As a haven for the persecuted, Britain has a proud history. The country’s cultural tapestry so evident today is due partly to the immigration of dis- possessed people, from the Huguenots at the end of the 16th Century to the Jewish Europeans fleeing the Nazis.

But it is a past that has at times been chequered and, according to a new book by Dr Edie Friedman — the founder and director of the Golders Green-based Jewish Council for Racial Equality — refugees and asylum seekers are villified by the media in modern Britain.

In Reluctant Refuge: The Story of Asylum in Modern Britain, Dr Friedman and co-author Reva Klein show how media campaigns against asylum seekers have exer- cised enormous influence on Government policy.

They also show how those campaigns are underpinned by a misrepresentation of the people who, having suffered terribly and with nowhere else to turn, flee to our shores.

Speaking at the book’s official launch at the Sigmund Freud Museum, in Belsize Park, last Thursday, she said: “It’s now more crucial than ever to rehabilitate the very notion of asylum and refuge, and to create a more positive narrative about refugees and asylum seekers — because, in a sense, the only show in town is a negative one.

“We decided to include refugee voices, usually excluded from any debate, to humanise the issues. We also wanted to debunk some of the negative myths around asylum perpetuated today by politicians and the press.”

Reluctant Refuge, which was published last June, takes the reader on a whistlestop tour through the history of asylum in Britain and exposes the process of applying for asylum.

The voices of refugees in the text, written in a first-person narrative, describe in cold terms the experience of escaping persecution only to be treated with suspicion and as criminals.

For civil liberties lawyer and Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy, who also spoke at the launch, it is an experience that is all too familiar.

She has represented asylum seekers in the courts and also clashed with the Government over its refugee policies.

She said: “It was a great shame to many of us that we started using the term ‘asylum seeker’ as a term of abuse. It was an idea put forward in a very calculated way by the tabloid media but our Government didn’t challenge it.

“Anyone who cares about good society believes that a civilised society has to afford a sanctuary for those who are fleeing persecution.

“Our retreat from that is a measure of how we’re doing as human beings, as people who believe in human rights. Re-treat is something we should be ashamed of.”

She believes reading the book would at times make you feel proud of being British, and sometimes ashamed.

She said: “Those of us with some knowledge of our history have a duty to keep that history alive, and to make sure the Government is held to account.”

Reluctant Refuge: The Story of Asylum in Britain, priced at £14.95, is published by and available from the British Library or by emailing JCORE at admin@jcore.org.uk