Begging on the streets is a criminal offense here. Earlier this month a stipendiary magistrate, Roger Davies, made the headlines when he told a Romanian asylum seeker, Elena Barbu, to tell her friends that they face jail sentences if they are caught begging with their children. Barbu was arrested for begging with her three-year-old daughter. "We don't like people begging with children in this country," Davies said. "Next time you come to court you will go to prison. Tell your friends, if they come before me they will go to prison."

Davies's remarks have been echoed by shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe. "It is a criminal offense to demand money [in public]. People like that should be in prison," she said. New Metropolitan police commissioner John Stevens has announced a "big bang" strategy to purge the streets of "aggressive beggars."

A major campaign by the capitalist media and politicians has been launched against so-called aggressive begging, targeting Romanians in particular. The London daily, the Evening Standard, has complained that London boroughs "spent £265 million in the year 1999-2000 supporting around 60,000 asylum seekers." A March 9 Standard article announced, "Beggar walks free as arrests double," citing the case of a "Romanian gypsy," Viorita Dumitry, who was caught begging with her two-year-old boy by plainclothes police. The paper sent a reporter, Keith Dovkants, to Bucharest to write a major spread entitled, "Town that lives off London's beggars."

Dovkants's report was filled with anti-working-class and antiforeign assertions. One was that a "gypsy township in Romania is sending beggars to London on organized expeditions that support a community of 4,000 people." At a meeting for London mayoral candidates March 14, Liberal Democrat candidate Susan Kramer said, "I know Romania. Begging is a way of life for these people."

About 60 asylum seekers--most of them from Romania--sent from London to Glasgow under the government's immigrant "dispersal scheme" were returned to London one week after 12 of them had been arrested for begging.

The government states that it hopes the get-tough measures will stem the number of asylum seekers. Home Office minister Barbara Roche plans to announce three further huge "reception centres" when she opens the Oakington barracks in Cambridgeshire March 20. The converted military and hospital sites, where newly arrived people will be detained in Kent, Yorkshire, and the West Midlands, will be policed by private security firms.

"Hundreds of men and women whose only crime is to have sought asylum" are "incarcerated on the mere say-so of low-ranking immigration officials, acting without reference or effective accountability to any court or independent review body," said Amnesty International in a new report entitled, "Cell culture: the detention and imprisonment of asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom."

The report explains that "over the past decade, the British government has implemented a seemingly endless stream of new and ever more oppressive measures against asylum-seekers...[including] the arbitrary and prolonged detention of many asylum-seekers, in purpose-built detention centres and criminal prisons, while their claims are examined."

Other accommodations include buildings like the London Park Hotel in Southwark, where nearly 1,000 immigrants are currently staying. Dozens of immigrants, the majority from Kosova, mill around the hotel with no money and nothing to do. "We receive board and lodging, and that's it," said Eddie, who didn't want his surname mentioned. "For the first six months after our arrival we are not allowed to work so there's nothing to do. You can only play football for so many hours a day," he said, referring to the kick-about on the green nearby.

"We want to do something constructive," said Tim, from Sierra Leone, who was visiting friends staying at the hotel. He said that even after an immigrant has the right to work, the problems don't end. "I applied for my National Insurance number but I was told I'll get it when I can find a job. But when you apply for a job, they ask for your National Insurance number!"

Depression conditions in Romania are fueling an increase in emigration. A report by the American Business Community states that there was a net population decrease in Romania in 1998, the last year for which figures are available. The economy suffered a decline in gross domestic product of about 12 percent in the last three years. Between 1997 and 1998 industrial production dropped by 17 percent and agricultural production fell by 7.6 percent. Last year inflation ran at an estimated 45 percent.

Jonathan Silberman is a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union  
 
 
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