06.11.1997

Bowing to chauvinism

Chile the European Union moves towards dismantling internal border controls, further barriers are erected against non-EU migrants - Blair’s Britain being no exception.

Last month Italy became the seventh EU country to join the Schengen agreement, under which travel between the signatories is treated in the same way as domestic journeys - ie, without any passport or immigration checks. By next year Austria, Greece and the Netherlands will also have signed up, leaving only the UK and Ireland as non-participants. Hand in hand with this internal relaxation goes the consolidation of ‘Fortress Europe’, directed against potential immigrants from outside the EU - particularly poor workers.

Reports of lax Italian external controls led to scare stories of a “surge of illegal, diseased and violent third world immigrants” (The Sunday Telegraph October 19) pouring into Europe via Italy.

This was however relatively restrained compared to the press coverage of the arrival in Britain of scores of Romany asylum seekers from the Czech republic and Slovakia. The Independent chose to lead with “Gypsies invade Dover, hoping for a handout” (October 20) and the rest of the press reported the story in similar vein.

The fact that these refugees are viewed as a threat does not reflect the “racism” of the British establishment, as many on the left proclaim, but its need to maintain social stability at low cost. In times of (relative) full employment, when few takers from among the native population can be found for low paid, unskilled jobs, poor workers have been positively encouraged to enter Britain, irrespective of their race or nationality.

Today capitalism is hard pressed to manage the existing unemployed and can no longer afford the welfare arrangements adopted during the post-war social democratic settlement. Highly skilled, self-sufficient immigrants - whatever their origin - would be a different matter, but the Romanies do not fit that bill. Despite forcible assimilation under the ‘socialism’ of the former Czechoslovakia, they were never fully integrated into a culture of work that would make them immediately useful for exploitation in an advanced capitalist country.

Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc the resentment felt against the gypsies has spilled out into open discrimination and oppression - often violent. In the Czech Republic unemployment amongst Romanies is said to have risen to 70%, with welfare benefits often being withheld. Positively encouraged to leave by television reports of “the munificence of Britain’s social security system and the laxity of our asylum laws”, as The Daily Telegraph put it (October 25), around 1,000 have arrived over the past year, and many more are said to be ready to follow.

Dozens have been immediately turned back, but others have been sufficiently well informed of the need to claim asylum immediately on their arrival in order to avoid immediate deportation. It was this that led home secretary Jack Straw to rush in changes to the vetting procedure. Previously asylum seekers had 28 days to lodge an appeal against exclusion after their initial interview. This is now to be reduced to five. The excuse for this knee-jerk reaction is that the processing will now be “speeded up” for “genuine” asylum seekers and it will be easier to weed out the “abusers”.

This was backed up by Gwyn Prosser, the Labour MP for Dover, where most of the refugees have entered Britain, who said: “Bogus asylum seekers normally go for the lines of least resistance and word has obviously gone round that Britain is a soft option.”

The only principled response that internationalists can make to such chauvinistic outbursts is to demand the abolition of all border controls. Far from accepting the diktats of the ruling class, laid down in the interests of capital, workers must have the freedom to live and work anywhere in the world. If the product is free to move the worker should be too. In addition we must organise internationally to end oppression everywhere, so that no worker is forced to leave their home against their will.

Unfortunately not all on the left see the question in such a straightforward way. For example The Socialist, weekly paper of the Socialist Party, calls for the media’s “racist backlash” to be opposed (October 24). Socialist Worker too complained of “the racist panic the press have whipped up” (October 25). The introduction of a racial element that is largely lacking is an attempt to skirt round the central issue of the right of workers to free movement.

Socialist Worker correctly points to the hypocrisy of “western big business” in demanding free movement of capital across national borders while objecting “to people moving all around the world”. But, instead of going on to demand unconditionally the same right for workers, SW puts forward a different, liberal, argument:

“Immigrants improve the quality of life of the country they settle in. The typical refugee is young, educated with useful skills and in need of less social spending.”

This does not sit very easily with its description of these particular immigrants as “some of the poorest and most oppressed people in Europe”. If the bourgeoisie can show that many asylum seekers are old, badly educated and in desperate need of social spending, where does that leave the SWP’s reasoning?

The Socialist Worker article ends with the argument that accepting the Romanies would be in ‘our’ interests: “Britain is built on immigration”. Basing what ought to be an internationalist call for open borders on what is best for Britain can only be described as perverse. Instead of attempting to combat chauvinistic prejudice, the SWP ends up pandering to it.

Both papers point to the oppression and discrimination suffered by the gypsies in central and eastern Europe. After describing some of the appalling acts of violence, The Socialist continues: “Yet the government says these people are ‘economic’ migrants ... People fleeing violence and racism should be given refugee status, not scapegoated.”

The first part of that statement is not entirely accurate. The government claims that it is examining each case on its merits, in accordance with its nauseating “firm, but fair” immigration policy. It states that manyof the asylum seekers have not themselves suffered or been threatened with violence, but are looking for a better standard of living.

The Romanies’ oppression is well documented. However, it would be foolish to deny that much of this takes an indirect, economic form. But The Socialist will have none of that. For it every single Czech and Slovak asylum seeker is “fleeing violence and racism”. Nobody is economically oppressed. The implication is clear: as with the government, for the SP only ‘genuine’ asylum seekers are legitimate. The SP just thinks the government should be more liberal in granting that status.

Obviously this position plays into the state’s hands. The establishment only needs to ‘prove’ a few cases of ‘abuse’ and the SP case collapses. It would surely find it hard to counter the argument that ‘economic’ refugees should be sent back.

This weakness arises from the SP’s opportunist method. Unlike Brian Heron and the SLP leadership, formally the SP is against immigration controls. As general secretary Peter Taaffe has stated,

“We oppose all restrictions imposed by decaying and outmoded capitalism. We oppose passports; we oppose the attempt to restrict the free movement of labour” (Members Bulletin no13, undated).

However,

“We cannot put forward ... the bald slogan of ‘open borders’ or of ‘no to immigration controls’ ... This approach immediately cuts you off from the majority of workers in Britain, who ... accept the need for ‘some control’ over entry into the country. It is connected in the minds of most workers with their jobs, education, housing, etc.”

It is certainly true that many workers see their interests as being diametrically opposed to those of ‘outsiders’. They accept the bourgeois rationality that resources are limited; that we must therefore ‘look after our own’. For example, many in Dover are outraged that asylum seekers have been temporarily placed in a vacated old people’s home that the local council had previously closed down. They do not blame the ruling class for its dismal failure to provide what we need: instead many believe that shortages are inevitable and that workers have no alternative but to side with their ‘own’ rulers to get the best they can at the expense of outsiders.

But how does the Socialist Party intend to break workers from national chauvinism? It has no strategy for doing so. Its false method leads it to bow to workers’ existing consciousness in the hope that somehow they will spontaneously see the internationalist light.

In fact, by portraying the Romanies as an ‘exception’, the SP is reinforcing existing chauvinism and implicitly accepting border controls. Even if workers went along with the SP’s liberal pleas for sympathy with the oppressed, they are still likely to retort, ‘That’s all very well, but how can we afford it? We can’t let everyone in, can we?’

However difficult the task may appear, there is no alternative to posing a direct challenge to chauvinism. The only way to win over workers is through raising the banner of working class internationalism.

Alan Fox