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Britain’s immigration controversy
TORY LEADER, Michael Howard, has claimed his first New
Labour scalp with the resignation of immigration minister Beverley Hughes. The
scandal that led to her resignation involved accusations that New Labour had
knowingly allowed immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria to enter Britain on false
papers as part of a ruse to lower the asylum figures.
For a while it seemed like the Tories would be able to use
the issue to wreak further havoc for New Labour, with the press openly raising
the prospect of the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, being forced to resign. It
even appeared possible that Tony Blair would be drawn into the mess when rumours
emerged that he was involved in agreeing a ‘visas for cuts in asylum numbers’
deal with the Romanian government.
A few weeks on, however, and a kind of fragile peace seems
to reign on the issue. This is partly because news headlines are once more
dominated by the disastrous occupation of Iraq. But it is also due to a shift in
the attitude of the Tories who are, in reality, under many of the same pressures
as New Labour. Tellingly, the Tory party has welcomed New Labour’s decision to
lift the suspension of work-related visa applications from Romania and Bulgaria
because, as the Tory agriculture spokesperson, John Whittingdale, explained,
"soft fruit growers are desperate to obtain labour under the scheme in time for
the harvest season".
Both New Labour and the Tories are trying to square the
circle in an extremely hypocritical fashion. The number of people who work
legally in Britain who were born abroad has increased from 1.8 million workers
in 1995 to 2.6 million today. Net immigration to Britain is at its highest level
for 150 years, a situation which has clear advantages for the British ruling
class, in whose interests both parties operate.
Increased immigration offers big business an opportunity to
compensate for an ageing population in Europe and, at the same time, to force
wages down. In this sense, it is an extension of neo-liberal policies.
Worldwide, capitalism has used the globalisation of the economy to increase
profits. One aspect of this has been the moving of production abroad to
countries where labour is cheaper. Now they want to try and globalise labour by
encouraging cheaper labour to travel to richer countries and therefore to drive
down wages in those countries.
This is particularly the case in those sectors that cannot
be exported abroad. In Britain, migrant labour is most used in health care,
education, cleaning, food manufacture, catering and hotels. As The Economist put
it in its 2002 survey of migration: "The gap between labour’s rewards in the
poor and the rich countries, even for something as menial as clearing tables,
dwarfs the gap between the prices of traded goods from different parts of the
world. The potential gains [to capitalist profits] from liberalising migration
therefore dwarf those from removing barriers to world trade".
This process is concentrated in low-paid, casual workforces
(such as fruit-pickers) but is also increasingly taking place in highly skilled
jobs. Both New Labour and the Tories see it as necessary. Of course, the Tories’
support for New Labour’s underlying approach did not prevent them from trying to
make political hay by attacking both the government’s policy and the clumsy way
in which they have implemented it. In doing so, however, they were playing with
fire. At the time of Hughes’s resignation, an opinion poll showed that 46% of
people considered immigration to be one of the most important issues to the
country, second only to the National Health Service. (YouGov survey, 3 April)
This mood was undoubtedly heightened by the Tory and tabloid
frenzy that was whipped up on the issue. However, the policies that New Labour
has pursued over their seven years in office created the necessary climate.
Desperate to distract working people from crumbling public services,
dramatically increased privatisation, and attacks on wages and conditions, the
government has been prepared to play the ‘asylum card’ again and again.
Increases in economic immigration have been combined with draconian attacks on
the rights of asylum seekers, many of whom are fleeing terrible oppression.
In adopting such policies, New Labour has hoped to prevent
the growth of the far-right, racist British National Party (BNP) and the
recovery of the Tory Party. Instead, it has assisted both. After all, Nick
Griffin, the BNP leader, has described Blunkett as the BNP’s ‘best recruiting
sergeant’. In the coming European and local authority elections the BNP could
make significant gains.
But while both the Tories and New Labour have shown
themselves to be more than willing to foster racist and anti-asylum prejudices,
they are worried about the consequences of those feelings going too far and
having a destabilising effect on society. Potentially this could, and at a
certain stage will, limit their capacity to act in the economic interests of
British capitalism by encouraging increased immigration to Britain.
The arrival of new immigrants has always had the potential
to create dangerous instability for the capitalists. The nation state is the
basic unit of capitalist society, whilst at the same time being an obstacle to
its development. Today, in the era of globalisation, the productive forces –
industry, science and technique – have long outgrown their national base.
Therefore, the capitalists strain hard against the limitations of the nation
state.
However, they cannot more than partially surmount it. The
big corporations are, almost without exception, still based in, and tied to,
particular countries. They are reliant on the market and the political
superstructure of their home nation. An intrinsic part of that political
superstructure is a national consciousness which the capitalist class tap into
in order, for example, to win support for their wars. However much they would
like to, the capitalists cannot switch national consciousness on and off at
will. Therefore, for example, British capitalism felt it had no choice but to
limit immigration at the end of the 1960s, despite the economic advantages for
them of speeding it up, because of their fear of the social instability that
could result.
Today, it is clear that the Tories have temporarily halted
their attacks on New Labour on the question of immigration because they are
coming under direct pressure from sections of big business to do so. This is
firstly for short-term economic reasons – having enough cheap labour to pick
this season’s fruit! But in all likelihood it is also because of more general
fears about increased instability. Of course, neither New Labour nor the Tories,
will permanently abandon playing the ‘race’ or ‘asylum’ card. The Tories, in
particular, will do so for short-term electoral gain. And both parties will be
prepared to do it on a far larger scale than they have so far when they feel it
is necessary to do so in order to cut across a united movement of the working
class.
Socialists must defend the rights of asylum seekers and
immigrants and link that directly to our programme to fight to improve the
living conditions of working people as a whole, and to the struggle for
socialism. In particular, we must fight for the trade unions to wage a serious
struggle to unite immigrant and other workers in a fight against low pay.
Hannah Sell
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