Ending Detention means fighting for our Collective Liberation: Gee Manoharan’s speech at End Detention Online Rally

On a grey day brimming with the promise of change, over 70 people gathered online for a rally to oppose the expansion of immigration detention. The event brought together individuals with lived experiences of detention and dedicated activists, all seeking one thing: END DETENTION.

We are grateful for the opportunity to be invited and present at this rally. Our colleagues from Right To Remain, No To HassockField and These Walls Must Falls Campaigners worked hard to pull this together—Gee Manoharan, our Co-Director of Policy and Influencing, whose words reverberated through the virtual space. Alongside so many other excellent speakers with lived experience and allies, Gee took aim at the failures of political leaders, exposed the brutality of the detention system, and called for a radical, relentless movement to dismantle it entirely.

It was, overall, an inspiring and energetic evening, but some of the community members in the room threatened by the detention shared their feelings of anxiety and unknownness.

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The Full Speech

Let me start by saying that the honeymoon for the Labour Party is over. They sold us promises of CHANGE—big promises—but what did they deliver? More of the same: enforcement, state-sponsored kidnapping, terror raids on our communities, and the continued threat of detention and its expansion.

They’ve repackaged despair as change.

For many of us, like myself, who have lived experience of Immigration Detention and asylum system, we were not hopeful, at least not blinded by hope. We were not hopeful that Keir Starmer would be different or that Yvette Cooper would be a changed Home Secretary who does not pursue cruelty.
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What we normally have in this system is disappointment, disbelief, guilt, loss, and grief.

We could not afford to fall too much into hope and at the same time not to fall too much into despair, but walking that fine line.

I’m speaking to you today from Birmingham, and I’m reminded of the words of Benjamin Zephaniah, one of Birmingham’s own: 'People NEED people.' This rally and demonstration on 19th October embodies that need. This rally, this extraordinary gathering, gives me hope—a rare thing in a world overwhelmed by pain, suffering, impending wars, and mass genocide. Yet today, here, I see a reinvigorated commitment to end detention. A spark of Hope. There’s a promise to rise, to show up at detention centres. Hope isn’t a passive thing—it’s a force for liberation. It demands action, and it drives us to resist oppression in all its forms.

But let me be clear: this cannot be a one-off event. It should be the start of a wildfire—a contagious, unstoppable movement that spreads throughout the entire detention estate.

In the past we’ve limited our protests to centers that make headlines—Yarl's Wood, where it was holding only women, Derwentside and Manston, where we heard the horrific conditions two years ago. But where are we when it comes to places like Tinsley House, Manchester 302, Swinderby RTSHF and Dungavel IRC?

Are we too selective, too comfortable protesting where the attention is? Why is the resistance there quieter? This is an issue, and it reflects how our efforts can be isolated and disjointed, too.

Yet there’s so much to learn from groups like No to Hassockfield. I want to commend them for what they do. They don’t wait for the headlines; they show up, month after month, tirelessly. Their tenacity and relentless demonstrations outside Derwentside are impressive. That’s courage. If we are serious about ending detention, we have to make this message spread—radically and relentlessly.

We cannot just ask for change politely; we must demand it loudly and unrelentingly.

‍This isn’t about catchy slogans, a convenient campaign, or a flashy hashtag. We need to shake the very foundation of these buildings. Brick and mortar should not imprison people. And when we shut a centre down, we must demand its walls be torn down entirely so it’s never repurposed to cage others. This government cannot come back later and repurpose it, turning it into a prison, another tool of oppression.

We failed to do that at The Verne, which is now a Category C prison, or Morton Hall, which became a foreign national prison and part of it repurposed as a Residential Short-Term holding facility. We can’t keep letting this happen. When Yarl’s Wood supposedly ‘closed for women,’ we were quick to celebrate, but it didn’t close down —it kept operating to this day. It turned into a centre for Men first and then slowly paved the way for women to be detained there. Haslar, Campsfield, the same stories.

We didn’t bulldoze those spaces; we just walked away. If we don’t destroy the roots, the system finds new ways to recycle its violence.

I’ve been working in this sector long enough to see the pattern. How are organisations and activists fighting to change the system? I quite often tell my colleagues this image comes to my mind!

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It’s like watching a snake eat its own tail—a cycle of action that doesn’t move forward. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. We need to break that cycle and pierce the bubble. So, how do we break that cycle? We pierce it with leadership rooted in lived experience. That’s the needle we need—people who’ve lived through detention, leading the fight against it.

But those voices, OUR VOICES, are left out of the rooms where decisions are made. NGOs and policy groups spend their time looking for a way to ‘reform’ detention, to attach their names to it. But where’s the talk of ending detention? Where’s the courage to demand the system be dismantled entirely?

It is being said that the oppressed, through their struggle, gain true freedom. Our struggle is to end detention, not just to tweak it around the edges. We are more than stories. We are the truth of this system, living proof of its harm. That’s why standing together today with so many of my friends who had direct experience of detention and those who are constantly threatened by it, gives me hope. Because this rally shows that the tide is turning!

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For the allies and activists who are standing here today in radical solidarity. We should remember that it is more than just a catchphrase. It is, the essence of our fight for freedom. It must be contagious, spreading through action, connection, and relentless commitment. We show up, again and again, not for headlines or recognition, but for liberation.

Immigration detention is rooted in racism. The very buildings scream oppression. The moment you step into their shadow, you feel it—the isolation, the deprivation of liberty. These places are designed to erase people from society, engineered to isolate and dehumanise.

I had felt that weight on me when I was detained in Larne House first and then transferred to Colnbrook and Harmondsworth. In between back and forth—there were about four other holding rooms—which we never got to hear much about. There has been an increased number of people detained in police cells in the last two years. When we are connecting dots, we must not shy away from looking into resisting the hidden system of immigration detention networks, moving beyond the big IRC and removal centres. We should not forget that people are detained in prison under the Immigration Act of Power and given double punishment compared to their British counterparts.

Immigration detention is abusive by design. It operates out of sight, out of mind—designed to isolate and strip people of their liberty and dignity. That’s why after my release from detention, I set up visitor groups for Larne House—not just to visit, but to resist—resistance to state-sanctioned isolation and rally against hostility instead of providing hospitality.

Resistance is what we do today, tomorrow, and every day until every detention centre is shut down.

So, I ask you: one thing—who is ready to start treating it as a fight for our collective liberation?

Together, we can make detention history, and we will—end detention.

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How can you challenge detention expansion? 

• Join the Demonstration against detention on October 19th - Right to Remain and These Walls Must Fall have joined up with the No To Hassockfield campaign in calling this national demonstration against detention.
  • Follow Right To Remain These Walls Must Fall for public events and actions to end detention.
  • Please join them and stand in solidarity against this abhorrent facility. If you can’t go, you can help someone else to go by donating to the transport fundraiser.
• Read more about our campaign asking the Home Secretary to Choose Freedom - here‍
• Join Keep Campsfield Closed Coalition, a campaign group local to Oxford. Whether you are based in Oxford or not, Keep Campsfield Closed Coaltion have created this guide on how you can support them.
• Join No Detention No Haslar, a campaign group local to Gosport and Portsmouth.
• Sign this petition from someone who was detained in Campsfield House.

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