20.11.1997

Fight oppression not ‘prejudice’

A further clampdown on the right of workers to free movement was introduced last week when 60 gypsy asylum seekers were put back on a coach to Dover after they had arrived in London.

They had left the Kent port in order to avoid last weekend’s anti-gypsy demonstration organised by the National Front and turned up at an ‘advice and assessment’ centre in Westminster. Nikki Page, the Tory chair of the council’s housing committee, claimed that Westminster already spends £169,000 a week on asylum seekers - the equivalent of £1.70 per week on the rates. She said: “The government has got to act. Local government cannot cope with these people.”

This further restriction on workers’ movement means in effect that poor migrants are not even permitted to change their location within Britain. Previously the Prevention of Terrorism Act barred hundreds of UK citizens from moving freely between Britain and the Six Counties, but now within Britain itself local authorities are taking it upon themselves to set up miniature ‘border controls’ of their own.

It should be noted however that Ms Page did not object to the colour of the asylum-seekers. The fact that most Czech and Slovak Romanies are dark skinned is of little concern. What matters to Westminster council is the fact that it is obliged by present regulations to provide benefits to homeless families resident in its area. It claimed that the gypsies were ‘proper’ to Dover, just as the British state tries to shift responsibility to other European countries by shipping unwelcome migrants back to France whenever it can get away with it.

Poor workers - black or white - are unwanted by the capitalist state because they are costly in periods of high unemployment. They are viewed as a burden, not as a potentially valuable source of exploitation, as they are when there is a shortage of unskilled labour. In addition they represent a possible trigger of social instability, resulting from competition for existing welfare resources at a time when the state is no longer willing to finance it to the same extent.

So why does the left insist that the imposition of more and more controls on the free movement of workers is motivated primarily - if not solely - by the state’s ‘racism’? Comrade Tom Ball (Weekly Worker Letters, November 13) implies that racial considerations are at least as important as those of class for the establishment. While he appears to agree that the bourgeoisie’s border controls are class-based and must be destroyed, he nevertheless gives prime importance to the contention that the Romanies are fleeing racial oppression in central Europe - only to be greeted with more of the same in Britain. If it really was so simple, why would they want to migrate at all? Surely the gypsies are hoping to achieve some kind of better life by doing so?

Comrade Ball implies that in my article, ‘Bowing to chauvinism’ (Weekly Worker November 6), I suggested that the Romanies are “only economic refugees, rather than fleeing well documented oppression”. In fact I myself stated that “their oppression is well documented”. The point is that the demand for open borders is not dependant on a degree of oppression, racial or otherwise. We consider it just as legitimate for workers to seek an improved living standard through migration as it is to escape persecution.

Unfortunately however, in order to avoid confronting this central issue, the left insists on introducing a racial element which, as I said in my previous article, is “largely lacking” (note, not ‘absent’). Thus comrade Ball refers to “the racism of the British state” and maintains that the ruling class is deliberately orchestrating events in order to “plumb the depths of racist feeling in Britain”. He reminds us that “dividing worker against worker on the basis of xenophobia, chauvinism and racism are excellent devices as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned”.

In the abstract he is correct to point out the usefulness to the bourgeoisie of divide-and-rule tactics. But the proclamation of abstract generalities is no substitute for the analysis of concrete reality. In fact the state’s overriding social concern in normal times is to ensure the greatest degree of stability amongst the population. This in turn helps to provide a base for economic stability and continued capitalist exploitation. Far from seeking to provoke divisions and conflict, the state strives to avoid it, hoping instead to win at least the passive consent of all sections subordinate to its hegemony.

On the other hand in a revolutionary situation the retention of power by any means becomes the overwhelming priority for the ruling class. In such times the question of long-term stability is secondary, and the bourgeoisie seeks to undermine working class unity and foment division. It hopes that working class anger can be redirected and any violence internalised, in the way comrade Ball suggests.

No such situation applies today. Working class opposition to bourgeois rule has been marginalised to the extent that it is virtually non-existent. Even trade union struggles, with one or two notable exceptions, take the form of token resistance to imposed changes - that is, where they occur at all. Today the bourgeoisie craves stability and promotes social harmony in every way it can.

If comrade Ball could bring himself to examine the bourgeoisie’s social policy, he surely could not fail to notice that the ruling class’s official ideology is anti-racist. Harmony between black and white is considered positively desirable. If disharmony were the aim and the state wished to provoke racial strife, it would surely be more fruitful to encourage black immigration - or conversely repatriation.

In reality the British state goes out of its way to promote the image of a multi-racial normality. Using the mass media, the positive contribution of black people to bourgeois society is stressed. Black TV presenters are favoured. Anti-racism, however patronisingly, is propagated in most schools by liberal, well-meaning teachers. Any hint of racism is met by expressions of outrage from the liberal bourgeoisie, and even ultra-chauvinistic newspapers like The Daily Telegraph usually avoid any distinction between black and white in their reporting.

Those on the left who believe, despite the evidence before their eyes, that the state is deliberately promoting racism ought to spend a couple of hours watching Children’s BBC. Diversity and bourgeois anti-racism leaps out from every programme.

Of course, despite this official ideology, racism exists at every level of society. Unfortunately it is not only restricted to conservative middle England, but is rife among sections of the working class too. So comrade Ball is not entirely wrong when he says that the government, through clamping down on gypsy asylum-seekers, is “pandering to anti-Roma racism in Britain”. There is an element of racism amongst the chauvinistic opposition to immigrants that many workers express. However, the national chauvinism that the state does its best to promote is not in itself racist at all.

National chauvinism finds reflection, as comrades campaigning on the street for decent healthcare could tell you, in an antagonism to ‘outsiders’. It is common for workers - black and white - to locate the source of inadequate healthcare (not to mention bad housing, poor education and unemployment) on the imagined floodtide of immigrants who supposedly use up the limited resources available.

This totally false argument cannot be combated at all through attacking racism. That is why the left’s insistence on seeing racism in the motives of the ruling class is not only foolish, but downright dangerous. The left’s emphasis on race appeals to a liberal, non-class ‘equality’ and can logically lead to calls for ‘non-racist immigration controls’ - a proposition that Blair and co would enthusiastically embrace.

On the other hand, by identifying national chauvinism, not racism, as the ruling class’s main ideological weapon, we have the basis for constructing a genuine working class alternative: not the false national ‘unity’ of the bourgeoisie, but the class unity of workers’ internationalism.

That is why comrade Ball risks falling into the same trap as Socialist Worker and The Socialist. Unlike them genuine proletarian internationalists concentrate their fire not on ‘prejudice’, but on the arrogance of the ruling class in seeking to limit our right to live and work where we please.

Alan Fox