From Uganda to Sierra Leone and Kosovo they tell “Teacher” Bidisha of gang rape, social ostracism and the shame attendant on homelessness. Their stories are representative of asylum seekers in Britain throughout the ages. My mother, a refugee from Nazi and Soviet oppression in the Baltic, came to London in 1947 at the age of 17 after passing through Displaced Persons camps in liberated Germany.
In the British capital she lived a hand-to-mouth existence out of a suitcase; but, just as life returns to a frozen limb, so life in Britain began to pick up for her. Perhaps it may also pick up for the courageous, displaced souls in Asylum and Exile, most of whom are here to work, Mr Farage, not to ransack the state coffers.
*The letter was pounced on by Channel 4 News recently. For more on Farage at Dulwich College, see his gushy memoir-cum-manifesto, The Purple Revolution: The Year that Changed Everything (Biteback).
Ian Thomson 26 March 2015