Britain Discovers Cultural Differences

After years of insisting there was nothing much to worry about, the Home Office has produced illustrated instructions explaining consent, child abuse, FGM, forced marriage and so on.

Editor’s note: The British Home Office has just published a new collection of illustrated guidance for asylum seekers called “Asylum: Consequences of Behaviour.” Its accompanying booklet, Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK, explains that people arriving in the UK may find that British “laws and customs” differ from those in their home countries, and warns that breaking them can lead to arrest, loss of accommodation or support, and consequences for an asylum claim, although serious sexual offending has repeatedly failed to produce deportation in practice, including cases involving convicted rapists who successfully fought Home Office attempts to remove them. Aslam tribunal judgment · MD tribunal judgment · A.A. v United Kingdom.

What follows is apparently what the government now believes requires explanation.

Sex requires consent. The Home Office has produced a poster explaining that “both people must say ‘yes’ to sex,” and that rape remains rape if the people are married or if consent was given and later withdrawn. The longer version adds that someone who is asleep, drunk or unable to respond cannot consent, and reminds readers that the age of consent is 16.

Do not abuse children. This requires a separate poster telling asylum seekers not to physically hurt or threaten children, have sexual contact with anyone under 16, neglect them, or “cut or harm a girl’s genitals,” which the Home Office identifies as female genital mutilation.

The longer child-safety leaflet supplies perhaps the most revealing sentence in the entire package:

“What is allowed in some countries may be illegal here.”

It goes on to explain that female genital mutilation and forcing a child to marry are serious crimes in Britain.

Do not sexually harass people in the street. Do not make sexual comments to strangers, repeatedly approach someone who is not interested, follow them or block their path. The full booklet adds whistling, kissing noises, rude gestures and verbal abuse to the list.

After years in which public concern about profound cultural differences was routinely treated as ignorance, hysteria or prejudice (one Judge excused the rapists as being “culturally at sea”) the Home Office has now commissioned an illustrated government guide explaining to asylum seekers that women may leave the house without male permission, women can refuse sex, children cannot be beaten or subjected to genital mutiliation, forced marriage is illegal, and strangers should not be followed down the street making sexual noises at them.

Apparently the cultural differences are real enough to need posters, and quite a few of them.

We asked T.W. to investigate.

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The editor has asked me to investigate the Home Office’s new asylum-seeker literature because I am currently in England on what I am obliged, for operational reasons, to describe only as a covert assignment involving hedgerows, several railway stations, a burner phone registered to a deceased ferret and [REDACTED].

I had assumed I was here to observe the final stages of British civilisation. It appears I arrived just in time for the instruction manual. The Home Office has published a series of illustrated notices under the heading “Asylum: Consequences of Behaviour.” These are intended to acquaint new arrivals with some of the more obscure customs of the British people.

For example, women are people.

I appreciate that this is a rather advanced concept to introduce on page three, but the Home Office has bravely gone straight in. Women, asylum seekers are informed, can work, study, travel, choose whom they marry and make decisions about their own lives. They do not require permission from a husband, father, brother or other male relative.

I checked this personally.

At approximately 10:40 yesterday morning I observed a woman leave a Boots in Swindon carrying shampoo without producing written authorisation from her brother.

Nobody arrested her.

Later, another woman drove a Vauxhall Corsa entirely unsupervised.

So that part checks out.

I attempted a third verification involving a woman entering a Wetherspoons alone, but this portion of my field report has been removed following legal advice.

[REDACTED: 317 WORDS]

The government has even provided a helpful box headed “What is expected of you”, explaining that a man must not stop a woman working, control what she wears, prevent her seeing friends, or make decisions for her without her agreement.

This is quite a development.

For years, anybody suggesting that Britain might be importing significant numbers of people from societies with markedly different attitudes towards women risked being escorted into the public square and beaten to death with copies of The Guardian.

There were no cultural differences.

There had never been cultural differences.

Diversity was our strength.

Please see the enclosed government diagram explaining that your wife is allowed outside.

Next comes sex.

The Home Office has decided that some asylum seekers require an illustrated poster explaining:

Both people must say yes.

This is called consent.

I had previously thought the British government regarded such educational material as something supplied to Year 9 pupils immediately before a lesson on pronouns and vaping. Apparently it is now also part of border policy.

The poster goes on to explain that rape remains rape even if you are married.

Again, I conducted field research.

I approached a married English couple outside a Tesco Express and asked the husband whether marriage entitled him to sexual access whenever he pleased.

He told me to fuck off.

His wife agreed.

Consensus appears strong.

My subsequent attempt to establish whether the same question produced different results outside [LOCATION REDACTED BY EDITOR] has been removed from the published report.

The editor says this is because my sample size was inadequate.

I say it was because he is a coward.

The longer Home Office booklet then handles some of the difficult edge cases. A sleeping woman cannot consent. A drunk woman cannot consent. A woman who previously said yes may later say no. You must stop.

One hesitates to ridicule educational material intended to prevent rape.

Fortunately, the ridiculous part is not the advice.

It is that the British state apparently decided the advice needed producing now, after years of everyone else being told off for pointing out the problem.

The government then advances to children.

Do not have sex with them.

Do not hit them.

Do not threaten them.

Do not starve them.

And, in one of those sentences which suggests the civil servant drafting the leaflet suddenly looked out of the window and wondered how his career had arrived at this point:

Do not cut or harm a girl’s genitals.

The Home Office helpfully adds that this is called female genital mutilation.

There is also a section explaining that forced child marriage is illegal.

I particularly enjoyed the sentence from the longer leaflet:

“What is allowed in some countries may be illegal here.”

There it is.

The entire immigration debate, compressed into eleven words and printed by His Majesty’s Government.

For ten years the country has endured panels of experts explaining that cultural concern was mostly a fever dream experienced by elderly people who had accidentally read the crime section of their local newspaper.

Then the Home Office quietly prints:

Some of the things you did back home will get you arrested here.

At this point my original field report contained a short comparative table listing the countries in which certain practices remain common, the principal nationalities arriving through the asylum system and several observations concerning [REDACTED].

The editor has deleted the table.

He has retained the sentence immediately following it:

Well, that was unfortunate.

I have requested that “What is allowed in some countries may be illegal here” be carved over the entrance to Whitehall.

The next module is Respect in public.

Apparently one must not follow strangers.

One must not block their path.

One must not repeatedly approach somebody who has shown no interest.

One must not make sexual comments.

One must not whistle or make kissing noises at women.

There is even an illustration.

This raises an obvious question.

Who was this written for?

Because nobody produces an illustrated government poster saying DO NOT FOLLOW WOMEN DOWN THE STREET MAKING KISSING NOISES unless somebody, somewhere, has decided that this information has operational value.

You will notice that the Home Office has not produced equivalent asylum guidance on the dangers of Morris dancing. Nobody has commissioned a six-page pamphlet explaining that it is unacceptable to discuss lawnmower engines for more than forty minutes with a stranger at a bus stop.

Government communications departments select subjects. That is rather the point. I made further enquiries into exactly why these subjects were selected. The Home Office has not answered me.

A source whom I shall identify only as “Nigel from somewhere near Croydon” did.

Unfortunately:

[REDACTED ON THE ADVICE OF COUNSEL]

The final magnificence is the threat attached to almost everything.

You could be arrested.

You could go to prison.

You could lose asylum support.

It could affect your asylum claim.

Could.

A beautiful English word.

After reading several deportation judgments involving men convicted of serious sexual offences who nevertheless managed to remain in Britain, I would perhaps have selected something stronger.

RAPE MAY ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR IMMIGRATION EXPERIENCE does not possess quite the deterrent quality I would have hoped for.

I originally followed this observation with four paragraphs concerning the relationship between deportation law, human rights jurisprudence and the British state’s apparently inexhaustible capacity to [REDACTED].

The editor has removed them on the grounds that he would like to continue visiting England.

Still, one should appreciate progress.

Britain has finally reached the stage at which its immigration policy comes with a laminated behavioural troubleshooting guide.

Problem: New arrival believes sister requires permission to leave house.

Solution: See Gender Equality, page 3.

Problem: New arrival believes marriage constitutes permanent sexual consent.

Solution: See Sex and Consent, page 5.

Problem: New arrival is pursuing woman through shopping precinct while making kissing noises.

Solution: Please consult Respect in Public before continuing towards Greggs.

Problem: New arrival believes that behaviour explicitly identified by the Home Office as potentially differing from the customs of his home country has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with culture.

Solution: Apply for position at the BBC.

I have now folded the entire Home Office package into my field notebook and returned to the safe house.

For security reasons I cannot disclose its location, except to say that the shed is behind [REDACTED], approximately eighty yards from a branch of Screwfix, and the Wi-Fi password remains [REDACTED].

The editor asked whether I had discovered anything significant.

Yes.

The government still insists Britain can absorb enormous cultural differences without serious difficulty.

It has simply begun printing diagrams explaining what the cultural differences are.

T.W. Burrows
Somewhere in England, beneath a shed I am not at liberty to identify

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