20.03.1997

Welcome in France but not Britain

Every Marxist worthy of the name knows chat the emancipation of the working class, the liberation of humanity, can only be achieved on a world scale.

That is why revolutionaries continually seek to strengthen our internationalism and give it ever higher organisational forms. We aim to build a new communist International - a democratic centralist world Party.

Like many left organisations the Socialist Party has international links, and its fraternal sections meet under the banner of the Committee for a Workers’ International.

Yet it seems that various affiliates of the CWI have taken up opposing positions on a principle which ought to be viewed as central to the very notion of internationalism: ie, immigration controls. Communists are for the dismantling of the present, capitalist, borders and the smashing of all immigration controls.

Formally, the Socialist Party would agree with us. Writing in an internal document, Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the SP (then Militant Labour), stated:

“We oppose passports; we oppose the attempts to restrict the free movement of labour ... But truth is concrete and on this issue we have to take into account the different levels of consciousness of the proletariat” (Members Bulletin no13, undated, my emphasis).

Therefore, Taaffe continued, “the bald slogan” of ‘No to immigration controls’ could not be raised: ‘That would completely cut us off from being able to combat racist ideas in the heads of the white working class.” He added:

“The sects, à la SWP, recently advanced ... the slogan of ‘Asylum seekers welcome’, which could be interpreted, and indeed was interpreted, as allowing ‘everyone’ to enter Britain” (see ‘Significant silence’ Weekly Worker February 27 for further gems from comrade Taaffe).

The SP’s opportunistic policy is to attack the symptoms, not the cause. The organisation calls for an end to deportations, for the right to asylum and opposes the breakup of families, police harassment and “racist laws”. Presumably the SP’s leaders hope that workers will spontaneously come to realise themselves that the state’s border controls are the main problem. Occasionally they try to help this process along by hinting at what is necessary.

National committee member Naomi Byron, writing in the SP’s theoretical and discussion journal, tells us:

“Immigration controls help the bosses drive down wages, conditions and living standards by giving immigrant workers less rights and exploiting them more ... By their very nature they are racist and discriminate against the poor. They give legitimacy to the arguments that immigrants are a ‘problem’” (Socialism Today March 1997).

Surely then we must fight to scrap the lot? ‘Your words, not mine,’ might be comrade Byron’s response. She ends the article with the lame call to defend the “basic human rights” of asylum seekers.

The same issue carries an interview with a member of Sprout, a revolutionary Hong Kong group, who states: “If Britain is concerned about the fate of the people of Hong Kong, then it can take one simple measure - grant all Hong Kong citizens the right of abode in Britain”. The interviewer, Kathy Kirkham, comments only that “both Tories and Labour are hell bent on preventing all but a tiny, rich handful of Hong Kong’s British citizens from being able to live in Britain itself.

What a contrast to the Socialist Party’s French sister organisations, the Gauche Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Left) and Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires (Revolutionary Communist Youth). The latest issue of their monthly paper carries an article entitled, ‘Down with all anti-immigrant laws’.

The author, Manuela De Oliveira, writes:

“More than ever we must reaffirm that every man and woman who wishes to come and settle in France must be able to do so; furthermore, every man and woman who lives in this country must have the same rights” (L’Egalité March 1997).

The article calls for “full citizenship rights for all immigrants” and adds:

“To make a distinction between clandestine and legal immigrants is to fall into the logic of the bosses, for whom foreigners are nothing but cheap, servile labour.”

What accounts for these opposing positions? After all, it can hardly be any ‘easier’ for the GR and the JCR to take up this principled position than it would be for their British counterparts. In France the rightwing Front National is strong, and its pulling potential has forced all the mainstream parties of ‘left’, right and centre towards its agenda.

Faced with the FN’s influence and a growing anti-foreigner sentiment in opposition to the large number of semi-official and clandestine immigrants, bourgeois opinion has united around the demand to clamp down on the sans-papiers (‘without papers’).

The National Assembly is at present discussing draconian anti-immigrant measures. These include: the expulsion of sans-papiers resident in France for decades; arbitrary powers to search vehicles; revoking of the automatic renewal of 10-year residence permits, with the possibility of reducing the validity of new permits to just two months; the finger-printing of all summonsed foreigners; and the setting up of a national register of immigrants’ certificated addresses.

The oppressed have not taken all this lying down. It is now one year since 300 African immigrants occupied the St Ambroise church in Paris, demanding full rights for all the sans-papers. After months of harassment they were brutally expelled last August.

But their struggle continues and has taken on more organised forms, with the setting up of a national body to coordinate the fightback. Florence Capron writes:

“The most oppressed workers of this country, those who had no existence, those they called clandestine, have risen up everywhere in France to claim, quite simply, the right to live ... Their desire for self-organisation is natural and legitimate ... Those who have less than nothing today are going all out in the struggle and sometimes taking initiatives that the traditional left refuses to organise” (L’Egalité March 1997).

The GR and JCR will have none of Taaffe’s mealy-mouthed call to “take account of the different levels of consciousness of the proletariat”. At a time when racism and national chauvinism is rampant in France, unlike the SP they are making no opportunistic concessions to the “backwardness of the workers on this issue” (Taaffe).

His French comrades have no alternative but to take up the sans-papers’ fight - a fight that unavoidably challenges the very notion of immigration controls. They know that not to do so when a section of the oppressed is by implication calling for the universal right of free movement would deprive them of all revolutionary credibility.

Which way now for the Socialist Party?

Alan Fox