19.04.2000

Hague's last refuge

Vote LSA: Against immigration controls For free movement of people

The left's insistence that the capitalist state and its Blair government are deliberately fostering racism received support last week from two grandees of the establishment: a baron of the trade union movement and a prince of the state church.

Bill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, launched a scathing attack on the government's inhuman policies on asylum-seekers, alleging that they were "giving life to the racists" (The Independent April 14). Morris, a New Labour loyalist on most issues, correctly condemned home secretary Jack Straw for recent policy decisions: the issuing of vouchers instead of cash to asylum-seekers; the "repugnant" suggestion that some visitors from the Indian sub-continent should have to pay a £10,000 bond on entering Britain to make sure they leave; and the abolition of the right to trial by jury for a range of offences, which he said hit black people the most harshly.

Morris, backed up by the bishop of Croydon, Wilfred Wood, said that the government had created a climate where "the mood music is playing a hostile tune for black Britons". He added: "Initiative after initiative has had a negative and in some cases discriminatory effect upon the black community".

A shocked Straw replied that he was "genuinely mystified" to have been on the receiving end of such damning criticism from two eminent people whom he regards as model black British. He said: "One thing after another that we are doing is designed to ensure that we are a beacon in terms of race relations in this country, and that we really make a reality of the idea of equality as well as diversity." A Downing Street spokesperson added: "The prime minister rejects absolutely the claim that the government fosters racism in any shape or form."

Nevertheless Parliamentary Labour Party chairman Clive Soley called on ministers to stop using inflammatory language about "bogus" asylum-seekers "flooding" into the country - it was the use of such terms that led Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat frontbencher, to report both Labour and the Tories to the Commission for Racial Equality, accusing them of 'playing the race card'. Instead, ministers have begun referring to "unfounded" asylum claims from large numbers of people. Surely such moderate expressions could not be "perceived as racist"? But Soley backed the government crackdown on "fraudulent" claimants: "It is right that we are addressing the concerns of people on the street, both black and white, who feel angry when they see a non-genuine asylum-seeker given a house."

The last straw for Morris was, apparently, the remark made by home office minister Mike O'Brien the previous weekend, that his department was "institutionally racist", in that it underemployed blacks and Asians in relation to their proportion of the population. Clearly a "racist" department is going to implement racist measures, not least over asylum-seekers, it seems. Yet despite Morris's sectional concerns for "black Britons", the biggest category of these immigrants are neither black nor, obviously, Britons. They come from former Yugoslavia - which, of course, has been ripped apart in a whole series of national-ethnic civil wars.

The main ethnic group singled out by the chauvinist media campaign have been the Roma - fleeing poverty, discrimination and persecution in Romania, the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. True, some have dark skins compared with the biological racists' stereotypical northern European. However, apart from the traditional dress of many of the Roma women, they would be impossible to distinguish in London's hugely diverse population.

How has our biggest ally on the left responded? In an article replying to the media's obscene barrage of anti-immigrant filth last month, Socialist Worker declared: "The hysterical attacks on asylum-seekers are a new form of racism" (my emphasis, March 25). It went on to point out that, "Jews in Hitler's Germany looked no different from non-Jewish Germans," and continued: "Today even some black and Asian people, whose families arrived here often 30 or 40 years ago, can fall into scapegoating refugees" - although that "does not mean that refugee-bashing is not racist", Socialist Worker assured readers.

Call it racism if you must, comrades but for me that deprives the word of all rational meaning - and fails to explain what is actually happening and why. Blair's government is not racist, but national chauvinist. The state is not hell-bent on excluding Romas, Kosovars, Serbs or Bosniacs out of some pseudo-scientific aversion to an ethnic group that favours brightly coloured headscarves or baggy trousers. And it is not simply because they are foreign - plenty of other foreigners move in and out of Britain virtually as they please. Nor is it just a question of "scapegoating", although that undoubtedly is a useful (for the bourgeoisie) side effect. The truth is that the ruling class wants to keep out these particular refugees primarily because they are poor workers with few lucrative skills to exploit. The government does not see why it should pay for the meltdown in ex-Yugoslavia. Let others carry the can - or 'encourage' the refugees to go back.

In fact Straw announced earlier this week that around 3,000 Kosovars out of the original 4,000 granted "exceptional leave to remain" during the Balkans war last year will be sent back by June. One thousand have already gone back of their own accord.

With Labour and the Conservatives vying with each other to appear the most anti-immigrant, Tory leader William Hague announced that his party would hold all new asylum-seekers in detention centres - that would teach them to try to come to Britain. They would be locked up in "welcoming" surroundings though. What is more, the new 'fast-track' procedure would ensure that their claims were dealt with speedily and families would be released from Hague's "non-punitive" concentration camps and booted out of the country within six weeks. In addition the Tories would set up a "removals agency" to eject unwanted applicants "at once".

The Daily Telegraph went into raptures over Hague's speech: "We believe that it is the most important speech that he has made since becoming the Conservative Party's leader and that it might, just, turn out to be the most significant he makes during this parliament ...

"The resilient, unexciting, uncomplaining man from Yorkshire is taking on the whole new establishment - the Council [sic] for Racial Equality, the BBC, the more flammable bishops, Tony Blair's new peers: all those who believe that the exploitation of asylum is not a fit matter for public discussion" (April 18).

The ultra-reactionary Telegraph's comments are significant. While the newspaper upholds the new anti-racist consensus, it cannot abide the political correctness of Tony Blair's redefined national chauvinism. Nor can it stomach the fact that it is Labour, not the Conservatives, who are taking the lead in consolidating the new ideology: the "new establishment" remains just as vicious as ever in the employment of its national chauvinism, but no longer employs racism as its main ideological weapon to divide workers in the interests of British capital. The Telegraph hopes that the Tories can ride back to government on a wave of jingoistic nationalism, outdoing anything New Labour can come up with. 'Bogus' asylum-seekers are the last refuge of these scoundrels.

Socialist Worker may not have grasped what is going on, but at least its talk of "a new form of racism" shows that it realises something has changed. But its failure to grapple with the changed reality leads it to ask the wrong questions and propose wrong solutions. If we were simply challenging 'prejudice', then it might be correct to concentrate on media lies about "bogus claims", "too many people", "not enough houses" and refugees "stealing our jobs". OK, so the native population is falling. What if it were rising? More people emigrate than come to the UK. What if the reverse were true?

Restricting your arguments to fallacies about overpopulation and scarce resources concedes ground to the anti-immigrant logic: that's all very well, will come the response, but surely there must be some limit to the numbers 'we' can take?

The London Socialist Alliance has the correct answer contained in its platform, where it calls for the abolition of all immigration controls. We must fight for the right of all people to move, live and work anywhere in the world. The capitalists have divided the planet according to their interests and in so doing dictate to us where we can and cannot settle. At the same time they demand the right to import and export capital as they see fit. If the product of labour can move across borders, then labour itself must be free to do the same.

This is the only winning argument, and the LSA must not opportunistically hold back from employing it for fear of losing popularity.