WeeklyWorker

27.04.1995

No worker is illegal

THE REPORT into Campsfield detention centre released by Judge Tumin on Friday will come as no to surprise to thousands of immigrants who are or have been locked away as criminals by the British state.

Neither will the brutality of that state come as a surprise to anybody being hounded, raided and abused for apparently being an ‘illegal immigrant’.

Two hundred people are locked up in Campsfield. It is run by Group 4 and is the largest run private detention centre.

There are no recreation facilities, so days there are filled with boredom and fear. The immigration minister, Nicholas Baker, said there were difficulties in providing “a full range of activities for detainees, the great majority of whom do not qualify to come to the UK”. People who have committed no crime are being treated worse than prisoners, worse than most animals - which some of the time at least get a field to run around in. The field at Campsfield cannot be used because of drainage problems.

Judge Tumin said he was not surprised there was a hunger strike and riot last year. Nor are we. This is the very least we should expect. The problem is that the organised working class is not strong enough or determined enough to ensure that these immigrants are released and all detention centres closed down.

Much of the left still calls for the abolition of racist immigration laws. But those in Campsfield and other detention centres are from all nationalities and races. White workers and black workers from Eastern Europe, Turkey and all over the world are subject to immigration laws because the state wants to control the flow of cheap labour. What those in detention centres have in common is that they are workers and not rich. The rich, whatever their nationality and race, move around the world freely.

Discrimination and the threat of deportation keeps wages low and divides the working class through undermining the possibility of trade union organisation. Immigration controls have nothing to do with the myth of overcrowding. They are designed to criminalise migrant workers.

Helen Ellis