10.05.2007

Legitimating racism

Dave Landau of the No One is Illegal campaign makes the case for open borders

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." This, I thought, was the underlying principle of socialism. But Margaret Hodge has added a caveat - 'unless you are a migrant'. No surprise really: she long abandoned the principles of socialism - if she ever truly embraced them.

No sense of history either, it seems. This pantomime of 'them and us' is played out in every generation - every time a tragedy, every time a farce. At the turn of the 19th century it was the Jews. They were 'them', taking 'our' homes, jobs and opportunities. Margaret's forebears were certainly not the poor from the shtetle who became the East End Jewish working class. But they were certainly part of 'them', as were my great grandparents. And it was the same with people from the Caribbean, from the Indian subcontinent, from Kurdistan, from Africa, from eastern Europe.

Leading Labour Party figures have lined up to condemn Hodge. We should welcome this, I suppose, but there is a heavy whiff of hypocrisy in the air. The New Labour government has presided over vast inequalities of rights and opportunities based on immigration status, and right at this moment they are pushing through yet another bill to 'strengthen borders'. This puts yet another brick in the wall of the international regime of immigration and border control, which leads to the scandalous pictures and litany of death featured in The Independent (May 28). How many of these Labour leaders and wannabees have challenged any of this? Very few. Most are part of it.

Of course, there is a context to Hodge's pronouncements. She is the MP for Barking, half the borough where the BNP has had its biggest electoral success and is the official party of opposition. Frightened by the threat to her seat, she is speaking to those in her constituency who have or would vote for the fascists, indicating that she is in sympathy with their insecurities and fears, and ultimately with their racism. Actually, its not necessarily their racism (thought it is in many cases): it is her racism now and it legitimates those attitudes in sections of the Barking working class who may not have so far embraced them. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

But in her grossly unprincipled way she is addressing a real issue. Working class communities, whether black or white, settled or migrant, in places like Barking and Dagenham have good reason to feel angry and disenfranchised. Labour has not delivered on their basic hopes of decent, affordable housing, health, education and a real voice in what happens in their community. The BNP provides the white settled part of the community with a scapegoat, reinforced now by Margaret Hodge.

There is a huge task involved in challenging these ideas. The legitimacy of immigration controls is accepted by the vast majority of the population. The idea that all immigration controls are racist and that there cannot be fair immigration controls has little currency. The idea of equal rights for all regardless of immigration controls, not much more.

No One is Illegal has argued these ideas into the wider working class through the trades unions, providing literature and organising TU conferences. But bringing these onto housing estates is harder still. It can be and has been done. A few anti-deportation campaigns have taken the defence of particular people facing deportation into the communities and tried to generalise the principles. But this has been rare.

It will not be easy and there are tactical problems. For example, the forces in a united front against fascism are unlikely to be agreed on the abolition of immigration controls and it would be wrong to argue for this to be a precondition for involvement in such a campaign. So smaller forces will have to take this forward. But, right now, there will be no ducking the 'equal rights for all' argument by all those seriously fighting racism and fascism in places like Barking and Dagenham.

The struggle for ideas will have to be combined with campaigns which can unite all sections of the community - eg, for housing, developing things like homelessness campaigns, thereby bringing migrants and non-migrants together