Pointing to the place that hosts 200-300 people a day and serves free hot meals, Hales says: “There will be no one left there who has not been subjected to racist harassment or who does not feel safe because of their appearance or flags.

“It’s definitely becoming more mainstream. People are encouraged because of people like Farage.”

The Reform leader clearly has his eye on Glasgow ahead of the Scottish parliamentary elections in May; polls suggest his party will win a number of seats in the high teens thanks to Holyrood’s proportional system.

Farage has attacked Glasgow in successive visits to Scotland. One Last Falkirk rallyHe claimed that the Scottish National party, which runs Glasgow city council and the Scottish government, “cares more about Gaza than Glasgow” and puts illegal immigrants “at the top of the housing list” over other families.

And in December he provoked widespread disgust by sarcastically using a controversial statistic that not one in five Glasgow schoolchildren speaks English as a first language. “cultural destruction” of the city. Something similar is expected to happen this week when the party visits Edinburgh to announce its Scottish leader.

So how are frontline Glaswegians reacting to these attacks?

Hales says: “At the beginning of Refuwegee, I would have been the person in George Square holding the banner saying ‘We’ve got space’. Now my perspective is completely different. I know how much it takes to successfully resettle one person. Underestimating that is what got us to where we are: a crisis situation where people have failed and there’s a community organization picking up the pieces for statutory care.”

Glasgow’s housing crisis has been building for years; Shelter says Scotland’s more progressive homeless rights exist only on paper and house building across the country is at a record low.

This developed into a housing emergency due to the unhappy alignment of UK and Scottish government policies; Holyrood placed a new duty on councils to house anyone involuntarily homeless, and the Home Office kicked people out of hotels.

Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow city council, said the “large numbers” of newly admitted refugees were “placing unsustainable pressure” on the city’s finances.

An estimated half of homeless claims in the city as of last month were from refugees, with overspending expected to be more than £40 million this financial year. Aitken said both the Labor and Conservative governments had refused to meet with the council. He is less willing to criticize his SNP colleagues at Holyrood, who have cut the affordable housing budget and blamed the UK government for failing to fund its policy.

Glasgow’s Labor MPs push back on the accusation, accusing the SNP of “virtue signaling”. Joani Reid, Labor MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, said: “They chose to make Glasgow a haven for asylum seekers… and now they want the Home Office to bail them out.”

Refugee organizations argue that the picture is more complex, and that migrants are drawn to Glasgow by established communities and support networks that have been in the making for decades. “Glasgow is known as a welcoming city,” says Hales. “We hear this all the time: ‘I was told it was safe here.’”

He adds that last year it was particularly difficult to watch people return to the hotel after receiving their status. The Scottish Refugee Council supports many such cases.

Such is the case for Omar, who spent five years in Glasgow with his wife and teenage daughter awaiting an asylum decision. When he was finally granted refugee status in November, the municipal office went bankrupt and the family lives in a hotel room. “As soon as I made my decision, I started trying hard to find a job and build a better future for my family,” says Omar. But he missed a crucial English exam because he had to move to hotels, job applications were difficult without a fixed address, and his daughter had trouble traveling long distances to get to school.

In Milton, a close-knit housing scheme at the north end of the city centre, saltire flags appeared on lampposts during the summer months.

Alex O’Kane is a community activist who presented evidence on poverty to the Scottish parliament. It also runs a Facebook service alerting local residents about traffic incidents, petty crime, lost items and, most recently, an escaped budgie.

“When I raise the Saltire flag, I am sending a signal to the SNP to make change before it is too late, before people become so disillusioned that they angrily vote Reform,” says O’Kane.

“I’m afraid of the Reformation coming in,” he adds. “I don’t know what their policies are on poverty.”

But he adds there is “real tension” around housing in the area. He says local people are bound to have questions when they see migrant families moving into the area while their own children leave for social housing. “This isn’t racism. It’s a real frustration with the lack of housing stock.”

St Andrew’s secondary school district covers much of the East End and its students’ heritage spans more than 50 countries and 20 languages.

Teacher Lee Ahmed chats with a group of 15- and 16-year-old children whose second language is English about the benefits of multilingual learning.

Maria, who speaks Portuguese and English, describes her bilingualism as “having two homes, two minds.” He is stunned by Farage’s criticism: “Speaking another language has definitely improved my cognitive skills and memory. It also opens up jobs.”

“It’s a way to connect with other people,” says Jiyan, who also speaks Sorani Kurdish. “The best way to learn a language is to speak it, so you hear people using different expressions all the time in school.”

It’s worth investigating the numbers Farage mentions. According to Glasgow city council, 27.8% of students are bilingual students with English Language Level, a data score that allows teachers to track their progress towards fluency. Only 16.4% of them are at the “new to English” level; This means that the vast majority range from good spoken fluency to very advanced English.

Ahmed says Farage’s claims that Glasgow is “culturally broken” are “outrageous”. Bilingualism “brings a pleasant atmosphere to the classroom when we can interact with each other in different languages.”

Young people agree that the city is changing. “Glasgow is a welcoming city,” says Aisha, who is originally from Iraq, “but in the last few years I feel like some people have become more hostile to immigrants.” Recently, a friend of his was beaten in a nearby forest and told to “return to his country.”

While it is undeniable that community frustrations have sharpened in areas across Glasgow and are being compounded for political gain, no one the Guardian spoke to echoed the rhetoric of Reform UK’s most prominent councillor, Thomas Kerr, who last week claimed the city was at “boiling point”.

In Refuweegee, Hales insists the welcome in Glasgow has not waned.

“If there is an increase in tensions, Glasgow will recover. We are very privileged to see the wider community response: What can I do? How can I share? What do you need right now? It’s a beautiful thing.”