Went to the cinema to see the movie ‘Limbo’ tonight – it’s about a refugee who has been put on a mythic Scottish island to await the result of his asylum application.
It is a beautiful film. The asylum-seekers’ plight is heartbreaking – but the movie is not grim. There are moments of humour and it is uplifting. Ben Sharrock describes himself as a ‘Scottish filmmaker with an international outlook’ – one of his early favourite movies was Gregory’s Girl – and there is discernible Bill Forsyth influence.
The island could be anywhere – it is the archetypal “middle of nowhere’ – and we soon see that the central character Omar (Amir El-Masry)’s world is still centred around his family and his childhood home in Damascus.
The issues raised are topical – last month there were reports that the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel plans to offshore asylum seekers: Ascension Island, oil rigs and disused ferries have all been leaked as possible destinations. Perhaps ‘Limbo’ might give Priti Patel the idea of housing refugees on St Kilda…
Since Brexit, more refugees than usual have been arriving across the channel from camps, after relations with the French government have soured. This has caused a lot of complaints – this week’s Spectator was one long whine about refugees arriving by dinghy – although one writer did suggest the ‘Alpha migrants’ who survive the journey could help fill the holes in the labour market caused by Brexit.
But the world is full of displaced people and the UK does not take its fair share – at fewer than 30,000 last year the numbers are tiny compared to what many countries host. In Limbo, Omar is from Syria and his friend Farhad (Vikash Bhai) is from Afghanistan – David Pratt reported in the National at the weekend that between 500 and 2,000 Afghans a day have started to flow towards the border with Turkey which already is home to 3 million refugees.
Still, despite the huge need, the UK government is determined to reduce still further the numbers of refugees it accepts. The Nationality and Borders Bill which is currently passing through Parliament makes it a criminal offence to arrive in the UK “illegally” – effectively the only route, so the lead in Limbo would henceforth be automatically disqualified from claiming asylum. There are virtually no legal routes.
Clause 38 of the bill also makes it illegal to help a refugee in a way that ‘facilitates their arrival’. Lawyers advising the Royal National Lifeboat Institution said that they could be affected – but they have said they will carry on saving lives. Donations to the RNLI soared after UKIP founder and arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage called them ‘ a taxi service for migrants’ for rescuing people in the channel.
There are still fewer refugees in Scotland than England. There was a policy of dispersal, sending asylum seekers across the UK but they no longer come to Scotland. When the Home Office tried to remove two immigrants from Glasgow earlier this year there was a spontaneous demonstration. After a protestor lay under the van in which the men were being held, a crowd gathered and blocked the street for several hours until Police Scotland intervened and released the men. These two were not asylum seekers, but that protest might be one bar to sending refugees north.
However, it seems this is mainly because of a sad incident in Glasgow last year when an asylum seeker in ‘a dire mental state’, who had been placed during lockdown in miserable conditions in a hotel, was shot by police after stabbing six people. After that, Glasgow Council which was the only authority in Scotland accepting asylum seekers, ended the programme saying it was being done “on the cheap”. It would be good to find a way to allow asylum seekers to come to Scotland and be supported.
Limbo makes you think about how alienating and depressing it might feel to be a refugee. It is sad – but we are spared too much horror. Its points are made gently, in the main. I was glad of that and enjoyed the movie. Cinemagoers like me, to paraphrase TS Eliot, cannot bear very much reality.
2