The scene outside St George’s cathedral in Southwark, London.

While it might be unfair to call the scene on Monday morning outside St George’s cathedral in Southwark a Ukip activist’s worst nightmare, there was certainly plenty on show to stoke the ire of anyone with trenchant views about immigration.

The slow procession entering the building snaked hundreds of metres down the street and encompassed many dozens of nationalities, variously indicated by flags, banners, scarves or items of national dress.

While inner London is hugely varied throughout – fewer than 40% of Southwark’s residents are of white British origin, half the average for England Wales – this was, however, a special occasion. It was the tenth anniversary Mass for Migrants, a service run by three Catholic dioceses to both celebrate diversity and call for fair treatment of incomers.



The service combined a tone of celebration and activism. Photograph: Peter Walker

It is a particularly pertinent issue currently – three days before a general election in which the major parties have traded tough language on immigration and amid the continued humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean, where Italy’s coastguard rescued almost 7,000 refugees over the weekend.

Heins Chuungwe and Sola Mulenga, leading a group of Zambian Catholics into the service, said the election debate had not, as yet, prompted any visible animosity.

“I think Britain is still a very tolerant place, and especially London,” said Chuungwe, who has lived in the UK since 1999.

Mulenga, an accountant who arrived a decade ago under a skilled migrant programme, said economic factors were key.

“It’s often this way in elections, particularly if the economy is suffering a bit. Then people are a bit less keen on immigrants. When I came here the economy was doing really well, so there wasn’t that same feeling. But it will all change again as the economy improves.”

The service combined a tone of celebration and activism, the former provided in part by a hymn sung in phonetically-rendered Mandarin, and prayers led by students from multinational local Catholic secondary schools in their native languages including Portuguese, Tamil, Tagalog and Tigrinya, the latter spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The activism came both from some celebrants – for example a union-backed campaign representing migrant domestic workers, and by the archbishop of St George’s, Peter Smith, whose homily included a rebuke for those with “blood on their hands” for tolerating, even passively, human trafficking.

Smith had particular criticism of the UK’s detention centres for migrants, saying these were “stripping them of their human dignity”, and expressed alarm at the crisis in the Mediterranean. He did, however, offer a thought for politicians heard not too often during the election campaign: “We must pray for them. They have a very difficult job.”

Migrants brought with them “new life and vibrancy”, said Smith – and also to Catholic congregations, he added, gazing at the several thousand people crammed into the cathedral, many forced to stand.

Leaving the mass, Manuela Derogatis said she appreciated the many intricacies of the debate.

“It’s a difficult one. I’m a migrant myself, I’ve been here 11 years, and I’ve been treated very well, so of course I have enormous sympathy for the people trying to get to Italy. But I’m also Italian, and I know how much of a strain it’s putting on the country, the sheer numbers. There’s not an easy answer.”

Derogatis looked down at her 16-month-old daughter, Eileen, asleep in her arms.“She’s got an Italian mother, a Brazilian father, and she was born in the UK. With an Irish name. It think she’s very much part of modern London.”