From a distance the queue of people is hard to make out. Are they waiting for a bus, taking them out to Purley and beyond? As you approach, you see they are within the thigh-high wall that marks the edge of the street. What lies over that wall? That curious hybrid – a government building; notionally owned by the nation yet inaccessible to most citizens (or rather subjects). And who would want to go there? This is not a destination building.
There are two main patrons of Lunar House – the last-minute vacationer, applying for a panic passport and, of course, the new arrivals, the huddled masses seeking, or perhaps pleading for, asylum. One could imagine a system of equilibrium based on balancing the numbers of these two groups. “One out, one in mate”, a surly Global Solutions Ltd (formerly Group 4) employee of the month may tell you, regardless of whether you speak English or not. But things are not easy on either side of the equation. There is a complex calculus that must be executed before anything like a decision can be made on one’s suitability for travel or residency.
Identity is the first point. Are you who you say you are? As if anyone can answer such a question, as if it matters what identities move around the world. The first thing you think of in the morning, your favourite song, what your farts smell like – these things are at least as good if not better indications of who you are and your ‘suitability’ than date of birth and mother’s maiden name. But the calculus deals with facts. Known knowns. The measurable. There is no appealing to the common sense, to any sense; only the proper channels. Lives flow through these passages like barges on a canal. There’s no turning round, no leaving the water, no jumping the lock.
The stamp falls on your passport and you are allowed to leave. Next stop Paris or Prague or Magaluf or Ankara or Basra. Pushing your way out of the door you see a family waiting in ‘the other line’. This is their fist trip to Britain, their first trip abroad.
We apologise for any delay, but it’s to be expected as with any journey. First the forms to fill in – any notes are clearly written in English on the the back. Then a friendly officer (replete with name badge – if only they’d said to wear a name badge, we could have sorted the identity problem out in a jiffy) guides you to a small room for searching and processing (men searched by men, women – and once children – by women). An interview: have you got your story straight? Are you a threat? Do you need to be detained? All these will be decided in good time, but first: the wait. Waiting is important, you must play out your uncertainty, your lack of control. A play with space but no action, save for a flickering television (an introduction to the local culture through property programmes and foreign soaps).
Judgement waits too, hides in doors and rattling offices. This happens in the beyond – the upstairs of the House. It happens between manilla files and phone calls, between printouts and re-faxed correspondence. Authority exercises itself. Stretches, poses and pouts; confirms its strength. It wants to look its best. This isn’t some anonymous shop-front, this is where the action is enacted. The building is modernist cool and therefore the non-cool of too-late coolness, of sunglasses in September. British holidayers in late season Costa Brava. It dominates its twin Apollo, despite being an exact mirror image, by courting publicity and controversy. The queues and protest and arrests for which it serves as a backdrop are part of its public proposal, its truculent charm.
The look is official, but not too official. Every day is dress-down Friday. It might be a college campus, or a joint embassy for a few of the ‘minor’ nations of the security council, or maybe a block of flats. It is all of these things. It wants to be seen, but it doesn’t want to be seen to be being seen.
Croydon is a fitting home (or rather hangout) for such a character, these are scenes that people expect to have been outsourced to some remote Asian warehouse economy. Those proposals for extra-national immigration centres – catalytic converters for the uninvited – were quietly dropped by all parties some time ago. Who needs a compound in Calais or Istanbul when we have a place as foreign as Croydon? A refugee returning to Sudan or Kenya would have great trouble convincing their surviving friends and family that they had truly visited Britain if they regaled them with tales of these tower and trams. “You must be delirious,” they would say, “you dreamed it all – you never even left the country.”
At last, a decision is reached, or rather, not reached. Further investigation is needed. More checks, more phone calls, more interviews. You are not dangerous enough to be ‘sent home’ but were not sure you are safe enough to be allowed to stay. Having no money for a phone call to friends or relatives (or a solicitor), means you are not burdened with many belongings. So you are walked by another friendly officer (the shifts have changed over three times since you arrived) to the car-park. Once loaded on the bus, the officers gather outside to wave you off to Oakingdon Reception Centre. You have much to look forward to; as you move off down Wellesley road, you take in what could be the last you will see of Croydon, the closest you got to the dream of London. An old television in the coach flickers into life offering an introduction to the delights of Oakingdon. You settle down in your seat, and wait to be received.
Lunar House (or The Threshold)
There are two main patrons of Lunar House – the last-minute vacationer, applying for a panic passport and, of course, the new arrivals, the huddled masses seeking, or perhaps pleading for, asylum. One could imagine a system of equilibrium based on balancing the numbers of these two groups. “One out, one in mate”, a surly Global Solutions Ltd (formerly Group 4) employee of the month may tell you, regardless of whether you speak English or not. But things are not easy on either side of the equation. There is a complex calculus that must be executed before anything like a decision can be made on one’s suitability for travel or residency.
Identity is the first point. Are you who you say you are? As if anyone can answer such a question, as if it matters what identities move around the world. The first thing you think of in the morning, your favourite song, what your farts smell like – these things are at least as good if not better indications of who you are and your ‘suitability’ than date of birth and mother’s maiden name. But the calculus deals with facts. Known knowns. The measurable. There is no appealing to the common sense, to any sense; only the proper channels. Lives flow through these passages like barges on a canal. There’s no turning round, no leaving the water, no jumping the lock.
The stamp falls on your passport and you are allowed to leave. Next stop Paris or Prague or Magaluf or Ankara or Basra. Pushing your way out of the door you see a family waiting in ‘the other line’. This is their fist trip to Britain, their first trip abroad.
We apologise for any delay, but it’s to be expected as with any journey. First the forms to fill in – any notes are clearly written in English on the the back. Then a friendly officer (replete with name badge – if only they’d said to wear a name badge, we could have sorted the identity problem out in a jiffy) guides you to a small room for searching and processing (men searched by men, women – and once children – by women). An interview: have you got your story straight? Are you a threat? Do you need to be detained? All these will be decided in good time, but first: the wait. Waiting is important, you must play out your uncertainty, your lack of control. A play with space but no action, save for a flickering television (an introduction to the local culture through property programmes and foreign soaps).
The look is official, but not too official. Every day is dress-down Friday. It might be a college campus, or a joint embassy for a few of the ‘minor’ nations of the security council, or maybe a block of flats. It is all of these things. It wants to be seen, but it doesn’t want to be seen to be being seen.
Croydon is a fitting home (or rather hangout) for such a character, these are scenes that people expect to have been outsourced to some remote Asian warehouse economy. Those proposals for extra-national immigration centres – catalytic converters for the uninvited – were quietly dropped by all parties some time ago. Who needs a compound in Calais or Istanbul when we have a place as foreign as Croydon? A refugee returning to Sudan or Kenya would have great trouble convincing their surviving friends and family that they had truly visited Britain if they regaled them with tales of these tower and trams. “You must be delirious,” they would say, “you dreamed it all – you never even left the country.”
At last, a decision is reached, or rather, not reached. Further investigation is needed. More checks, more phone calls, more interviews. You are not dangerous enough to be ‘sent home’ but were not sure you are safe enough to be allowed to stay. Having no money for a phone call to friends or relatives (or a solicitor), means you are not burdened with many belongings. So you are walked by another friendly officer (the shifts have changed over three times since you arrived) to the car-park. Once loaded on the bus, the officers gather outside to wave you off to Oakingdon Reception Centre. You have much to look forward to; as you move off down Wellesley road, you take in what could be the last you will see of Croydon, the closest you got to the dream of London. An old television in the coach flickers into life offering an introduction to the delights of Oakingdon. You settle down in your seat, and wait to be received.