‘I went on Channel 4 Show Go Back To Where You Came From – There’s One Thing We All Agreed on’

This week, I am one of the faces of the mainstream media we would normally use this column to criticise. And with good reason.

The Channel 4 reality series Go Back To Where You Came From pairs its clickbait title with the gopping premise of “immersing” Brits in asylum seekers’ journeys. A futile goal, for displacement cannot be tried on.

With this USP, the channel has managed to enrage both far-right fearers of Leftist propagandists and the refugee campaigners whose grievances it commodifies for the screen.

I set two goals when I agreed to be one of only two pro-immigration cast members, sent into battle outnumbered on a month-long journey. My first was the one closest to my heart: refugee rights. The second was a pretext for achieving it: not raising my temper, not belittling in anger, and listening twice as much as I speak.

Welcome to my one-woman war on polarisation. *Two women, when I’m accompanied by my trusty and much-missed Media Storm co-host, Helena, who asked me on this week’s episode: “So let me get this straight, you went on a Channel 4 show called Go Back To Where You Came From to fight sensationalist polarisation?”

Yes. And that’s probably why my fiercest arguments were with the guy behind the camera. Also, I believe that is why I’m given very few lines in the final cut (either that, or I never said much of more value than three full titty jokes from contributor Dave). But from the lovely, sometimes frustrated, DMs I’ve received, I believe there is more of an appetite for talking — not yelling — than Channel 4 affords our public.

In its impact on the refugee debate the show could only be (net) positive. Sure, it airs views many would rather pretend don’t exist—but they do exist, and the show broke out of the echo chamber with educational and humanist content featuring the people it’s actually about. It may feel like a small and depressing win, but the abysmal state of the media is such that by giving refugees names, faces and voices (consensually: I took note) this show is an immense improvement on the norm.

My co-travellers Jess Hallett (who grew up in a small village in Wales) and Nathan Rimmington (a trucker from Barnsley) were blown away by the horrors driving refugee migration — not just from countries of origin but throughout Europe — which are almost entirely concealed from coverage of “our” border.

“These people aren’t scary,” was Jess’ closing thought, “I actually feel so embarrassed that I thought that way.”

“At the beginning of this, did I think I’d change my opinion?” asked Nathan. “Not even a little bit. But f**k me, I have. And I’m proud of myself for that.”

They were transformed — and so was I. Not by the refugee hardships of which I haven’t been ignorant for some time (though they re-break my heart every day), but by Jess and Nathan.

I would like to share this lesson with everyone who messaged me: “How did you deal with such disgusting bigots?!” (answer: they weren’t). Or who criticised me for going on the show because “the burden should be on racists to educate themselves” (sorry, that’s not happening). The nature of inequality is such that many people grinding through life in the conditions most susceptible to racist exploitation, have no more time to read tragic world news, than they have cause to listen to people belittling them with no idea of their life experience.

This is important. In my decade working in the refugee sector, I have observed polarisation to be one of the most detrimental forces to human rights. Dividing and conquering the hardshipped majority serves only the most self-interested elites, and when we do not see our common values, we neither see our common solutions.

I learned that Jess’s fear of “migrants” hinged more on her fear of men than of foreigners, and was based in real and traumatic lived experience. She observed the gender imbalance of UK-bound asylum seekers, which our media has abjectly failed to explain (the documentary edit also cut my many attempts to add context: mandatory male conscription, the added dangers for women making journeys, and the fact almost every one of these men is sending money back to families trapped in transit zones that have been abandoned by the world’s wealthiest countries). Not knowing this, Jess was terrified of men that the media told her were economic opportunists wanting to rape white women and bomb white towns.

“When do you hear anything good about Somali men in the media?!” She explained on Media Storm. “If the only thing Somali men do in the media is rape children, I’m going to believe it, aren’t I?”

In the end, her mind was not changed by me calling her a racist, it was changed by her own compassion — and the truth. Meeting James, a refugee from South Sudan who had made it to Calais, had the most profound effect on her: “To see a man just standing there so vulnerable… I remembered him the whole time I was home”.

And after I’d listened to her concerns, she gave me space to share mine.

I told her I believe the best solutions to the refugee crisis are ones that address her worries too. For example, making safe, legal routes for a realistic number of refugees (which currently only exists for Ukrainians in the UK) — because regulated routes would enable screening before entry, addressing Jess’ fears about strangers. I also believe safe, legal routes would reduce Nathan’s valid grievances around migration, by giving asylum seekers alternatives to smuggling their ways into the back of his trucks.

If a single asylum seeker is found hidden in his vehicle, Nathan could be fined £10,000. This is happening, with lorry drivers losing livelihoods and the cost of haulage skyrocketing as the Government’s hostile environment legislation — which puts the burden on citizens to police and pay for migration — reverberates through the insurance matrix.

“That’s the reason why a good 97% of haulage drivers in this country hate [asylum seekers],” Nathan told Media Storm this week. And though he does not sympathise totally (as I do) with everyone desperate enough to throw a brick through a windscreen and risk death-by-truck to reach sanctuary, he now understands why they do it, and he cares. “Make it safe and legal for kids, a hundred percent. No kid should ever be born in this world scared”.

And while we don’t agree on every point (which is okay), there is one thing on which we were all unanimous. The media’s representation of the refugee crisis is a crying shame. “Propaganda!” says Nathan. “Full of shit,” says Jess.

While filming, we had no access to the internet or news. Nathan said this was crucial to his understanding: “I ain’t got media in me, I ain’t got the news, I ain’t got Facebook, I’ve just watched it from my eyes and it’s helped me so much to understand it more, for the people that are absolutely desperate and just want a better life.”

At the premiere of the documentary, Nathan and I held hands the whole way through the screening. “That’s a moment I’ll never forget,” he told me.

“Me and you have come so far in this journey. We come from worlds apart. But you understood me and I understood you, and I’ll never not appreciate that. Never in a million years.”

I will never not appreciate my friendship with Jess and Nathan and everything they have taught me. Most of us fighting each other care about the same things. We’ll fight better together.

Media Storm’s episode ‘How to fight polarisation: With Jess and Nathan from Go Back To Where You Came From’ is out now.