Labour strengthens state racism
Anyone not yet convinced of the racism and hypocrisy of the parliamentary Labour Party need only look at the despicable role it has played over immigration and asylum legislation over the last few years.
In 1996 when the Tories introduced the Asylum and Immigration Bill, many Labour MPs actively campaigned against those racist laws. Even at that time, however, the Labour leadership refused to condemn the bill outright, hiding behind some weasel formulation of opposing the "racist aspects of the bill".
Labour did make two pre-election pledges: that it would remove the requirement for employers to carry out immigration checks on their employees, and that it would restore benefits to all asylum seekers if it could be shown that the cashless system was more expensive. Having conceded that the voucher system is more expensive, Labour has subsequently reneged on both counts.
The timing of the current legislation’s passage through parliament seems as if it were planned to highlight the racist hypocrisy of the Labour leadership. The second reading of the bill went through parliament without a single Labour MP voting against, just as the MacPherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was published.
Tory and Labour leaders all denounced the "institutional racism" that the MacPherson report acknowledged, whilst arguing for a strengthening of Britain’s racist immigration laws, and for increased powers to lock up and harass those fleeing persecution.
The third reading of the bill went through on the eve of a war that Blair and co have claimed was in defence of those facing persecution and ethnic cleansing. It is clear that the labour leadership have been prepared to spend billions of pounds bombing Serbian civilians, but are not prepared to spend a fraction of that in offering those fleeing persecution a degree of dignity when they arrive in Britain.
Milosevic closed down all the Albanian language schools in Kosova in 1989. The home office response has been to lock up Kosovan children in detention centres on the basis that they must be lying about coming from Kosova as they couldn’t name the school they attended!
Although the threatened rebellion of some MPs forced Jack Straw to make some minor concessions, the Bill as it stands is still an appalling piece of racist legislation that is far worse than the Tories thought they could get away with just three years ago.
All asylum seekers will be forced to live wherever the government tells them to, regardless of what support structures exist on a local level: in fact the legislation specifically states that an asylum seeker’s preference must not be taken into account when deciding where they will live.
Anyone who has tried to live on the meagre level that state benefits offer will realise that it is not enough to live on. Asylum seekers are to be offered a package that is equivalent to a measly 70% of benefit levels, and even then most of that is in the form of vouchers.
Whilst the government has claimed that there will be a fairer, more streamlined process in which cases are dealt with quickly, this is in fact a further attack on asylum rights, with a more limited appeals procedure and less time given for asylum seekers to obtain necessary documentation for their case.
As if this wasn’t enough , Immigration Officers are to be given police powers to monitor, harass and arrest asylum seekers, without even the limited accountability that exists with the Police Complaints Authority.
There are two worrying aspects of the current legislation.
Firstly, this is not simply an attack from the Blair government, but is part of a concerted effort on the part of all EU governments to create a common framework of racist legislation based on the worst aspects of each individual member state.
The second aspect is the absolutely abysmal level of opposition to the current legislation. The fact that only seven Labour MPs voted against the bill at its third reading isn’t simply a matter of having the wrong individuals in parliament. It also reflects the lack of pressure that the rest of parliament feels it is under to oppose these laws.
On one level, anti-racism has been given an enormous boost over the last year with the inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. This has not, however, translated to a mass anti-racist movement that can challenge racism on all levels.
Nor have demands for Immigration and Asylum rights yet reached the mainstream of the anti-racist movement. These weaknesses can assist anti racists in pointing out how we can start to build an effective anti-racist movement – one that aims to mobilise all anti-racists, one that sees immigration and asylum rights as central to its programme, and that builds beyond national boundaries, and that makes links throughout Europe and beyond.