No to racism - defend Geneva Convention!
The last few weeks have seen the greatest racist backlash since Enoch Powell’s "river of blood" speech. But Nick Griffin of the BNP is only partly right when he says that William Hague is his best recruitment sergeant.
The leadership of both main political parties have been vying with each other to play the race card.
Of course all anti-racists deplore William Hague’s failure to deal with the deeply offensive statements of John Townend and his supporters in a more decisive way. But the comments that Townend made reflect a widely held opinion in his party – that black people are not welcome in Britain.
This episode demonstrated yet again the deep crisis of the Tory Party and the threat that Hague’s leadership will be under after the election. But few people expected anything different from the Tories.
It is Tony Blair, as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party who must bear the greatest responsibility for much more widespread upsurge of racism, through:
The witch hunt against asylum seekers
The increase in racist attacks
The backlash against the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry
The fact that this is a deliberate strategy on the part of new Labour is graphically demonstrated by Tony Blair’s recent articles in The Times. In the few days before calling the General Election, the Prime Minister made sure that racist passions were further inflamed by writing an article calling for the scrapping of the 1951 Geneva Convention.
Blair protests that race and asylum are two separate issues, and castigates the Tories’ flabbiness over Townend for making a "sensible" debate over asylum difficult. This separation does not hold water.
It is black people, along with those from Eastern Europe, who pay the price for the tougher asylum regulations that are part and parcel of Fortress Europe.
It is black communities who are attacked by the police, while their legitimate right to self defence is challenged.
And the Chinese community has been subject to racist scapegoating for their alleged role in the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, rather than pointing the finger where it belongs – at the neo-liberal deregulation of agriculture and food production.
Blair’s attack on the Geneva Convention focused on the supposed increase in "economic migration".
He treats the idea of people fleeing wars and persecution as a minor issue, one with capitalism can deal easily. Likewise he ignores the millions made homeless by environmental degradation, despite the fact that the system he and his cronies preside over is responsible for these massive involuntary population movements.
And when he deals with economic migration, he implies, just as much as the most brazen of the tabloids, that what we are talking about is greedy scroungers looking for a flasher car or some other status symbol.
The stark reality is that neo-liberal capitalism is starving to death many children, women and men across the world not because there is not enough food to eat but because that food is produced for profit not greed.
Socialist Outlook stands for the abolition of all immigration controls We have argued time and again in these pages that a world which values profit before people is one that fuels racism.
In this issue, we are pleased to print letters from Gabriel Nkwelle which are a powerful indictment of immigration detention.
In previous issues, we have told stories of the horrific realities from which other asylum seekers have fled in their own countries. We have tried to give a voice to black people fighting back against racism in the so-called criminal justice system in this country.
This is why we welcome the initiative from the Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers to launch a petition against racism in this election and carry the text on this page.
We hope all our readers will not only sign it themselves but become actively involved in the campaign around it.