Britain

Priti Patel targets victims of capitalism’s ‘refugee crisis’

June 3, 2021

Rob Tetley Socialist Alternative member and support worker for child refugees
Cummings lifts lid on deadly Tory failures. Now organise the fight back

May 27, 2021

Connor Rosoman
Say no to voter ID – fight for real, socialist democracy

May 23, 2021

Rob Flamson
Greens boost votes in locals: But are they the left alternative we need?

May 15, 2021

Tom Costello
NEU exec elections – a moderate step forward for the grassroots left

May 14, 2021

Danni Crowter
Tories plan to decimate university arts courses: build a fightback now!

May 12, 2021

Student Socialist Alternative

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Priti Patel targets victims of capitalism’s ‘refugee crisis’

In recent months we have seen the so-called refugee crisis re-emerge as an issue being discussed in the British press. Last summer, the Tory government attempted to whip up xenophobia by highlighting the hundreds of asylum seekers and migrants crossing the channel. Of course, this ignored the millions of people flying into the country legally, with only those most desperate attempting to cross from Calais. Asylum seekers and refugees were once again being scapegoated – used as a political tool by the ruling class in attempts to divert attention away from the failings of their capitalist system and divide the working class.

There is a fraught relationship between refugees and migrants and the capitalist system. On the one hand, capitalists love access to migratory labour to super-exploit. On the other, they love weaponising the issue of immigration to divide workers and distract from their own responsibility for a lack of decent jobs, homes and services.

Now Priti Patel has launched (potentially wildly illegal) new plans for the handling of asylum seekers coming to the UK. These have rightly been greeted with outrage and condemnation, with even some right-wing politicians opposing the plans, along with the United Nations. Patel is proposing a system that for the first time categorises asylum seekers as either legal or illegal. This is before their claims have been heard and resolved. Services offering support to refugees will only have the ‘right’ to deal with those claimants arbitrarily deemed to be legal asylum seekers. What is more, Patel argues that any asylum seeker deemed to have passed through a ‘safe’ country on their way to the UK should be immediately deported back to said country, despite there being no clear legal basis for this.

Asylum seekers in the UK are increasingly forced to live in prison-like conditions while they face an extraordinarily long wait to get their decision from the UK. Old army barracks which have been described by former soldiers as not fit for human habitation seem to be the new norm. Napier camp recently faced a mass outbreak of Covid, almost certainly made worse by the fact that people were being forced to live in spaces not fit for purpose, living and sleeping right next to one another.

Often quoted to justify this inhumane policy is the EU’s Dublin Protocol. When this came into effect in the late 1990s, its basic principle was that those fleeing persecution should claim asylum in the first country they arrive in.

And often, this is the case. Over 80% of the world’s refugees live in the world’s most economically deprived nations, often their neighbouring country. Nearly half of Lebanon’s population is made up of refugees and not one European nation comes in the top ten global homes for asylum seekers. As imperialist wars and their ongoing consequences have devastated the Middle East, an increasing number of refugees have been forced to flee, with many attempting to reach safety in Europe. Responding to this, the Dublin Protocol has been through many agreed changes. This culminated in 2013, with the statement that the country in which an asylum seeker is processed is where they shall claim asylum. This made more sense than the original basis of the protocol but is a widely abused idea: asylum seekers are regularly processed in various European countries then packed onto trains to their neighbours.

2015 saw the complete and total breakdown of any idea of international capitalist collaboration during a period of crisis. Whilst Germany accepted over one million asylum seekers that year, other EU countries took dramatically different approaches. Eastern Europe attempted to shut its doors, whilst even the governments of countries like Denmark and Sweden began adopting the language and policies of the far right with regards to refugees and asylum seekers.

The ‘mainstreaming’ of far right rhetoric by traditional pro-capitalist (and even some former Social Democratic) parties, has had repercussions in the UK and Europe. Such politicians have used anti-migrant propaganda in their attempts to shore up a social base in the context of mass disillusionment with neoliberal austerity politics. This gives confidence to the actual far right, who have frequently targeted hostels and hotels where asylum seekers are being lodged, threatening those who have already fled persecution along with honest workers who are doing their jobs at these facilities. As Hope Not Hate noted:

“Britain First […]activists stormed into a hotel in Birmingham, currently being used to house refugees and migrants. Cameras in hand they walked down the corridors, banged on room doors and confronted residents when they opened. Similarly, BF leader Paul Golding went to Epping and harassed migrants at a hotel there which has already been the target of For Britain activists in recent months”

Patel’s new proposed policy can be seen as a kind of political extension of this far right violence. It is clearly vital that a movement is built that can defend refugees and asylum seekers against these attacks. But what can we do to better understand and try to tackle this issue now?

Firstly, Solidarity

We have to recognise that asylum seekers and refugees are members of the working class. The ruling class has always relied upon migrants to further its economic interests and boost profits. Whether it be Latin Americans travelling to the United States to provide labour on farms or in restaurants, or women from the Philippines migrating to Britain to work in care or for the NHS, international capital loves to exploit migrant labour.

Even Germany’s apparent openness in accepting one million refugees in 2015 must be seen through the prism of an ageing population and German capitalism’s need to expand and protect its reserve labour army. Employers often seek to use migrant workers in order to undercut wages or undermine existing trade union agreements, creating division between workers of different backgrounds. The fact that asylum seekers are denied the legal right to work in the UK only increases the chance that they will be forced to work in highly exploitative situations – often receiving less than the minimum wage, for example.

Instead of treating this highly exploited group as ‘outsiders’ or seeing them as competition, the workers’ movement and trade unions must instead fight to expand and broaden job security and trade union representation to all workers – demanding the trade union agreed rate for the job is paid to all and fighting to secure decent wages and conditions for every worker. If all members of the working class have access to well-paid, secure employment, including for those fleeing persecution, then the sense of resentment and mistrust the capitalists aim to foster can be undermined. After all, a worker who happens to have been born in England has far more in common with a member of the Syrian working class than with a British Billionaire. This can allow a shift in focus to the unjust and corrupt nature of the capitalist state.

The outpouring of sympathy and mass protests that followed the incredibly tragic death of the toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed up on the beach in 2015, showed that there is huge potential to build movements in solidarity with refugees. Such a struggle must demand that refugees are really made ‘welcome’, including by being given the right to work, access to decent housing, help and support to learn English if this is required, and so on. With fresh attacks being planned by the Tories as outlined above, we need to once again take to the streets in defence of refugee rights.

Fighting capitalism, war, and environmental destruction

As socialists, we recognise that there is an intrinsic link between the destruction of the planet and human lives through the greed of capitalism.

The misery that imperialist wars and their consequences bring for the world’s poorest across the globe is horrifying. War is currently the main driver of people having to flee their homes and seek sanctuary elsewhere. And this is likely to be vastly dwarfed by a looming human catastrophe of capitalism’s making: environmental degradation.

The destruction of the environment in the pursuit of never-ending profits will cause a catastrophe that has the potential to spare no one, and yet the ruling class internationally can still not see beyond a short-sighted pursuit of profit that ruins the natural environment. We are starting to witness the effects of this as sea levels rise and volatile weather becomes increasingly normal across the globe.

In the coming years, this is likely to only get worse. More and more land will become inhospitable. If there is a presumption that we have a refugee crisis now, one can only begin to imagine what we are likely to face in the future.

Capitalism means war. Only by ending capitalism can we end class exploitation. And by ending the profit system, we end the economic conflicts of interests which drive conflicts over access to markets, land and natural resources which force so many refugees to seek safety and shelter elsewhere in the world.

As well as exploiting working-class people the world over, capitalism creates insoluble social problems. And because capitalism is a system of class exploitation, it is in the interest of all workers – whether they were born in Britain, are refugees, or are workers living elsewhere in the world – to fight to abolish it.

Only by ending the private ownership of the world’s key resources, as well as the central means of producing wealth, will we be able to establish a global social system where production takes place directly and solely to meet human need. Socialism will be based on co-operation, not on competition and conflicting interests. This is because it will necessarily be based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution, on production to meet human need not private greed. A democratic plan for production combined with solidarity across borders, would pave the way for a society without war, to end environmental destruction, and to prevent people being forced to leave their homes agains
Cummings lifts lid on deadly Tory failures. Now organise the fight back

Dominic Cummings, the former right-hand man of Boris Johnson, gave evidence to a select committee of MPs on Wednesday around the government’s handling of the early stages of the pandemic in the UK. In doing so, he has shone a light on the carelessness and the callous disregard for people’s lives that has defined Boris Johnson’s government for the past 18 months. In this personal crusade against his old allies, Cummings has blown the lid on a Tory cabinet wracked by internal chaos, but also a stubborn refusal to deal with the reality of a rapidly worsening situation, as the then new coronavirus ran rampant through the country.

This was demonstrated last year in the government’s approach of aiming for “herd immunity” – a strategy that was predicted to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and one which government ministers, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock, have repeatedly denied supporting. Cummings’ confirmation of this approach, only confirms what many of us already knew, but it also serves as a reminder that after 150,000+ deaths in this country as a result of the pandemic, the blame falls squarely at the government’s feet for the disastrous spread of Covid. The Tories have blood on their hands.

Profit vs health and lives

What Cummings fails to mention is the driving force behind the Tories’ failure to deal with the pandemic. Over the last year, the Tories have consistently taken every opportunity to ensure big business can make a profit. This included outsourcing the NHS track and trace system to infamous corporations such as Serco, with disastrous results, and a reckless premature reopening of the economy. As a result, for all the government’s apparent discussion about avoiding a ‘worse’ second wave in the Winter by allowing a wave of infections in the spring, they totally failed.

This is also one of the core reasons for the deadly delay to the initial lockdown, as well as the second lockdown toward the end of 2020. Cummings makes the point that Johnson had to be pushed into announcing the first lockdown due to the potential economic damage it would do. But he made the mistake not once but twice, delaying the announcement of a second lockdown as Covid rates soared again. As socialists, we understand that the pro-capitalist Tory government is at the whim of the short-sighted interests of capitalist profits. The government only stepped in and introduced the lockdown, as well as state support for businesses, as a last resort to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed to the point of collapse and stave off economic catastrophe.

Shockingly, at the same time as the virus surged, Cummings has revealed that Johnson’s cabinet was preoccupied with plans to join the US in a potential war in the Middle East, putting their imperialist interests ahead of the lives of thousands of working class people in Britain and in Iraq.

It was not just incompetence or ignorance that led to the catastrophe of the last year, although these certainly played a part. But far more crucial was the government prioritising the profits of the capitalist class over the lives of the rest of society. Their drive to maintain, and then to return to, “business as usual”, all the while undercutting the NHS with deals to dodgy corporations, is a fundamental reason for the mishandling of the virus’s spread.

We need a mass, working-class opposition

Cummings’ evidence is a damning indictment of this government, but it would be a mistake to see Cummings as any sort of champion of the working class. Despite his apologies in recent weeks, the central role Cummings played in creating this situation, and his own disregard for his government’s own rules as illustrated in the now-infamous ‘Barnard Castle’ incident will not be lost on ordinary people for whom the effects of the Tories’ long list of failures have been all too real.

It is clear this government has to go – lives depend on it. But we can’t rely on people like Cummings to change things. We need to get organised to build a real fight back and to build a new, mass party of struggle which can offer a real alternative. If you agree with us, get involved!

We say:
- For a fully independent inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic – led by trade unions, health workers and bereaved families
- Save our health service. Fight for a fully funded, publicly owned, democratically run NHS. Kick the privateers out. Nationalise all aspects of health and social care currently in private hands, including track and trace and the pharmaceutical giants, under the democratic control and management of workers
- Courageous health workers deserve a pay rise. Reject the government’s 1% insult. Unions must organise a fight for 15%
- Make solidarity the new normal. The government’s covid failings stem from their prioritising private greed over human need. Fight for a socialist society – based on public ownership of the big monopolies and an economy planned democratically to meet the needs of people and planet
Say no to voter ID – fight for real, socialist democracy

An Electoral Integrity Bill has been outlined in the Queen’s speech to open the next session of Parliament, which includes provisions for implementing voter ID requirements for all UK-wide and English elections.

This represents a huge threat to the democratic right of working-class people – especially those in minority groups – to be able to vote.

Voter Suppression

On the face of it this bill may seem like a common sense idea to solving the problem of in-person voter fraud (personation); however in the 2019 general election, of around 32 million votes, there were just 33 allegations of personation with only one of these resulting in conviction and one in a caution.

By contrast research published in 2019 by the Electoral Commission showed that “17% of eligible voters in Great Britain are not correctly registered at their current address, representing as many as 9.4 million people. Meanwhile 11% of the register entries are inaccurate, affecting up to 5.6 million people”.

The Electoral Commission have also found that “Most cases [of electoral fraud] related to campaign offences (49% of all reported cases in 2017 and 48% in 2018), for example where a party does not include details about the publisher on election material.”

If Boris Johnson’s government is worried about ensuring that everybody’s vote is counted properly then why they not invest in support for people to register to vote, or focus on ensuring that the Tory party and its candidates are following electoral law?

Currently in the UK ~3.5 million electors do not possess photo ID and ~11 million do not have a passport or photographic driving license.

Among those lacking a passport or driving license we can see huge variations among different ethnic groups; 24% of white people in England do not hold a full driving licence, compared with 39% of people of Asian ethnicity and 47% of black people.

So we can begin to see that a voter ID system is not about protecting our democracy or ensuring everybody gets to cast their own vote but is rather designed to suppress voting from workers and young people, in particular those from ethnic minority groups.

This sentiment has been echoed by The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and Commons Cause, three leading civil rights groups in the US who opposed Donald Trump’s attempts at voter suppression using similar voter ID proposals.

What we can see is a government attempting to shield itself from accountability. It is a reminder that, far from enjoying mass support, Johnson’s government is actually deeply unpopular. This attempt to rig the electoral system speaks to a lack of confidence on the part of the Tories. This is a part of the Tories’ preparation for the big class battles that lie ahead as they attempt to make working-class and poor people foot the bill for a crisis of their capitalist system. Indeed, the Queen’s speech exposed the Tories’ anti-working class agenda.

Fixing the electoral system

The working class must oppose this bill. We must build a fightback against any and all attacks on the right to vote.

More than that, we must demand the government invest in the support necessary to make it easier for working-class people of all backgrounds to register and to vote. Any genuine attempt to tackle electoral fraud would start with the likes of Boris Johnson, who allegedly broke the rules when running the EU ‘Leave’ campaign. Such charges should be subject to a proper, independent, trade union-led investigation, organised democratically including by workers’ organisations and community groups.

Even if barriers to registration were removed, however, it would still be the case that many people who are eligible to vote would not do so. In fact the figures from Ipsos MORI show that whilst whilst 74% of over 65’s turned out to vote just 47% of 18-24 year olds did; we see a similar trend by social class where 68% of upper and middle class voters turned out whilst just 53% of working class and non-working voters did (this figure is likely given a boost by the aforementioned pensioners being counted in this group).

So why are so many young and working-class people not voting and what might inspire them to do so? We believe that there simply isn’t a party in Britain that genuinely represents workers’ interests. Jeremy Corbyn’s left leadership of Labour offered a glimpse of what could be possible, and encouraged many young people in particular to become active in politics for the first time. But he was undermined at every stage by a parliamentary Labour Party dominated by pro-capitalist politicians. Corbyn’s failure to mobilise the working class to drive out the Labour right, along with his over-focus on parliamentary maneuvers, meant it was possible for the Blairites to retake the leadership following the 2019 general election. This should serve as a reminder that the capitalists are not willing to cede any meaningful power to the working class unless forced to by determined, mass struggle.

A socialist democracy

Democracy is therefore not simply a matter of people having the right to vote, important though this is. A society in which a tiny minority own and control huge swathes of the economy, and consequently the lives of millions, can be democratic in only the most superficial sense. Socialists fight to dramatically deepen democracy.

On the basis of a break with capitalism, it would be possible to massively increase the control that workers have over every aspect of society and their own lives. This would go far beyond simply voting for which capitalist politicians will preside over our exploitation for the next five years. Public ownership and socialist democracy would include workers having control of their workplace. This would allow both for workers to benefit fully from their labour and for them to make the decisions that will impact their daily lives, rather than these being made by a board of unelected executives in the interest of capitalist shareholders.

Rather than being governed by a small group of privately educated people, who come from wealth and understand nothing of working class issues, workers could organise at a local, national and international level to plan production in the interests of people and the planet.

A democratically planned economy would ensure secure jobs that pay a real living wage, an end to the big rent rip-off, full funding for our health service, a universal social care system free at the point of need for all and high quality, comprehensive education for all.

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