Glasgow Girls BBC 3 pm, written by Brian Welsh and Joe Barton, directed by Brian Welsh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b049n0js

The story of Agnessa Murselja (played here by Olivia Popica) a fifteen-year old refugee and pupil at Drumchapel High School that was taken with her family  to be deported, in a dawn raid, and returned home to Kosovo. At home whisperings of fields unsown/ Maybe the kind old sun will know. Home is the key word here. The Home Office suggest her home was somewhere else. The Glasgow Girls, as the name suggests, thought otherwise.

But it’s not just the story of Agnessa. Amal’s mum asks ‘is this it?’ We are shown three delipidated high rise flats. Refugees come to Glasgow because its cheaper housing than most places in the United Kingdom, with the added bonus that unwanted housing stock can be let. They do not choose to come here, but neither do they choose to go ‘home’.  Amal’s mum cautions her daughter, ‘we need to stay invisible’.

The Glasgow Girls did the opposite. They made themselves visible. They became vocal. The became politicised. They garnered names on a petition and Agnessa did return. This is an uplifting piece, but its business as usual.  Dawn raids. The incarceration of children. The deportation of refugees. It’s a potent home brew from the Home office. Watch the story in one sitting and weep.

 http://unbound.co.uk/books/lily-poole