Selling their bodies for the price of a spud
The Independent, 10 December 1998

It wasn't clear whether the Folkestone Herald was aping the Sun or the Sunday Sport. "Town centre call-girls in Folkestone claim immigrant women have sunk to an all-time low -- selling their bodies for the price of a spud," it reported last month, in the midst of the media frenzy over asylum-seekers coming into Britain.

"The blouses are coming off as refugee 'potato patch dollies' are winning their own version of the war of the undieworlds," the paper punned. "A local prostitute reckons that Slovak 'working women' have a new motto: For mash read cash. The 29-year-old Folkestone call-girl, who wishes to remain anonymous, says she is fed up with female immigrants stealing potential customers with their incredibly low prices."

"Speaking exclusively to the Herald" (as opposed to, say, the Dover Mercury or Express), the call-girl is quoted as saying: "It is starting to get a bit annoying now. The prices these girls are charging for various services are unbelievable . . . They seem to be happy just charging the price of a potato -- how on earth can we compete with that?"

Never mind that this was about as daft a story as will ever make it off the pages of Herald reporter Sarah Hall's notebook. The paper gave it the full treatment -- including the po-faced official police statement that "they have had no reports of Slovaks soliciting but would like to hear from anyone who has". Evidently unsure itself whether to treat the story as a joke or a serious news item, the Herald hedged its bets by printing a lengthy rebuttal from a local refugee organisation explaining why it was extremely unlikely that any of the "family-orientated" Romany refugees in the town would be involved in prostitution.

In different circumstances, the Folkestone Herald's "exclusive" might be merely laughable: no one really believes that refugee women "do it for potatoes", do they? In an area where anti-refugee feeling is running high, however, and where some people do indeed seem to be prepared to believe almost anything about asylum-seekers, it ceases to be simply daft and becomes dangerous as well.

Here, for instance, are just two of the "33 reasons why we should send them back and close the door" listed in a leaflet widely circulated in the Dover and Folkestone area recently:

"No medical checks on refugees -- with the knowledge of their promiscuity and selling sex for money, who is to answer for the epidemic of venereal diseases that will undoubtedly become rife?"

"[A local hospital] has advised [that in the event of] any blood contact with these people, then medical help is of the utmost importance."

Among much else, the leaflet also rages against refugees' supposed involvement in crime ("Yet there are no charges brought forward against these people"), their preferential treatment over longstanding residents ("Locals going to collect their benefit are being told, 'You will have to wait, as the refugees take priority'") and the luxurious lifestyle they enjoy at the British taxpayers' expense (DSS "crisis loans" of up to £1,000 are said to be spent at the local Argos jewellery counter, where the asylum-seekers can be seen "getting their friends to take photographs to send back to their families and show them their new-found wealth").

The rantings of an extreme anti-immigrant minority? Certainly. But here is how the Dover Express (15 October) reported the views of one of the leaflet's authors, under the headline "DSS cheats are now into brothels":

"A Dover woman wants local people to join her in putting pressure on the Government into doing something about the number of immigrants in town. Sheila Farrell, 63, of Avenue Road, Dover, hopes enough people will show an interest in going to Westminster to lobby Parliament on the issue of asylum seekers that it will make it worthwhile hiring a coach."

The article then quotes her at length: "Immigrants get so much more benefits than local people . . . They're like a fifth column. They've taken over loads of houses in the district. The county council's education department is paying for a 52-seat bus to take four immigrant children [to school] while mums and their youngsters have to walk . . . When we offer pregnant mothers second hand prams they refuse saying they want a new one . . . One asylum seeker is being housed even though he won £150,000 on the National Lottery . . . What really gets me annoyed is the police aren't being probably funded. They're called out up to 15 times a day because of immigrants shoplifting. And at least three brothels have popped up around Dover . . . " And so on.

That last allegation, in case you missed it, was the sole justification in this story for the Express's headline "DSS cheats are now into brothels". And in case you thought this respectful coverage of Sheila Farrell's unsubstantiated prejudices was a one-off aberration, it's worth looking at how the Dover Express has been treating these issues week in and week out.

"Builder pays a high price to stem the flow" said its headline over another respectful (and lengthy) report in October about how a local builder -- who intends to stand for the far-right British National Party in next year's local elections -- was "refusing work from businesses which accommodate asylum seekers, immigrants and refugees". "We are sitting on a time bomb that must be defused now" announced its editorial that same issue. "Every week we report fresh outpourings of resentment over the tide of
immigrants arriving through our port," it declared. "It is easy to dismiss these as the opinions of an extremist minority." We shouldn't do so, it seems: "The vast majority of townsfolk are not racist. But they ARE alarmed by what they believe is an escalating problem."

The vast majority may well not be racist. But a significant minority have been given voice -- and legitimacy -- for the sort of opinions that defy any other description. This, finally, was the Dover Express itself (1 October 1998), in an editorial headed "We want to wash dross down drain". Published during the week of the Labour Party conference, it targeted government ministers then assembling in Blackpool.

"Illegal immigrants, asylum seekers (when they get to asylum are they happy?), bootleggers (who take many guises) and the scum of the earth drug smugglers have targeted our beloved coastline for some unwarranted attention . . . " the paper raged. "Kent Police, who are doing an exceptional job, have got their backs to [the] sea and are being pushed ever closer to the cliff edge. While Labour luvvies dribble on at that most historic of northern pleasure outposts -- Blackpool -- we are left with the backdraft of a nation's human sewage and NO CASH to wash it down the drain."

You don't have to be a racist to publish that sort of thing -- but it helps.