At the start of the Channel 4 series Go Back to Where You Came From, chef Dave Marshall outlines his ‘Stop the Boats’ policy.
“I’d set landmines up,” the 35-year-old TikToker says, “and then any boat that comes within 50 metres of this beach, they’d get blown up.” Watching his display of bravado, are five people from all over the globe who fled to the UK for safety. Gaida Dirar, a 35-year-old Sudanese refugee, responds with dignity.
“Everybody should be able to speak their mind,” she says. “But we are all humans. We are all in the same world together. If the same things happened to them, they would do the same journey. Not one of us wanted to leave home. We didn’t make this crisis or cause this war.
“We are just trying to be safe. The day I became a refugee, I lost my identity. I lost who I am. We cried hard from our hearts. It’s not easy to leave everything. No-one deserves to be a refugee.” Then she adds, sadly: “I think the show is helpful for us to know the hidden views of British people – the same ones attacking me on the street.”
After weeks of controversy surrounding the series, which concludes tonight, the Mirror set up its own version of Gogglebox – with five people who sought sanctuary in Britain. Gaida’s family fled the horrors of Darfur for Libya when she was four – only to be displaced again by war at 21. A trained nurse and journalist, she is now a charity worker in Hull.
Motaz Amer’s family fled war-torn Yemen, when he was just nine, for Belfast via Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Greece. Now 19, he is a student at Glasgow University and a human rights activist.
Joel Mordi’s life was threatened after he organised Nigeria’s first Pride protest at 21. The Home Office detained him at the notorious Harmondsworth Detention Centre before giving him refugee status.
Sadia Sikander, 26, is an award-winning photographer and artist who fled persecution in Pakistan only to endure a gruelling six-year journey through the UK asylum system including being made homeless.
And Shams Moussa is a refugee forced to flee from Niger, West Africa, because of his political views. He now lives and works in safety on Tyneside.
We have asked them to watch the C4 series because in the furore, very few refugee voices have so far been heard. Condemned as ‘A Place in the Sun meets Benefit Street’ and ‘Racist Across the World’ by refugee charities, it features a group of British people brought to Somalia and Syria, before taking dangerous migrant routes to the UK.
In early episodes, Nottinghamshire chef Dave, a friend of MP Lee Anderson MP, compares refugees to rats. Jess Hallett, a sports coach from Llanelli thinks migrants are “rapists and paedophiles”. Nathan Rimmington, 32, a haulage contractor from Barnsley, worries his children “will be going to work on a f***ing camel”.
Then there is Chloe Dobbs, 24, a GB News contributor from London who says her right-wing and often heartless views “are just common sense”. Travelling with them are Mathilda Mallinson, 29, a humanitarian podcaster from London, and Bushra Shaikh, 42, an entrepreneur from Surrey, who has since been exposed for anti-Semitic tweets, for which she has apologised.
As the show goes on, the people most vitriolically against Britain accepting refugees begin to change.
“I look at the ratio of how many people change their minds, most of them,” says Shams. “For me, that makes the show worth it. When they land back in Dover, they are kissing the rock. It made me see we all have something in common. We are all humans. They had 24-hour security, and still their hearts were beating outside their chests. The anxiety, the stress, the fear you will die.”
Sadia says the title ‘Go Back to Where You Came From’ reminds her of abuse during last summer’s riots. “I’ve never heard so many hateful words,” she says. Joel, now 27, has mixed feelings. “I am grateful they’ve done something,” he says. “But it’s so far from reality. This was a simulation. These are our lives. These children going to dumpsters, picking up shells, living under bombs. When they say, ‘why don’t they stay in a safe country like France’, why don’t they think, ‘why do these people speak and write English?’ “Because of empire.”
Joel says the pain of asylum seekers’ journeys doesn’t end after reaching the UK. “When I got to the detention centre, I found a place where broken people are broken into smithereens.”
Gaida says she never chose to come to Britain. Her family were offered resettlement here. Even so, she was upset to see the show’s participants try to convince a boy in a camp not to come here. “I saw many like him in the camp I was in,” says Gaida, who worked as a nurse there.
“You just seek hope to continue as a human being. Coming to Britain is his hope to get out of the camp. Without that hope, I saw people who lost their minds. They attempt suicide.”
Motaz agrees with Joel. “Everything is over-simplified,” he says. “I don’t want to throw people into a small boat to go to Britain. But this is not reality. The people were not challenged enough. GB News commentator Chloe is used to making all these arguments. Her opponents are not. But, later, you could see she learned something. And so did Nathan and Jess. Jess realised there are good and bad people in every community.”
Gaida says: “They feel sad about the children, but don’t they understand those children will one day be the men they are so afraid of.” Overall, Motaz says, he found the series “heartbreaking”. “I found it upsetting seeing people’s culture called ‘s***t’,” he says. “There was no understanding of how British foreign policy is impacting those problems.”
All of our panel believe the term ‘illegal immigrant’ should have been challenged more clearly. “People are escaping a crisis,” Gaida claims. “You are not applying for a visa. No-one should call you illegal.” Shams agrees. “When you are hiding from an armed group, you are not going to go to the passport office.”
Channel 4 said: “The production team worked with a number of refugee charities in the making of the series, to ensure lived experiences were accurately reflected as far as possible.”
“We acknowledge the series cannot fully replicate the danger of undertaking the refugee journey for real.
“Immigration is an issue Britain has grappled with for decades, and it is hoped the series will offer an opportunity for the public to explore the varied and sometimes polarised opinions in our society.”
Go Back to Where You Came From is based on an Australian format, which ran to four series. Put to the vote, all five of our Refugee Gogglebox participants think the show should – on careful balance – have been made.
But they think it could be made better next time with their input. Gaida sums up the panel’s verdict. “We have a saying in the refugee community: ‘nothing about us without us’ – this shouldn’t have been without us.”
