"There is no place more institutionally racist than an immigration detention centre!"
The opening speech at the Barbed Wire Europe conference in Oxford was given by Bill MacKeith, a key organiser of the conference and of the Close Campsfield campaign, and President of Oxford Trades Council.
We are here to build the movement against immigration detention. It will be part of the movement for all sorts of justice - for freedom of movement, the right to work and to full benefits for refugees and other migrants - equal treatment with other residents.
It will be linked to the fight for a world free from the activities of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, big companies and governments that support them that subordinate people to the needs of private profit, a world free of the debt burden, from despots sustained and often put in power by the force of arms sold by the rich countries.
And we should note that last year the UK sold more arms abroad than any other country except the USA.
Brutal (often futile) attempts to control the movement of people are a world-wide problem. In the last 2-3 months thousands of immigration detainees have revolted at a centre in the wilds of western Australia, thousands of south Chinese have been deported from Canada. A great wall, armed police and vigilantes divide the USA from the rest of the Americas to the south, and inside the USA two million people-disproportionately black people - are in prisons built and run for private profit - a system that is being imported into Europe.
Europe is a world super-power in the process of construction at the expense of people's rights inside it and without. The walls around the Spanish enclave Ceuta in North Africa, immigration officials, airline liaison officers, embassies, consulates and visa systems are to erect a fortress Europe.
This conference is dedicated to opposing detention because the practice of arbitrary detention of refugees and other migrants not only is part of the European fortress but also is a key mechanism of the divide and rule home policy of governments inside the European Union.
As well as being unjust, painful, boring, traumatic, depressing and very bad for your health (particularly your mental health), arbitrary detention of migrants is a gross incitement to racism in thought and deed. "If they are locked up, they must have done something wrong" is a common reaction.
We are very angry that the British government talks about opposing institutional racism, when, we believe, there is no place more institutionally racist than an immigration detention centre.
The government attitude reminds me of another piece of breath-taking hypocrisy: the Anti-Racism Declaration which is on display-to visitors, not detainees-as they first enter Campsfield.
In the past 2-3 years, there has been a very rapid extension of immigration detention in Europe. This morning's speakers will relate the key developments in eastern Europe-a buffer zone to check immigration from the east - and in Italy - what the German and British governments in particular regard as the soft and vulnerable underbelly of Europe.
The past 2-3 years has seen the development of new forms of resistance to detention and other forms of racism - major protests by detainees, border camps, signs of internationalising of resistance - this conference being an example, the further development of independent migrant organisations, such as the VOICE movement in Germany following the sans papiers in France, the stopping by passengers, pilots and others of air flights with deportees on board.
An important boost to European-wide work to end detention were the two conferences organised by the French organisation FASTI, at Lille in 1997 and Fernay-Voltaire in 1998. They were under the title "Europe Barbele".
The Campaign to Close Campsfield took part in these and-in the absence of any other offers to do the job, has organised this "Barbed Wire Europe" conference in the same spirit. The aim is to take stock of the considerably altered situation described above, to inform ourselves, make new friendships and build new contacts, and agree a realistic programme for future collective action-a few points that we can actually carry out will be more productive than a massive shopping list.
The Campaign to Close Campsfield seeks to work closely with the detainees and with ex detainees and migrant organisations. The organisation of migrants themselves will be crucial in changing the situation in the UK. That is why this conference is organised to encourage refugees and other migrants to participate.
I think that last night's session on conditions in countries of origin was very useful in this respect. I am sure that participants in this hall will be among those who will build the sans papiers movement in the UK and Ireland (and decide what it will be called). I am sure this will happen now that the voucher scheme and forced dispersal has led to organised protests by refugees in Hull and in the West Midlands, from which a group of protesters set out recently on a protest march to London.
The UK Caravan for Civil Rights will be part of this UK migrants mass movement; it is very good for this conference and I think for the Caravan that it is coming here on Sunday to lunch, speak and join the demonstration at Campsfield tomorrow. These demonstrations are not big media events, but they the detainees find them very supportive. So if you can come it will be worth it.
Campsfield was opened in November 1993. It holds nearly 200 detainees for an average 5 months. Both detainees and their supporters in the campaign have staged many protest actions-some spectacular, and done much campaigning. Both detainees and the campaign have a remarkable history.
In the UK, before the current expansion of detention, over 10,000 immigrants a year, most of them seeking political asylum, were detained under the 1971 Immigration Act on a decision made by an individual immigration officer at the lowest level.
At this moment over 1,000 are detained a detention centres near Oxford (Campsfield), at Harmondsworth near Heathrow, at Tinsley near Gatwick, and Oakington near Cambridge (this one opened this year and is called a "reception centre" where asylum applications can supposedly be turned round in a week or ten days), at Lindholm in Yorkshire, and at prisons at Rochester, Kent, and Haslar, Portsmouth.
A 700-bed detention centre is being prepared at Thurleigh near Peterborough. Total current detention capacity is 1,327, but in addition many people are held for short periods at ports and in police stations.
Following a vicious and organised campaign against migrants, particularly asylum seekers, in the Tory press, the Labour government has now stated that it will quadruple the number of detention places. The Conservatives say they would put every single asylum seeker in detention.
A key reason that detention centres are so important is that they make it easier to deport people. Labour has carried out its election policy - to deport more people that the Tories. In the first 7 months of 2000 there was a 29% increase in the number of deportations and removals over the same months in 1999. The number was 26,515.
Finally, we should like to see two kinds of initiative coming out of this conference:
A group of participants agreeing to form the basis of a group that will facilitate - by email as well as by more traditional means - coordinated actions across Europe at detention centres, at seats of government and in the cities.
Some steps focusing on the institutions of the European state, the European Union, that is, the Parliament and the Commission, not to mention the secret meetings of interior ministry officials who shape immigration law along with crime and drugs in the same meeting. The Parliament has never discussed detention. It is time that it did.