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MIGRANT LIVES MATTER
STOP THE SLAUGHTER IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
In 2011 during the chaos that followed the overthrow of Gadafi EU countries “shamefully failed” to help thousands of Libyan refugees. Nicholas Beger, director of Amnesty’s European Institutions Office said, “We have witnessed an abysmal response to the plight of displaced refugees on Europe’s doorstep. This failure is particularly glaring given that some Europen countries, by participating in NATO operations in Libya have been party to the very conflict that has been one of the main causes of the involuntary movement of people”. Many of these refugees driven by desperation tried to make the perilous sea journey to Europe. By September 2011 1,500 had died in the attempt.According to Amnesty only Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherland, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden offered any help, but they only offered 700 places. In response to criticism of Britain’s failure to offer a single place, a British government spokesman said,
Our early action in providing emergency shelter supplies and flying people home from the border camps helped prevent a logistical problem from developing into a humanitarian crisis. We have repatriated over 12,700 people from the border camps and also provided tents and blankets for emergency shelter.
We are under no international obligation to bring asylum seekers to the UK from Libya and do not believe it would be desirable to do so. In our view humanitarian and refugee issues are best dealt with in the region of origin, or by asylum seekers claiming protection in the first country they reach.
Today Britain and the EU are reacting in the same appalling way to the refugee crisis created by the civil war in Syria. More than 1300 people drowned in one week in mid April attempting to cross the Mediterranean. They were desperately trying to reach Europe to escape the horror of civil war in their own country. On the 18th April 950 died in a single incident when an overcrowded fishing boat capsized. By the end of April this year some 1,776 refugees had died. Conditions on the boats are terrible.
It is not hard to understand, given the situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, why people are so desperate that they endure these hardships and put their lives at risk in this way. They are driven to make the dangerous sea crossing because alternative routes have been closed down. The Greek government put a fence along its border with Turkey in 2012. Bulgaria did the same in April of this year. Spain has almost sealed the border with its own North African enclaves Ceuta and Melilla.
The shocking images of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean have outraged millions of people. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi rightly called the deaths part of a “systematic slaughter”. But although politicians throughout Europe have cried crocodile tears their response has been totally inadequate. They can only think of ways to strengthen the callous immigration policies which caused the problem in the first place. Last December the UN refugee agency UNHCR appealed to EU states to provide homes for 130,000 Syrians displaced by the civil war. In response Germany pledged to take 30,000; Sweden 2,700 and the other 26 states just 5,438 between them. Britain promised to take in only 143. Yet it can afford to spend billions on border controls and brutal immigration centres.
The Daily Telegraph quoting aid agencies wrote on the 9 December, “The British Government is failing in its responsibility to resettle vulnerable refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria, The United Nations hosted a conference in Geneva on Tuesday aimed at getting countries to pledge to take more refugees from Syria, which now faces the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in modern history. Whilst many countries are participating at ministerial level, Britain is represented only by its ambassador to the UN, and is not expected to make any meaningful commitment to resettle more refugees on its soil ... Britain has been heavily involved in the Syrian war, backing the opposition to the Syrian regime when protest began in 2011, and later providing non-lethal support to rebel groups. However its borders have remained almost totally closed to Syrians whose livelihoods have been destroyed in the conflict”.
In response to these criticisms a Government spokesperson said, “The UK has been at the forefront of the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, having pledged £700m making us the second largest bilateral donor.” Ms Camilla Jelbert Mosse, campaign manager for Oxfam, however said, “The response that the UK is doing its bit by providing aid does not cut it. The resettlement programme is for people whose needs cannot be met in the region. They can and should be helping with both.”
Although David Cameron says it is a tragedy his government had refused in October to take part in the inadequate EU rescue mission ‘Operation Triton’. This replaced Mare Nostrum, which cost the EU £6.5 million a week and was run by the Italian Navy. It was cancelled last October because EU countries were no longer prepared to fund it. Operation Triton costs a third of Mare Nostrum, and only operates within 30 miles of the Italian coast. Triton is coordinated by EU borders agency Frontex.
At the emergency EU Summit on Thursday 23rd April politicians made it clear that while the military vessels they were mobilising may rescue people: they do not want those refugees getting into Europe. Fabrice Leggari, Frontex’s executive director stated that its brief was to tighten border control, rather than to save lives. He said, “Triton cannot be a search and rescue operation.” Cameron supported this view. The previous Monday a home office minister argued that rescuing people would only encourage more to travel. This idea was originally put forward by Foreign Office minister Lady Anelay who last year called the rescues an “unintended pull factor”.
The summit also called for a military plan to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers”. It is not clear how they plan to do this, but destroying fishing boats will do nothing to change the circumstances that lead people to risk everything to escape from war and poverty. It will just mean that people will try by other means, which may well be even more risky, whilst at the same time destroying the livelihood of some genuine fishermen.
Britain’s alleged traditional generosity towards “real refugees” is often trotted out to justify the hard line taken against the newest wave of people seeking asylum. The ‘Spectator’, in an article in January 2014, wrote, “Historically, Britain has, to her great credit opened her doors to victims of persecution abroad.” On the 15th September 2014 the BBC in a radio programme said, “In its long history as a safe haven for refugees, Britain had given a home to French Protestant Huguenots in the 17th century and Russian Jews in the 19th century.” When on Monday 11th May the EU proposed that its members should take fixed quotas of immigrants determined by a number of factors: including a country’s population; economic indicators and the number of asylum seekers already accepted a UK government spokesman said: "The UK has a proud history of offering asylum to those who need it most, but we do not believe that a mandatory system of resettlement is the answer. We will oppose any EU Commission proposals to introduce a non-voluntary quota."
These statements that Britain has historically ‘opened her doors to victims of persecution abroad’, however, are basically untrue. The despicable reaction of our government today to the plight of the refugees dying in the Mediterranean is not something new which can be explained by the rise of UKIP etc. although this has undoubtedly dragged politics to the right. It fits into the hostile attitude that governments, of different political persuasions, have shown to asylum seekers since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The modern concept of the right to asylum only dates back to 1951. Before this people coming to Britain, who were fleeing from persecution, were treated as immigrants. The Aliens Act of 1905 first introduced immigration controls and gave the Home Secretary overall responsibility for immigration. In the context of what was to follow, it was the point at which the liberal, ‘Open Door’ approach to immigration began to close; a process that continued throughout the twentieth century.
The period before the Aliens Act was a period of economic uncertainty. Britain began to fall behind Germany and the United States. Her industrial output was expanding much less rapidly than before. It has been roughly estimated that if the rate of expansion of industrial output in the early part of the century was 3% per annum, it fell to under 2% per annum in the last quarter of the century, and to about 1% in the first quarter of the 20th century.
Agriculture also went through a period of crisis at this time. In the seventies imports of corn from the States had caused a drop in wheat prices. Thisontributed to the depression of British agriculture in these years. By 1875 nearly half of the wheat consumed in Britain came from abroad. The bad harvests of the late seventies increased the proportion to nearly 70%. Many farmers switched to arable farming, but the development of refrigeration later in the century meant British meat producers also faced competition from abroad. Agricultural labourers and farm servants were forced to move to the towns where many remained unemployed. Unemployment figures were high in the 1880s; they fell between 1894 and 1899, but rose again between 1900 and 1904.
The BBC, in the statement quoted above, seems to have forgotten that although the Aliens Act said it was to prevent paupers and criminals from entering the country it was really introduced to stop the waves of Jewish immigration which followed the Russian pogroms in 1881-1882 and 1903-1905. It was, therefore, a piece of racist legislation, and as I will show racism underlies all subsequent immigration legislation. About 150,000 desperate Jews arrived in the UK. As they were fleeing persecution today we would describe them as refugees. Immigration officers were given powers to refuse entry to ‘undesirables’ which of course could be Jews. Magistrates could recommend the deportation of foreigners convicted of offences linked to prostitution. Furthermore aliens convicted of a crime could be deported if they were unable to support their families or themselves. They could also face deportation if they fell destitute within twelve months of arrival or were wanted for an extraditable crime.
Many Jews settled in the East End of London. This produced a popular backlash. The’ British Brothers League’ which was formed, with the help of prominent politicians, organised marches and petitions. At rallies, its speakers said that Britain should not become “the dumping ground for the scum of Europe”. In 1905, an editorial in the ‘Manchester Evening Chronicle wrote “that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil … shall be forbidden to land”. From the start, therefore, immigrants, as they are today, were linked to crime and prostitution as a way of winning public support for their exclusion. .
The Act was supported by most of the working-class representatives, whether Liberal or Labour. The official trade union movement repeatedly blamed immigrant workers for unemployment and as early as 1892 the TUC had called for a total ban on immigration.
The 1919 Aliens Restriction Act extended the powers of the 1905 Act and the wartime act of 1914. Under this legislation the Aliens Order issued in 1920 granted the Home Secretary the power to deport any alien whose presence was deemed not to be conducive to the public good. It restricted the employment rights of aliens resident in Britain, barring them from certain jobs, e.g. in the civil service and had a particular impact on foreign seamen working on British ships. The government wanted to safeguard the jobs of indigenous white Britons at a time when wartime labour shortages were coming to an end. All foreigners had to have a certificate of registration. South Asians were not formally classified as ‘aliens’ as they were citizens of the empire. Many, however, were harassed because of the legislation. The 1919 Aliens Restriction Act was renewed annually until 1971 when it was replaced by the Immigration Act.
The economic problems of the inter-war years, particularly in the 1930s, are too well known to need repeating here. Britain’s hospitality to 80,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s in spite of the economic difficulties, is therefore, also often cited as evidence of our traditional generosity to refugees. British immigration policy, however, was designed to keep out large numbers of European Jews not let them in - perhaps ten times as many were refused entry as were let in. Escape to Britain was an exception for the lucky few; exclusion was the fate of the majority.
It was argued that Britain was not a country of immigration, so although it had accepted its fair share of refugees in the past, Britain would not be able to offer refuge to the many who would wish to come here. Though it would participate in the international efforts to solve the refugee problem, Britain had to have control over who would be granted entry. Refugees would be assisted only if it was in the interests of Britain. The government, and the already-established Anglo-Jewish community, believed that too much Jewish immigration would increase antisemitism and cause unemployment.
Refugees were not allowed to enter the labour market without permission from the Ministry of Labour. This stipulation, however, was waived in two cases, firstly for refugees able to leave Europe with their business intact and who were willing to establish new firms in Britain, and secondly for those who were able to enter Britain as domestic servants.
In 1938 visas for immigrants from Germany and Austria were introduced so that the government could be more selective over who was granted entry. In November 1938, after the Kristallnacht pogrom, Home Secretary Samuel Hoare told Parliament that the 11,000 Jews whom Britain had admitted thus far had created jobs for 15,000 Britons. He advised keeping up the policy of "very careful selection" that had led to such a positive result.
The deed of which Britain is proudest was the admission of 10,000 children in 1939 under the Kindertransport scheme, but these children were admitted on condition that they would not be a burden on the state; their parents, Jewish organizations, private charities, or hospitable individuals had to pay for their transportation and upkeep. Children aside, only 17,000 Jews were admitted in the final year of peace. When the war started in September 1939 all issued visas were cancelled. Throughout the war the government remained reluctant to admit Jewish refugees.
In the end Britain did admit about 70,000 "suitable" Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, on top of 10,000 transmigrants. The government was particularly receptive to elite emigrants such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Popper, and the bulk of the immigrants were doctors, scientists, lawyers and other economically useful categories of people. British hospitals, for example, actively recruited German Jewish doctors. Finally, since Britain was not a country of immigration, the refugees had only been admitted on a temporary basis, pending their re-emigration to a country of permanent settlement. Whilst in reality some 40,000 remained in Britain, this had not been the government's intention. More could have been done in trying to assist Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany and also to permit the shattered remnants of European Jewry to enter post-Holocaust Britain.
After war the new Labour government continued the restrictive policies that had been introduced prior to the war. Rising fears of future labour shortages, however, led the Labour Government to adopt a very different attitude to the Poles who were in Britain because of the Second World War. The Polish Resettlement Act 1947 allowed them to stay.
Initially a very large community of Poles was centred around Swindon, because many military personnel had been stationed there during the war. Large numbers later settled in London. The number of Poles in the UK grew in the 1950s as travel restrictions from Poland were relaxed.
A report from the Royal Commission on Population in 1949 said immigration into Britain should be welcomed ‘without reserve’ but only on the condition that the migrants were ‘of good stock and were not prevented by their race or religion from intermarrying and becoming merged into it’. This referrred to the arrival of SS Empire Windrush the previous year which had brought some 400 West Indians to Britain in search of work. The Commission broadly hinted that ‘coloured’ immigration would not provide a satisfactory solution to Britain’s future labour shortages. Even so during the post-war boom from 1950 to the mid 60s employers were quick to recognise the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent as fertile recruiting grounds for the labour that they needed.
In these circumstances Labour leaders began to publically oppose immigration control. Thus Arthur Bottomley, Labour spokesman on Commonwealth affairs, told the Commons in 1958: “We on this side are clear in our attitude towards restricted immigration. We are categorically against it.” Gaitskill had strongly opposed controls because “every Commonwealth citizen has the right as a British subject to enter this country.” This attitude, however, was based on economic necessity rather than principle and in fact was shared by many Tories. In the 1950s Tory cabinets consistently voted against immigration controls. The way the need for more workers at this time changed the perpective of many politicians is, perhaps, best shown by the fact that when Enoch Powell, who is not noted for having a positive attitude to immigration, became Health minister in 1960 he encouraged a large number of Commonwealth immigrants to come to Britain to work in the National Health Service.
During the 1960s the last African countries still under imperial control gained independence from their European rulers. The process of Africanisation that followed was not straightforward. Economies suffered as political leaders struggled to unite communities in the face of drought and famine.
The political instability affected the large Asian communities in East Africa who had been brought from India by the British for economic reasons and who had British passports. Many lived in distinct communities, separate from their British rulers and their African neighbours. They were often successful and skilled workers, occupying management positions that most indigenous Africans could only dream of, in sectors such as banking, insurance and industry. These communities became increasingly threatened as African governments cast Asians as a scapegoat group.
In Kenya Asians in the civil service were sacked in favour of Africans. The Kenyan Immigration Act 1967 required them to acquire work permits, whilst a Trade Licensing Act passed in the same year limited the areas in which non-Kenyans could engage in trade. Asians, along with Europeans, were given two years to acquire Kenyan citizenship and renounce their British passports. Many Asians decided to leave for Britain. Asians living in Uganda faced similar problems to those experienced by Asians in Kenya.
By the terms of the 1962 immigration Act British passport holders living in independent Commonwealth countries could move freely to Britain. The Act, however, was passed amidst widespread fears that the government planned to permanently close its doors to citizens in the New Commonwealth, including the families of those already living in Britain. Although this didn’t happen it sparked a rise in immigration as dependants attempted to ‘beat the Act’. This coupled with fears of an influx of Kenyan and Ugandan Asians, together with the beginnings of an economic slow down provoked a racist backlash. The rate of profit fell more rapidly than in the past. Pre-tax profits fell from an average of 18.8% in the 1950s to 12.3% in 1967-8 and finally to 10.9% in 1969. The result was that investment in the private sector grew at only 3.6% half of the 1964-70 Labour Government’s planned rate of 7%.
The shallowness of Labour’s commitment to opposing restricted immigration is demonstrated by how quickly they capitualed to these pressures. Their 1964 Manifesto stated, “Labour accepts that the number of immigrants entering the United Kingdom must be limited.” During the election campaign nearly twice as many Labour candidates as Tory ones mentioned immigration as a problem in their election addresses. In the general election an extreme Tory racist won Smethwick with a swing against the general trend. This convinced most of the Labour Government as Crossman wrote in his diaries that, “ Ever since the Smethwick election it has been quite clear that immigration can be the greatest vote-loser for the Labour Party if we are seen to be permitting a flood of immigrants to come in and blight the central areas in all our cities.” Clearly Labour was now prepared, just like the Tories, to use immigrants as scapegoats for economic problems, unemployment and housing shortages.
Economic problems mounted. A deterioration in the balance of payments put pressure on the pound and forced the government to borrow money. To win back the confidence of the foreign markets and ward off devaluation Wilson brought in various deflationary measures, e.g. all indirect taxes were increased by 10% and public investment was cut by 150 million pounds. The situation was not helped by the ‘Six Days War’, which significantly increased the cost of imports.
In November 1967 the government was forced to devalue the pound. Further deflation measures followed in 1968. These affected the level of unemployment. Up to about 1967 the unemployment rate fluctuated around 1.5 to 2% of the labour force. Unemployment then grew steadily from 2.3% in 1967 to 3.7% in 1972. In the boom year of 1973 it fell sharply to 2.6%, but this was still higher than at any time during the 1960s.
Labour’s response to Asians emigrating to Britain because of Kenya’s and Uganda’s ‘Africanisation Policies’ was determined to a large extent by these economic factors. As early as 5th August 1965 Labour proposed cutting work vouchers for Commonwealth immigrants from 208,000 to 8,500. These had been introduced by the 1962 Act. By 1970 the new measures had succeeded in reducing voucher holders from 208000 to 4,000. Nevertheless Kenyan and Ugandan Asians continued to come to Britain.
In the atmosphere of hysteria whipped up by Powell’s claim that up to 200000 Kenyan Asians would exercise their right to reside in the UK, the Labour Government in 1968 steamrollered the Commonwealth Immigrants Act through Parliament in three days of emergency debate. This introduced an annual quota system and restricted the right of entry previously enjoyed by citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies to those born in Britain, or who had at least one parent or grandparent born there. Obviously this was racially biased. One month after the Act was passed Enoch Powell made his notorious "rivers of blood” speech on 20 April 1968. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act didn’t make Labour popular and they lost power in 1972.
On the 1st January 1972 to appease the right-wing of his party the new Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, passed another Immigration Act under which Commonwealth immigrants faced the same restrictions as any other person applying to live and work in Britain. In order to be allowed to stay, they had to produce a work permit relating to a specific job in a specific place. They also had to register with the police and after 12 months re-apply for permission to stay. Only after having lived and worked in Britain for 5 years were they allowed to stay. The new law also allowed those who wished to return to their country of origin to be repatriated with travel expenses paid. The old system of quotas was dropped with the Department of Employment restricting numbers coming into the country by picking and choosing which applicants were to be granted work permits. Another important change was the introduction of a partial "right of abode" which lifted all restrictions on those - mainly white - immigrants with a direct personal or ancestral connection with Britain.
President Amin, on the 4th August 1972, gave Ugandan Asians a deadline to leave Uganda - accusing them of being "bloodsuckers" and milking his country's economy. This led many Ugandan Asians to flee. Other countries - including Japan, India and Australia - were asked by Britain to take them but they all refused. The Attorney-General, Peter Rawlinson, told the Cabinet that “under international law a state had a duty to other states to accept those of its nationals who were expelled from their country of residence and were not admitted to any other country”, which applied notwithstanding the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act. The resulting resettlement of some of these Ugandan Asians into Britain is often cited as one of the more successful immigration operations.
In spite of Rawlinson’s legal advice government papers from 1972 show ministers worried at the effect it would have on race relations and whether Britain would be inundated with refugees from other East African countries tried to find a remote island home for the thousands of Ugandan Asians who eventually settled in Britain. The papers show that one suggestion was to set up an island territory - similar to Hong Kong - on which to put the refugees. The Solomon Islands in the Pacific, and the Falklands Islands, which did offer to take some refugees, were considered, but both were discounted.
In the end some of the 80,000 Ugandan Asians went to Canada and South Africa, while 25,000 were taken in by Britain. Former Conservative minister Lord Carlisle showed that the hypocrisy of today’s politicians is nothing new when he said he believed the success of many of the Ugandan refugees in the UK showed the government "was indeed right" in offering them a safe haven. He had conveniently forgotten all the attempts by the government to avoid having to do this.
During the Labour Government of 1974-1979 workers’ living standard fell for the first time in real terms since the 1930s. Unemployment rose from 500,000 to over 1.5 million. After 1973 a deep crisis of profitability returned to the system and production during the next decade grew at less than half the rate of the 1960s, with a further slow down evident from 1979 onwards. With the exception of a few very short periods of recovery the global economy has remained in a deep crisis since the early 1970s. Labour shortages were apparently a thing of the past. Migration to Britain for a better life by the time of Thatcher’s premiership was virtually impossible. The ‘Economist’ wrote in September 1993 that, “ Tory policy has already reduced the inflow to a trickle. The number of successful applications for British citizenship (is) at its lowest for ten years. Nowhere in Britain is being swamped.”
The state of the economy, however, meant there was still a need to find someone to blame, so in Britain the focus for much of the period was concentrated on so called ‘bogus’ refugees and illegal ‘immigrants’. By and large this is still the case today. Although East European immigration has increased, because several East European countries have joined the EU following the collapse of communism, it is difficult for the mainstream parties to make capital out of this because of their support for the EU. Only politicians opposed to the EU, like the Tory sceptics and UKIP, have been able to do this.
Under Thatcher Britain acquired one of the worst records in Europe for its treatment of asylum seekers. British immigration officers accepted for asylum only 240 for every I million of the UK’s population, ie. 0.024% as compared with nearly 5,000 per 1 million inhabitants for Sweden and more than 4,000 for Denmark. In 1981 more than 60% of applicants who managed to reach Britain were accepted. By 1988 the figure had dropped to only 25%.
This figure is even worse than it seems, for the total of asylum seekers who managed to reach Britain was reduced significantly by the introduction of steep fines for airlines and shipping companies who carried passengers without proper documentation. Visa restrictions were also used to stop asylum seekers reaching Britain. By 1991 residents in more than 90 countries were subject to visa restrictions on travel to the UK. John Major imposed these on the former Yugoslavia, making it impossible for most victims of the war to leave. In 1995 the same method was used to prevent victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone from coming to Britain. The Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act of 1993 enabled the government to deport huge numbers of asylum seekers within days of their arrival, without having their applications even considered, on the grounds that their ship or aeroplane stopped in a third country on its way to Britain which supposedly gave any ‘genuine’ refugee the opportunity to claim asylum there instead.
The Labour Party might have called the 1993 Asylum Act ‘shabby and mean’, but Labour’s opposition to the huge tightening up of asylum and immigration procedures implemented by this act was the weakest imagineable. Labour’s shadow spokesman on immigration, Kim Howells, maintained a deafening silence in the face of record levels of deportations, detentions and even deaths that followed. Instead Labour in opposition simply pandered to the Tories’ claims about ‘bogus’ refugees, desperate to convince any potentially racist voters that Labour will be ‘tough’ on immigration. In Government between 1997 and 2010 Labour passed a further six acts dealing with asylum and immigration.
It is quite clear that since the Aliens Act of 1905, both Tory and Labour governments, have tried to control who could enter the country, whether they were coming for economic reasons, or to escape persecution. Any strategy for fighting the restrictions on asylum seekers being allowed access to Britain which looks to the Labour Party is therefore doomed to failure. Instead, effective opposition will rely upon the efforts of black and white workers themselves, fighting together from below against all immigration controls and the racism that undrelies them. Ultimately, though, fighting immigration controls means fighting the system that produces them. Capitalism needs immigrants when the economy is booming. Even in periods of economic difficulty immigration is used to fill gaps in the labour force and to provide skilled workers without having to meet the cost of their training, for example, 40% of our nurses today were born outside of Britain. Immigration is also needed by the ruling class in times of economic difficulties to provide scapegoats to explain the system’s inability to provide basic things like decent housing, schools and an effective health service. Ultimately, therefore, because of this symbiotic relationship between immigration controI and capitalism, effective opposition to immigration restrictions and the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers means challenging the very foundations of capitalism itself .
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