The immigration ‘debate’: silent on class
IMMIGRATION HAS resurfaced as a headline grabbing
issue, with the Home Office announcement that, since 2004, 600,000
Eastern Europeans from the new EU countries (62% from Poland) have
arrived in Britain – and that, with the (possible) enlargement of the EU
to include Bulgaria and Romania early next year, there may be more
immigration to come.
The ensuing ‘debate’ has seen, on one side, the
hysteria of the rightwing, led by the Murdoch press. On the other side,
we have the capitalist establishment and so-called ‘left-liberal’
commentators talking of the benefits immigration has brought to the
‘British’ economy and ‘British’ interests.
The right-wing press attempts to blame immigrants
for falling wages and the fact that the welfare state is falling apart.
It is claimed that immigrant workers have driven down wages in the
construction industry by 50%. Since when did Polish workers set the wage
levels in different sectors of the economy, legislate for the minimum
wage, or administer company pay-rolls? The fact is that big business
will pay as little as it can get away with in the pursuit of profit. Sir
Digby Jones, former head of the Confederation of British Industry,
admitted as much when commenting that "you cannot blame migrants if they
are prepared to come here and work for wages which, though they may seem
low to us, are a lot higher than in their own country". Indeed! This is
a clear admission that the blame for low wages lies with big business.
Big businesses are in competition with one another
for market share and profits. If a business can cut its costs by paying
lower wages and giving itself a competitive edge, then it will do just
that. This forces competing businesses to follow suit. The result is the
driving down of wages for all workers, which is not the fault of
immigrant workers but down to the imperatives of the capitalist system
itself.
Similarly, the claim that immigration is the cause
of the problems with the welfare state is a fallacy. Since Thatcher’s
Tory government, whichever party has been in power has sought to break
up and privatise the welfare state to keep their big-business friends in
profit. This has resulted in the privatisation of council housing, cuts
in benefits and pensions, and job losses and closures in the NHS. Yet
again, it is the wilful decision of neo-liberal governments, Tory and
Labour, to cut state expenditure and replace it with private,
profit-driven provision that has led to the decline of the welfare
state.
Wages are too low and the funding of public services
inadequate. Immigration is used by big business and its representatives
in government to excuse underinvestment in vital services and try and
place the blame on anyone but themselves and their system. Official
statistics estimate that immigrant workers contribute £2.5 billion to
the economy each year. Rather than being a strain on the welfare state,
most immigrant workers are aged in their 20s and 30s, and work when they
get here. Less than 10% arrive with dependant family members, making
them net contributors through the work they do and the taxes they pay.
(The Independent, 23 August)
The main factors driving migration are also a result
of the capitalist system. The restoration of capitalism in Eastern
Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 has been an unmitigated
disaster. Unemployment in Poland and Slovakia stands officially at over
15%, pushing people to migrate to find work. As if to hammer home the
way the imperatives of the capitalist system force migration, The
Financial Times (29 August) reported that, because of rising skills
shortages in Poland due to migration, "many Polish employers are
beginning to turn to Ukrainians to fill the jobs gap"!
Other than false economic arguments, the right-wing
press pushes as far as it can a racist and xenophobic line to further
divide working people. It is in the interests of capitalism to sow
divisions among the working people of the world. With globalisation,
ownership of supposedly ‘British’ companies becomes more and more
diffuse. Similarly, the different workforces around the world are more
and more composed of different nationalities. For example, the National
Farmers Union says British agriculture relies on 70,000 immigrant
workers to bring in the harvest, and immigration now makes up 10% of the
workforce in the construction industry, which still suffers from a lack
of labourers (The Independent, 23 August).
It is usually at this point that the so-called ‘left
liberal’ media takes up the case of immigrant workers and the
contribution made to the ‘British’ economy. Organisations such as the
London Stock Exchange announce immigration as a "cause for celebration"
because "migration has contributed 0.5% to 1% to UK economic growth in
each of the years 2005 and 2006". (The Independent, 23 August) The
problem with this sort of analysis is that is poses immigration in terms
of benefiting a supposed ‘British interest’. Comments about GDP say
nothing about the distribution of wealth in society. The profits of
British capitalism are booming yet the wealth gap between the richest
and poorest has increased hugely since Labour came to power in 1997.
Bonuses in ‘the city’ are at record levels based on these massive
profits yet wages for everyone else remain at a paltry level.
The reason for this discrepancy is that there is no
such thing as a ‘British interest’. Society is divided into different
classes whose interests are at odds to one another. Capitalism’s profits
come from exploiting the labour of working-class people. Nationality,
immigrant or indigenous, is unimportant to big business – it will pay as
little as it can get away with.
At other times, the ‘liberal’ press attains an
astonishingly similar reflection of right-wing hysteria. Yasmin Alibhai
Brown, a frequent contributor to The Independent, comments that
"[British] people are either too lazy or expensive to compete.
Tax-paying immigrants past and present keep indolent British scroungers
on their couches drinking beer and watching TV. We [immigrants] are
despised because we seize opportunities these slobs don’t want". (23
August) Competing with the right-wing press as to who can portray one
group of workers as more ‘lazy’ than the other, does nothing to break
down racism and xenophobia! No mention is made, for example, of the
excessive overtime that British workers perform.
The concern of working-class people in Britain over
the state of welfare provision and wage levels is totally legitimate.
However, to place the blame on ‘immigrants’ does not address the causes
of these problems or advance anything to improve the situation. The
problem is the capitalist system itself.
A brief glance at history reveals when workers’
living conditions recorded their biggest improvements: in the 1960s and
1970s, when the trade union movement was at its strongest, representing
more than 50% of working-class people in Britain. At this time,
working-class people were represented by their own political party, the
Labour Party, despite its generally pro-capitalist leadership. In other
words, when the working class is sufficiently organised to demand back
some of the wealth that it creates, improvements can be won.
The path to beginning to solve the problem of low
wages, under-funded public services and racism is workers’ unity across
ethnic, religious and national lines. This can only be built through the
day-to-day experiences of working people. It is vital that the trade
union movement makes the recruitment of migrant labour a top priority.
Joint action of British-born and immigrant workers, organised in unions
and based on a unity of interests, is how to stop big business using
immigration as an excuse to cut wages and dismantle the welfare state.
But working people also need to be organised
politically to fight for their interests in all areas of society. The
need for a new mass workers’ party has never been clearer.
Unfortunately, many of the major unions continue to affiliate to New
Labour – the principal executors of big-business, neo-liberal interests
that provide such fertile ground for division and racism. Philip
Stevens, commenting in The Financial Times (29 August), points out that
"the erosion of old political boundaries is evident in the debate about
the influx of workers from Eastern Europe… Labour MPs these days are
almost as likely as their Tory counterparts to call for tougher
restrictions on foreigners". In other words, Labour and the Tories try
and out-compete each other in scapegoating immigrants to divert
attention from the fact that both parties’ policies caused these
problems and will exacerbate them in the future.
Sean Figg
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