Brick Lane, Afia Begum & Jeremy Corbyn In 1984

In 1984 the government decided to deport Afia Begum and her baby to Bangladesh following the tragic death of her husband in a house fire. There was a huge demonstration in the East End that started and finished on Brick Lane outside the police station. Despite the campaign Afia was deported. The issue was raised in parliament by a young Jeremy Corbyn who said:

“Mrs. Begum has a perfect legal right to be in this country as the wife of somebody who had permanent residence in the country. On 15 March 1982, her husband, Abdul Hamid, was tragically killed in a fire in their tenement house in the east end. Further to that, Mrs. Begum arrived in this country and was told by the Home Office that the basis on which she would be allowed to stay in this country had in fact changed. Since then, she has been the subject of an unremitting war waged by the Home Office to try to ensure that she is deported from this country. An unprecedented number of representations have been made by Members of both Houses of Parliament asking that she be allowed to remain permanently in this country in order to look after her baby and to care for her sick and elderly father. For the last year, she has been in hiding while the Home Office has been hounding her like a criminal throughout London.

Last Thursday morning, at 6 o’clock, a police raid was made on the house where she was staying with her daughter, and she was picked up. Further urgent representations were made to the Home Office by a number of hon. Members asking that she be not deported. Indeed, on Thursday evening, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) and I attended the Home Office to plead her case. We were informed on Friday afternoon, after the House had risen, that our representations had fallen on deaf ears and that Mrs. Begum was to be deported the following morning.

We have since learnt that, during the afternoon of Friday, Mrs. van den Heuvel, the leader of the Socialist group in the Dutch Parliament, sent a telegram to the Home Office saying that she would be making an application to the Dutch Ministry of Justice yesterday morning to ask that Mrs. Begum be allowed temporary leave to remain in the Netherlands while her case was heard at the European Court of Human Rights.

My reasons for making this application, Mr. Speaker, are that it is unprecedented for somebody to be deported from this country while the case is before the European Court of Human Rights—it is due to hear the case later this month—and while there is a Bill before the House which, if it were carried—it has already been given a Second Reading—would have the effect of altering the law to prevent the Home Secretary from changing the basis on which somebody is regarded as resident in this country.

Those are the reasons, Mr. Speaker, together with widespread disquiet about the way in which this poor woman and her baby have been hounded by the Home Office and by immigration officials, and thrown out of this country, after being dragged from their home at 6 o’clock in the morning, and the fury that runs through the Asian and Caribbean community in this country that —compared with the way that the Government bent over backwards to bring Zola Budd here at the drop of a hat, because she was white and was from South Africa — Mrs. Begum, the widow of somebody tragically killed in  a fire who, if her husband was still alive, would have a perfect right to stay here, has been bundled out of the country as if she were a criminal. She is no criminal but a victim of circumstances.

I believe that a debate is necessary so that the Home Secretary can answer for his actions in this matter, and we can tell the House that we want Mrs. Begum back here until the case has been heard at the European Court of Human Rights and that we want her status as a resident of this country to be restored, instead of the disgraceful way in which she has been treated.

The speaker replied:

“The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely, the deportation of Afia Begum from the United Kingdom last Saturday. I have listened carefully to what the hon. Member has said, but I regret that I do not consider that the matter which he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10. I cannot, therefore, submit his application to the House.”

Jeremy Corbyn accompanied Afia and her baby to Heathrow airport and tried to persuade immigration officials that she had a legal right to stay in the UK. Unfortunately, she was deported.

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