Football Welcomes Refugees at Dulwich Hamlet

As part of our ongoing commitment to welcoming refugees to Champion Hill, the Hamlet will be taking part in Amnesty International's 'Football Welcomes' campaign for our game against Cray Wanderers.

We are pleased to have invited a group of refugees to our game and we hope they have a great time with us. Tim Lezard, a local campaigning journalist, tells us their story:

It’s all kicking off in the West Country.

Well, that’s what the Tories hoped. But at a time when our world feels ever more hostile and broken, when global and national forces beyond our control seem to rule our lives and politicians of all colours take their lead from right-wing media scare stories about foreigners and immigrants, Here’s a story of warmth, hope and welcome born in Gloucestershire and manifested, at least in part, on the football pitch.

It’s a story that shows you can fix a little bit of the broken world and push back against the hate with a smile, a hand of friendship and the kick of a ball.

At the end of 2022 Stroud District Council, my local authority, was told by the Home Office that a nearby hotel was to be used to house asylum-seekers. The premises, which had been closed since the start of the pandemic, was unsuitable due to its remoteness and lack of public transport, but the vocal opposition of local Conservative councillors and MP seemed to go beyond this. They had no desire for such a hotel on their patch.

Some locals agreed with them, expressing anti-migrant feelings, especially on social media, with the police intervening after one particularly nasty hate video was posted online.

With far-right extremists targeting similar hotels elsewhere, there was a real worry that our area would be next.

But it turned out the hotel wasn’t on the Tories’ patch; it was just inside a ward represented by Liberal Democrat and Green councillors who, along with Independent councillors, make up the authority’s ruling progressive alliance.

These local politicians, aided by former council leader Doina Cornell in a newly-created Migrant Champion role and charity Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (GARAS), were determined to approach the situation with positivity and compassion, building on their earlier work supporting Syrian, Afghan and Ukrainian refugees locally.

Their concerns about how isolated the men might be, and the lack of support being offered, led to a group of local people meeting up and discussing what they could do to help.

They rose to the challenge. English classes were hastily arranged, bicycles delivered so the men could make their own way around, lifts organised for those who couldn’t cycle, food, mobile phones, clothes dropped off.

In the return, the men became involved in local projects, cooking, building, gardening, electrical work, amateur dramatics… and football.

On hearing several of them liked football, I invited one young man from Senegal to join our five-a-side team.

It was obvious he was the best player on the park. He was snapped up by local Saturday side, Berkeley Town FC, playing in the Gloucestershire Northern Senior League Division One.

Two other men – one from Namibia, the other from Iraq – joined Berkeley too and these three men, miles from home, were welcomed into the heart of this rural footballing community.

The club organised lifts to and from training every week, and to games. The club also paid their registration and match fees and covered the cost of their kits.

If they hadn’t suffered enough fleeing their homes, some joined me watching Gloucester City in the National League North. League Two’s Forest Green Rovers invited them to a game and provided free veggie-burgers, and they took part in a five-a-side tournament against council staff.

Sport is a common language and breaks down barriers in ways other things cannot.

The right-wing media dehumanises asylum-seekers, wanting us to believe they’re all the same. They’re not, of course. Every man is different. The hotel residents come from some of the most troubled countries in the world fleeing persecution, leaving loved ones behind.

Some speak no English, others speak as many as four languages. Some support Arsenal, some support Liverpool or Manchester United.

I’m very proud of the 30 or so volunteers who showed humanity, love and warmth to these men. They took part in a different sort of politics, one based on compassion and friendship, not hatred and division.

A random decision by the government, pushing people who have experienced unimaginable suffering, torture and persecution, into an isolated rural hotel, with the expressed aim of creating a hostile experience to deter others from coming, and to demean and discourage those already here, ended up backfiring in a beautiful way: the green shoots of hope grew out of the government’s dirty policies.

Dulwich Hamlet has, today, planted more hope for these men. They are part of your new community now.

Back in the West Country, lifelong bonds were created. Volunteers and former hotel residents remain in touch via What’s App. There’s football banter aplenty.

The story of this moment of warmth and hope in a rural community can serve to illustrate that at moments in our lives, there may be a brief intersection between global and national politics we feel we cannot resist and the ancient human tradition of hospitality to the stranger, the simple act of befriending a person new to the area.

As individual voters and citizens we feel increasingly little agency over our lives. So let’s find the places where we can make a difference, in the smallest and most local of ways and places.

The world might feel broken but we can fix it bit by bit. With a little help from football.