Hang on, Simon Rattle? What's he doing in this company? And then you read on and see that Howard Goodall, composer among many other things of the theme for Blackadder and choral work for Classic FM, presenter of Sgt. Peppers Musical Revolution for BBC2, as one of the supporters. Goodall picks up the theme in a long blog post written partly in response to a "courteous" enquiry from Nadine Dorries. He contrasts his experience of working in the US:
In order to rehearse and conduct with the choir and orchestra [in Texas], the commissioning church’s music & arts department were obliged to engage a team of lawyers to work on the visa submission made, initially, to the US Dept of Homeland Security to acquire a ‘petition’ (permission document from the requesting body in the USA). This process is time-consuming and (if the lawyers hadn’t been members of the congregation offering their time pro bono) relatively expensive too.
It took weeks, in fact, since to be classed as an alien of ‘Exceptional Ability’ you can’t just assert you have won awards or had your work performed all over the world, you have to prove all these claims in writing. You can’t assert you have won an EMMY award, for example, you have to show it, either as a scan of its certificate or a photograph of the physical award itself bearing your name. Multiply this process by the 40 years of my career thus far and you can appreciate how the hours mount up.
That’s just the first stage. The second stage in being granted a visa (for one week’s work!) is you making your own application online to the US Embassy, armed with the Petition that you hope you have by now been granted (which in itself is insufficient to allow you to travel and work). This took a few hours of further bureaucracy and the payment of roughly £140 of fees. The third stage is an interview at the Embassy itself, for which one has to allow approximately 3 hours to include a fair amount of queuing.
with the same pursuit within the EU:
I know it is a privilege to be able to work in another country as I do from time to time but my point is this: I conduct my works fairly regularly. If I were to undertake the same rehearsing and conducting job in Berlin, or Rome or Paris I simply get on a plane and go and do it. No administrative costs, no visas, no long delays not knowing whether one can travel. Brexit will deny me, and all professional musicians, this easy access to 27 other countries, countries which in the world of music are significant and busy employers of musicians.
At another end of the music business is Stephen Bass of Moshi Moshi Records, who fears that "any change to travel rules [will have] a dramatic effect on the fortunes of the [bands] I look after and the crew of people involved in live shows... Countries like America make it increasingly difficult to tour, and effectively cut themselves off from being a territory in which Moshi Moshi acts can perform and generate income. To have our near neighbours isolating us in a similar way would be a disaster for us and even worse for bands starting out in their careers".
There's no way of knowing at this stage whether it will be this bad, but doesn't "no way of knowing" sum Brexit up as we hit the three-day countdown to The October EU Council summit?
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| Page 1 of 20 pages of documents included in Jim Vallance's blog post John Lennon's Work Permits |
Nobody said it was impossible. It might even have been easy with the right management, though the story of the Beatles in Hamburg (1960) is instructive: "As [their manager at the time] had not obtained German work permits, they were detained at Harwich for five hours. [The manager] finally convinced the authorities that they were students on holiday, although work permits were later obtained after their arrival in Hamburg".
The point is, you had to make arrangements - work permits (eventually) signed by the appropriate officials (then George Harrison was deported for being under-age). As a citizen of an EU member state today you can travel and play anywhere in our 28-country home area as a right. You have to observe local laws on noise and opening times, but no more than a local in whatever town you're playing in.
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| Page 10 of 20 pages of documents included in Jim Vallance's blog post John Lennon's Work Permits |
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What's the position for musicians visiting this country? The immigration system being discussed by government at the moment speaks of five year visas for "skilled workers" and border checks for visitors, but I've seen nothing on short-term work visas which might be suitable for musicians. There's talk of six-month work permits for agricultural workers, and every industry is queuing up to argue, essentially, that nothing should change, but there's nothing for that band from Antwerp you've heard online and want to book for your three day festival in one of the Manchester Northern Quarter's many cellars.Since government has only just started thinking about post-Brexit immigration policy (despite it being an obsession, for May especially, since 2010 and before), let's look at the principle that they're telling us will apply: in future, British immigration policy should be non-discriminatory, treating people the same wherever they come from, rather than giving special treatment to EU citizens from elsewhere in our huge home area. How do we treat musicians coming to this county from non-EU countries today?
The Womad festival provides an example. Three of this year's acts were unable to appear, or arrived the day after their scheduled performance. The festival's co-founder Peter Gabriel told the Guardian: "It is alarming that our UK festival would now have real problems bringing artists into this country … [many of whom] no longer want to come to the UK because of the difficulty, cost and delays with visas, along with the new fear that they will not be welcomed."
A story told in Private Eye 1474 in July goes into detail and illustrates what could happen - a good version and a bad version:
When musicians from non-EU countries come to play in the UK, they can do so without a visa (£245 per person "standard" and another £400 "fast-track" - absurdly expensive for a touring orchestra) if they have a "certificate of sponsorship" from a promoter or an invitation from a "permit-free" outfit like the Barbican, the Edinburgh Festival or Glyndebourne. And so it's been for years.
However, two non-EU citizens travelling, they thought, legitimately without visas recently tried to enter the UK via Ireland. They were stopped, jailed overnight and sent home. The reason? The Home Office has, without warning, unearthed an obscure control order from 1972, the time of the Troubles, which says visa-waiver provisions don't apply if you're entering the UK via Ireland.
Many musicians - especially from the US, Canada and Australia - do come into the UK via Ireland, either in transit or stopping off to perform in Dublin. There has never, until now, been any suggestion they needed visas. This sudden, unannounced change of policy so surprised Steve Richard, an immigration expert who advises musicians, he went to the Home Office to ask was was going on.
"So far as I'm aware," he says, "this control order has never been enforced: for 46 years it's been dormant, buried in obscurity and forgotten. Resurrecting it is bizarre." All he was told was that 46 years of non-enforcement were neither here nor there: it was the law, and henceforth it would be applied.
"They did admit it had to do with UK/Irish border issues being thrown into what they called 'sharper focus'," says Richard, "and they insisted that the control order was a matter of record for anyone to consult. But you'd have to be clairvoyant to know it existed. And this is going to affect not only musicians but sportsmen too."
So, if the policy for short term working stays for musicians and others is to be "non-discriminatory", what kind of thinking will prevail? Will it be the supported visa-free system for everybody, or the "visas please or jail" version that seems suddenly to be the thing if you come in the wrong way? What rules does "Global Britain" propose - level up, and open ourselves to the culture of the world, or level down, and cut ourselves off in the name of "taking back control"? And when will UK negotiators get round to looking at this question for our own touring musicians?
Three museum professionals from Egypt had their visa applications refused in August, preventing them from attending an Egyptology conference in Swansea; several scholars were denied visas to attend the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, and then (not visas this time, just a busy airport)...
When musicians from non-EU countries come to play in the UK, they can do so without a visa (£245 per person "standard" and another £400 "fast-track" - absurdly expensive for a touring orchestra) if they have a "certificate of sponsorship" from a promoter or an invitation from a "permit-free" outfit like the Barbican, the Edinburgh Festival or Glyndebourne. And so it's been for years.
However, two non-EU citizens travelling, they thought, legitimately without visas recently tried to enter the UK via Ireland. They were stopped, jailed overnight and sent home. The reason? The Home Office has, without warning, unearthed an obscure control order from 1972, the time of the Troubles, which says visa-waiver provisions don't apply if you're entering the UK via Ireland.
Many musicians - especially from the US, Canada and Australia - do come into the UK via Ireland, either in transit or stopping off to perform in Dublin. There has never, until now, been any suggestion they needed visas. This sudden, unannounced change of policy so surprised Steve Richard, an immigration expert who advises musicians, he went to the Home Office to ask was was going on.
"So far as I'm aware," he says, "this control order has never been enforced: for 46 years it's been dormant, buried in obscurity and forgotten. Resurrecting it is bizarre." All he was told was that 46 years of non-enforcement were neither here nor there: it was the law, and henceforth it would be applied.
"They did admit it had to do with UK/Irish border issues being thrown into what they called 'sharper focus'," says Richard, "and they insisted that the control order was a matter of record for anyone to consult. But you'd have to be clairvoyant to know it existed. And this is going to affect not only musicians but sportsmen too."
So, if the policy for short term working stays for musicians and others is to be "non-discriminatory", what kind of thinking will prevail? Will it be the supported visa-free system for everybody, or the "visas please or jail" version that seems suddenly to be the thing if you come in the wrong way? What rules does "Global Britain" propose - level up, and open ourselves to the culture of the world, or level down, and cut ourselves off in the name of "taking back control"? And when will UK negotiators get round to looking at this question for our own touring musicians?
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Musicians, sportspeople.. who else will be affected by the choices government makes? A dozen authors couldn't attend this year’s Edinburgh international book festival after their visas were refused by the “humiliating” application process. Festival director Nick Barley fears it will deter artists from visiting the UK. "We’ve had to draw on the help of MPs, MSPs, ambassadors and senior people in the British Council and Home Office to overturn visa decisions that looked set to be rejected," Barley said. "We’ve had so many problems with visas, we’ve realised it is systematic... We want to talk about it and resolve it, not just for [this festival], but for cultural organisations UK-wide."Three museum professionals from Egypt had their visa applications refused in August, preventing them from attending an Egyptology conference in Swansea; several scholars were denied visas to attend the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, and then (not visas this time, just a busy airport)...
The family of Nelson Mandela were stopped at Heathrow Airport security, resulting in them missing their event at Edinburgh International Book Festival.https://t.co/PTfDsKxkhu— The Scotsman (@TheScotsman) August 13, 2018
Going back to the Geldof letter, we find a quote in response from Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Telegraph of 8 October: "Handel did not need the free movement of people to come to England and compose the Messiah". Which drew various replies of which I'll give just one. Someone who really cares about detail (unlike Rees-Mogg it seems) pointed out that Handel needed his own Act of Parliament to regularise his activities in England.
