Derby Road is a fairly normal street in Southampton. I pass its terraced homes dotted with newsagents and internet cafes on my way into town almost every day. But recently something has changed. Makeshift, photocopied posters have appeared in dozens of windows along the street, pinned up by residents. They simply read: “Go Home Love Productions, No Filming or Photography Here.”
It has been chosen as the site for Channel 4’s new series, Immigration Street. It aims to document the lives of people there, and the company making it, Love Productions, has already started work capturing the area. The producers hope it will make a fitting sequel to the controversial series Benefits Street, which triggered a national row about Britain’s welfare system when it was transmitted earlier this year. No doubt Channel 4 is hoping that by choosing another explosive topic, it will see the same sort of ratings boost.
The problem is that the community doesn’t want it. In July about a hundred residents met Love Productions to ask questions and air their frustrations, but the company is steamrolling ahead regardless. It wants to make a programme about a street against the direct wishes of most of the people who live there. The residents of Derby Road will have their story broadcast to the nation as Channel 4 see fit – and no matter how humiliating the consequences, they will have to live with them.
If you can’t engage with the community you’re making a series about, you’re in danger of misrepresenting them. Walking down Derby Road yesterday, I met a group of Asian teenagers who live there and in the surrounding streets. Without exception, they were all born in the UK and none of them considered themselves migrants. Why should they, when they were born and bred here and have Southampton accents? You only have to meet a few residents in Derby Road to realise that a huge proportion are second-generation citizens, which seems at odds with the show’s title. As one of the teenagers put it: “They are making a mockery of us.” The programme-makers are now said to be considering changing the title of the series.
Then there’s the danger of rising community tension. Southampton is a port town that has welcomed people over the years, but it also has an EDL presence and a history of BNP activity. Locals already seem more nervous than they used to be about talking to strangers for fear of being stereotyped and misrepresented. It’s getting harder than it used to be to have a conversation on Derby Road.
If the programme does get broadcast, without proper ownership from the community, it is in danger of damaging the vulnerable. Local doctors have publicly spoken out against the company for potentially recruiting vulnerable people in the area, particularly given its close proximity to a day centre, and participants have reported being confused by the nature of the contracts. Then there are the children who go to Maytree infant and nursery school at the end of the road. In Channel 4’s last series, kids who came from the road where filming took place were said to be victims of bullying. The residents of Derby Road don’t want that for their children.
None of this means that the local community are against a proper debate on immigration, nor do we think that it doesn’t have costs for our country. In fact with local MPs John Denham and Alan Whitehead, we have been holding community meetings on this very subject. Most people we listen to think that there are serious issues to be addressed with the numbers coming to our city, such as jobs, wages, homes, abuse by employment agencies etc. and I agree with them. But these issues are too complex and important to be addressed in an entertainment show that will create a huge amount of heat and no light.
It’s time for Love Productions to go home, and leave the people of Derby Road free to tell their own stories.
