A UK advertising watchdog has banned a controversial Home Office advert suggesting that illegal immigrants in the UK to ‘Go home or face arrest,’ saying that it was misleading. However, the ad was not ruled to be ‘offensive’ or ‘distressing.’
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) absolved the government campaign of either
attribute, despite the widespread belief that it was offensive
forming the basis for the majority of the 224 complaints filed
against it. The vans bearing the controversial slogan were driven
around six London boroughs with large immigrant populations as
part of a Home Office pilot scheme in July.
The ASA took issue merely with “inaccurate statistics” on
the vans, but complainants deemed the ads to be “racist.”
Out of the five categories of complaint made, a mere two general
points were upheld, the first being that the writing on the ads
was not legible, and the second being that the ad was not
substantiated and misleading.
After instructing illegal immigrants to “go home,” the ads
cited a statistic that there had been “106 arrests last week
in your area” across the six boroughs.
The ASA said that the figure “related to arrests made
throughout a significant part of London north of the Thames,”
and not necessarily relate to the specific areas where people
would have seen the vans.
Additionally, the arrests had been made more than two weeks prior
to the vans being sent out, not in the last week, and the ASA
ruled that a breach had been committed under “misleading
advertising” and “substantiation.”“We…noted the
posters were displayed during the week of 22 to 28 July,”
said the ASA, conceding that the data provided in support of the
“106 arrests” statistic in fact “related to the week 30
June to 6 July.”
However, the watchdog conceded that that “most” of the
complaints had challenged whether “the poster, and in
particular the phrase ‘Go home’, was offensive,” because it
was considered to be “reminiscent of slogans used by racist
groups to attack immigrants in the past.”
The slogan has echoes of the Neo-Nazi National Front rhetoric in
the 1970s, with ASA chief executive Guy Parker telling BBC Radio
4's Today Programme that it “clearly carries baggage.”
However, he added that the campaign was unlikely to cause
“widespread offence.”
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Labour Party
Conference two weeks ago that: “Those ad vans were driving
past the offices and homes of families whose parents and
grandparents had to endure those same slogans scrawled high in
graffiti 40 years ago.”
The ASA highlighted that complaints had been made accusing the
campaign of having the potential to exacerbate racial tensions,
particularly within multicultural communities. Britain’s business
secretary, Vince Cable, himself termed the campaign ‘stupid and
offensive’. However, the ASA did not uphold the criticisms.
“We concluded that the poster was unlikely to incite or
exacerbate racial hatred and tensions in multi-cultural
communities,” it said.
The Home Office responded, stating the advert would not appear
again in its previous incarnation and welcoming their dismissal
of complaints calling it ‘offensive’. “We are pleased the ASA
has concluded that our pilot was neither offensive nor
irresponsible,” said a Home Office spokesperson.
“This campaign was about encouraging illegal immigrants to
leave the country voluntarily and was not targeted at particular
racial or ethnic groups.”
This means that the UK’s government still remains at liberty to
direct the ‘Go Home’ slogan at UK illegal immigrants, providing
statistics are both relevant and accurate, and the writing is of
a legible size – the second complaint which was upheld was made
by a ‘few’ people who found the most questionable feature of the
vans to be the fact that the smaller print was illegible on a
moving vehicle.
“We considered… that small print should be clearly visible to a normally sighted person reading the marketing communication once from a reasonable distance and at a reasonable speed,” said the ASA in its ruling.
“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” the
ASA report concluded.