Waiting for judgement

This week we have a powerful and thought-provoking extract from Free To Be Me: Refugee Stories from the Lesbian Immigration Support Group, edited by Jane Traies. 

The door to the tribunal office in Mosley Street is so quietly anonymous that you wouldn’t notice it unless you had a reason to be there. Before it slides open to admit you, the mirrored glass gives no hint of what’s inside: a small, equally anonymous hallway, where a friendly man politely searches your bag. Thoroughly. Then you need to step through an electronic gate, like the ones you see at airport security. On the other side, a second kindly Mancunian pats you down with equal thoroughness and passes a drug-searching wand over your body, just to be sure. Only then may you take the lift to Reception. 

Reception is a long desk at one end of a large, low waiting-room. All the rest of the space is taken up with seating of that modern kind made for offices: light oak veneer and soft blue fabric, functional, pleasant, neutral. The staff, like their colleagues downstairs, are friendly and courteous: public servants doing their sometimes-difficult jobs in the kindest way they can. At a few minutes after nine, there are already people waiting, even though nothing will happen until at least ten o’clock, and for some of them it will be a much longer wait. They sit in ones and twos, with serious, worried faces. Their tension is infectious. The staff on Reception are white; with one or two exceptions, the anxious people on the chairs are not.

I have arrived early, so I have time to observe all this before the women from the Lesbian Immigration Support Group start to arrive in ones and twos. They bring life and movement into the room. Lesbians and asylum seekers themselves, they have come to support a sister. They hug each other in turn, like the family they have become, and talk animatedly, catching up on each other’s news: who is well or ill, who has a new girlfriend, who has been sent a date for her appeal hearing, who has been granted leave to remain in the UK – or not. We are all here this morning to support Grace, whose final, last-chance hearing is today. She has been fighting for asylum in the UK for thirteen years, and none of us can bear to think about what will happen if she is rejected this final time. Three of us are here to be witnesses in her case; all the rest have come as observers, to offer love and friendship. I do not see such a crowd of sisters anywhere else in the room.

A black man in a very good suit approaches us and introduces himself as Grace’s barrister. I examine the small shock of surprise this gives me: there is clearly a stereotyped ‘pale male’ barrister in my head; and there are still so very few black barristers in England. So, in spite of his expensive suit and his privileged education, this man knows what it’s like to have the odds stacked against you. That feels like a good omen. He beckons the witnesses into a small office where he briskly outlines the case he plans to make and the questions he will ask us. We are all very tense, because we are fighting for our friend’s life. He explains that the Home Office’s Presenting Officer can cross examine us, and might be aggressive. He tells us that the judge who is presiding over our case is not known for his liberal views. I feel sick.

Back in the waiting room, Grace has arrived at last. The women surround the short, stocky figure, trying to reassure her. With her smooth skin and jet-black hair, Grace looks much younger than her years, but she will be 74 in a few months and she has not slept well. It’s no surprise that her asthma is bad today. She sinks down on one of the seats, coughing, groping in her bag for her inhaler. She did not have asthma – or rheumatism in her knees – when she arrived from Uganda; years of struggle in the UK’s hostile climate have taken their toll. 

The room has filled up now. So many people waiting for judgment, watching anxiously as men in suits with files under their arms thread the crowd looking for the people they have been assigned to help. Suddenly our barrister is here again, looking for Grace. He introduces himself to her, putting out his hand. I watch her quick frown of non-comprehension; then her face clears and she smiles up at him. For a second it seems to me that they are holding, as well as shaking, hands.

Then everything happens at once. Grace’s case is called; an usher comes to take her off to the courtroom. The chattering crowd of women follow her out. They will be too many for the public chairs in the courtroom – the system does not expect this level of support. It is quiet when they have gone. The three of us are left, sitting in a row. As witnesses, we cannot join the observers in the public seats, but must wait to be called into court one by one. The tension ratchets up a notch. Our conversation falters into silence.

That was the day that the idea for the book Free To Be Me: refugee tales from the Lesbian Immigration Support Group was born. You can read all of Grace’s story – and a dozen diverse others – in this book, due to be published on 8 March 2021.

Proceeds from the sale of Free To Be Me will go to support the work of the Lesbian Immigration Support Group. 

https://www.tollingtonpress.co.uk/free.html