23.03.2000

Scrap immigration controls!

Straw's dirty crusade

Last year it was the travellers; more recently benefit claimants; and now it is the turn of asylum-seekers and refugees to be the target of an unbridled campaign of bigotry and vilification.

In each case the method is the same: first, the tabloids, pandering to all that is most reactionary, philistine, and irrational in the worst kind of intolerance and resentment, foment a controversy. Then the broadsheets of the right and centre weigh in with their magisterial comment. Finally the Blair government, in the form of an increasingly authoritarian Jack Straw, hastily jumps on the accelerating bandwagon in order to win populist support for draconian measures against the chosen target.

The latest media witch hunt, initiated by the Daily Mail and The Sun, is steeped with hatred. In calling for a "blitz on the beggars", the Daily Mail focused on the activities of those few dozen east European women, many of them Roma, who beg for change on the tube or try to earn a few coins by washing car windscreens. Those who live or travel in central London will be familiar with all this, but the Daily Mail manages to transform what is a rather pathetic and mildly irritating phenomenon into a "gypsy gangs menace", involving "hundreds" of beggars, who, purportedly "armed with knives" and "handing round" babies amongst themselves to use as props in their "vile" begging, are becoming more and more "aggressive" (March 13).

This tissue of lies soon attained the status of fact and the talk was of a "crisis". The Times, for example, solemnly informed its readers that, "Asylum-seekers drug babies to gain sympathy" and the focus switched to "exploitation" of children by these wicked women (March 18).

The government's initial response was predictable. Home office minister Paul Boateng went on BBC TV to denounce the "increase in the number of gypsies from eastern Europe on our streets who maintain that this [begging] is part of their traditional lifestyle. It isn't acceptable in this country and the police and the courts - backed up by the government - will bring that message home to them ... Nobody has an excuse to beg in this aggressive fashion" (March 12). According to informal reports from Millbank, New Labour's poll guru Philip Gould was warning the cabinet that evidence from focus groups indicated that, after health and education, the issue of asylum-seekers was foremost in the mind of electors who criticised the government's performance. No surprise, therefore, that Boateng's colleague and the minister responsible for immigration, Barbara Roche, citing "growing public concern and the exploitation of children", announced measures to introduce a "fast track" system of handling applications for asylum applications, whereby those convicted of "aggressive begging" would have their cases heard within seven days and, in the event of a failed appeal within three weeks, would be deported (The Times March 20).

At a cost of some £4.5 million, the former RAF base at Oakington in Cambridgeshire has been opened as an internment camp, where convicted beggars and those suspected of being "dubious" refugees will be detained pending their asylum hearings. Men and women will be separated and families broken up. So much for Roche's utterly hypocritical concern for the welfare of the "exploited" children involved.

At a stroke the whole issue of asylum-seekers has been conflated with criminality. The consequence is that the unfortunate people in question are essentially dehumanised, marginalised, and written off as anti-social, quasi-criminal elements against whom 'society' (ie, the ruling class) has a perfect right to adopt the most stringent measures.

The real scandal behind the current "crisis" is that Labour, having made a total mess of its handling of the issue by leaving some 100,000 refugees in limbo for months, if not years, now seeks to make some cheap populist political capital at the expense of a defenceless social minority. The hard-line utterances of Boateng and Roche - backed up by rightwing trade union bureaucrats like Sir Ken Jackson of the AEEU - bolster New Labour's patriotic credentials, and the rhetoric of exclusion and criminalisation serves to deflect attention from the real causes of social ills. Neither the government in particular nor the capitalist system in general can be held accountable for the plight of the disadvantaged. If they suffer, then it is their own fault. And if the fault is theirs, then 'society' has not only the right but the duty to combat the 'threat' which they pose to the state.

Liberal opinion has been characteristically muted and ambivalent on the question. The Guardian, for example, while calling for "calmness, composure and compassion" and for the "bold political leadership" capable of "standing up for refugee rights", goes no further in concrete terms than to suggest that the benefits of asylum-seekers should be increased. While correctly asserting that, "Few rights are more fundamental than the right to be free from persecution and that this right should include freedom from being misrepresented by a rabid media" (March 20), the paper avoids the central issue of guaranteeing freedom of movement from and into the UK for all who wish to find a better life.

That, of course, is one right that the bourgeoisie is not prepared to concede for those below. Using poor workers as 'worst paid labour' and restricting their movement according to capital's requirements is essential for the ruling class. To this end they employ a redefined national chauvinism, where the incorporation of sons and daughters of previous immigrants is encouraged through official anti-racism. Black and white, 'British' workers are urged to take a stand against the new 'outsiders'.

Our position is radically different. Anyone who reads this paper will know that the CPGB programmatically champions the oppressed. We contend that national, racist, sexual, etc. "oppression is a direct result of class society and will only finally be eradicated by the ending of class society" itself. As communists and internationalists we stand unequivocally for the right of all workers to live and work anywhere in the world, and demand the scrapping of all immigration controls. We welcome the fact that this demand has been included in the platform on which the LSA will fight May's GLA elections.

The LSA must go onto the offensive on this issue. The attack on immigrants and asylum-seekers is an attack on the working class. If capital can freely move across state borders, then workers must have that right too. We must demand full citizenship rights for all who reside in this country for more than six months.

This is the vision - not merely political, but intensely moral - which informs all our struggles on behalf of victims of oppression and intolerance, including asylum seekers and refugees.