As Everybody to Kenmure Street premieres at the Glasgow Film Festival on Wednesday evening, I had the opportunity to watch the 90-minute film of an event that will go down in history. Filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra has produced an endearing homage to that fateful day, and it is no surprise that it won a Sundance Film Award earlier this year.
It is no surprise that it opens with archive footage from the city’s past, of other acts of resistance in Glasgow. Red Clydeside, a speech by Jimmy Reid, a work-in, Nelson Mandela’s speech to the city after he was released from prison in South Africa, protest after protest.
Kenmure Street was no different, but it stands alone in its own way. At a time when the hostile environment was ramping up, under the leadership of former Tory home secretary Priti Patel, the people of Pollokshields chose to refuse to allow the Home Office to remove two of its residents.
At the time I lived nearby in Shawlands, word had reached me that the community was trying to stop a Home Office dawn raid in Pollokshields. I grabbed my jacket, my work bag, and ran to my car.
READ MORE: Glasgow Home Office protest: Neighbours rally to block dawn raid eviction
When I arrived, there was a scattering of a crowd, but more and more people were heading in the same direction as me. There were police cars and officers everywhere. As a journalist, I had been to plenty of crime scenes and protests, but I had never experienced anything like this. The size of the police response was meant to intimidate; there was even a helicopter at one point.
The documentary uses footage from those on the ground – and there is a lot of it, so many people filmed or live streamed the whole thing – showing the crowd and the number of police officers multiplying.
It was Eid, in Scotland’s most diverse community of Pollokshields. There is a mosque on the street just a few doors down from where the detained men lived. If the Home Office wanted to pick a day and area most likely to inflame such a diverse community by kidnapping two men –who were in fact Sikh – from their homes, they were successful in that endeavour.
The documentary truly does reflect the community spirit that I experienced, as the crowd and its determination grew, a bus stop was turned into a tuck shop, snacks and water were handed out, blankets and jackets shared. I knew early on that the community wasn’t going to back down, and they didn’t.
The police presence at Kenmure Street grew as the protest went on (Image: NQ staff)
One part of the film I found particularly interesting was the perspective of the “van man”, who bravely threw himself under the immigration van, and the nurse who monitored him throughout the day. Neither of their real faces were shown, instead their words spoken by actors. Kate Dickie, known for her role as Lysa Arryn in Game of Thrones, spoke on behalf of the nurse, a grey-haired woman in a denim vest with silver studs on the shoulders – the same as the van man – speaks from under a van, showing how tight and oppressive it must have been. He was under there for hours.
Those were parts of the story that even I, who was there from almost the start to the finish, did not fully comprehend. They were both behind a wall of police officers, at great risk to themselves. Two of many faceless heroes in this story that allowed, what at one point felt like a tinderbox event, to end peacefully.
When Aamer Anwar, the human rights lawyer, arrived with his two young children and addressed the crowd, I remember a shift in the atmosphere. Tension had been growing, there had been arrests and clashes further up the street. Seeing the footage of the officers shouting and arresting a young woman, who had tried to throw herself under a car to stop it from being moved out of the way, brought it all flooding back. The anger from the crowd, the unnecessary force from officers, the skirmishes, if there hadn’t been an intervention, then it would have kicked off.
The community made it clear to the Home Office and police they were not going to back down (Image: NQ staff)
I remember speaking to a Scottish Government spad, who had turned up later in the day. He had asked what I thought was going to happen. I told him that if the two men weren’t let go, it was going to kick off, this community was in for the long haul. The documentary perfectly reflects that feeling. If it had taken all night to secure their release, they would have stayed. That van wasn’t going anywhere without a deal being struck. The Home Office had lost, and they knew it.
Anwar, the man who intervened and arguably stopped the whole situation from descending into a full scale riot, is rightly credited in the film for getting the men released into his custody. The two options he put to officers – release the men or use force to get the immigration van out of the street – were the only two ways forward. If it had gone the other way, Kenmure Street would be remembered as a stain on Police Scotland. I can’t even imagine the scenes that would have erupted.
The crowd erupted into cheers when the men were released (Image: NQ staff)
Thankfully, it did not, and the two men were released. I was at the front of the police line when they were, and watching the footage of the crowd erupting in cheers, the looks on their faces genuinely brought me to tears. The emotions came flooding back, being pushed by officers and told to move as I tried to film.
The documentary ends as the two men are led out of Kenmure Street. What it doesn’t show is that hundreds, more likely a thousand, people escorted the police and the two men to a mosque up the road. People cheered, chanted and whooped as they were led away. The community made sure they saw it through; they refused to leave until they knew that the two men were safe.
Five years on, the Home Office’s assault on immigrants has deepened; tensions across Scotland have flared. We have seen far-right groups stir up hatred in communities from Falkirk to Dumfries, we have seen our politicians demonise and target migrants.
Everybody to Kenmure Street stands as a testament to the power of the people, of community, and of resistance. In a United Kingdom where it can feel hopeless at times to fight against the wave of hatred we are experiencing, that message matters.
But as the crowd can be heard chanting in the documentary, the people united will never be defeated.