How the SWP Supports New Labour and Imperialist Immigration Policies.
A Marxist Critique of Home Office 'Socialists'

In a pamphlet entitled "Refugees are Not To Blame" with subtiltes 'No
to Scapegoating and No To Immigration Controls" written by a Hassan
Mahamdallie the SWP declares itself with New Labour's immigration
policies and the NATO programme of counterrevolution in Eastern
Europe. In order to understand the full depth of their policies and
how related they are to the ruling government we will use some
paragraphs from their pamphlet.

"Answering the myths

Are we overcrowded?
No. The population of Britain is around 59 million. Its hardly growing
at all. It is hardly growing at all. Migration of people out of this
country since the Second World War has consisitently been higher than
those coming to settle. For example, 54,000 people permanently left
the country in 1995, 10,000 more than claimed asylum. 10,000 more than
claimed asylum. But no one talks of a 'flood' of people leaving
Britain.
Since 1971 ther has been a sharp fall in the number of births in
Britain. In common with the rest of Western Europe, we have an ageing
population. By 2050 the population of Britain is set to drop to 56
million. This means that in the next century Britain will need to find
new sources of labour to keep up the workforce.
Asylum seekers could provide part of that labour supply"

In order to prove that asylum seekers are welcome here and that their
arrival doesn't actually affect anyone, even the British working
class, one has to create a reality to fit the purpose of the argument.
All well and good if the argument was actually tailored to represent
the reality of capitalist Britain in decline. But if the argument is
tailored to defend capitalism in decline then reality has to be
inverted. Has the author asked the millions who live in council flats
in overcrowded estates whether Britain is overcrowded? Or are we
dealing with a theoretical concept of overcrowding which takes no
account of present day reality and just argues that another 10 or 20
million people could fit into Britain? Russia which has approximately
260 million people in 1/6 of the worlds earth surface is definitely
underpopulated in relation to its land mass, but that doesn't stop the
government having 20 odd people in a cell where prisoners take it in
turns to lie on the floor spending at least 20 hours a day standing
up. Is this overcrowding? Is this what we mean when we say we aren't
overcrowded? When we wait for buses or go to the dole queue or the
local library are we on are own? Is the UK a country which can easily
cope with an influx of millions as the author of the SWP argues?
When it is stated more people left England than actually came in are
we supposed to take this literally or assert in relation to the number
of asylum seekers? Are they the only ones coming into the UK? Or are
we playing with words to create a diversion? New York over a twenty
five year period has had at least 2 million new arrivals. Has London
had any less? Only in the decade of the 1990's at least 70, 000 Kurds
have arrived? Were they asylum seekers or not? Irrelevant question.
The issue are the numbers. Has Britain seen its population decrease
over a twenty five year period or increase. If it has increased then
the SWP is inverting reality to serve its purpose…
As a result of the ageing population which the government always talks
about and wants to raise the age of retirement so you work till you
drop dead, the SWP now argues labour shortages will be created in the
distant future and these labour shortages can be filled by asylum
seekers. Is capitalism actually creating jobs which cannot be filled
in the UK and labour from abroad needs to be brought in? Full
employment is once more on the agenda!!! This obviously happened in
the 1950's during the post-capitalist boom. Are we in the same period?
Has Labour actually ever reversed the 19 or so changes in calculating
the rate of unemployment which the Tories introduced which actually
led to pretending there are no longer any unemployed in the UK? Can
British workers actually find jobs? Aren't there at least 5 million
unemployed? Where will the asulym seekers now find jobs, if they
aren't asked to work on slave labour wages in scab outfits? Or should
they be asked to take over jobs done by British workers at starvation
wages? Here the SWP reveals its class hatred of British workers and
sides with the government which wants to use immigrant labour to
undercut hard won rights, as has happened in sub-contracted council
cleaning companies. A stroll in London will actually show that shops
are now open 24 hours a day and workers in these shops primarily from
the immigrant communities work without any rights whatsover. That is
why it has appointed Barbara Roche MP as a new Minister for
Immigration to handle the largest influx of immigrants in post-war
Britain. This isn't mentioned in the SWP pamphlet as they are
concerned in telling the British working class it has to move to the
side to allow immigrants in.

"Are We Flooded with Asylum Seekers Compared to Other Countries?
NO. There are an estimated 13 million refugees today, fleeing war and
brutal regimes. Britain provides for just 0.5% of them in 1997…
In 1997 Germany received the most applications for asylum - 100.000.
Britian received just 30,000 application. Britian takes less refugees
per head of the population than the following countries: Germany,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Norway, Sweden,
Ireland, Denmark and Canada."

Its an irony that Greece is actually missed out. It has according to
government statistics accepted 1.5 million in the 1990's alone. That
is equivalent to 35% of the working population. Has Greece been
flooded? Technically no. If you apply the Russian principle of 20 to a
cell and now picture Greece where people sleep 10 to a room it still
has a long way to go. The issue is what is a flood? What percentage
are we dealing with which turns a puddle into a flood? The author of
the SWP doesn't answer this question as again reality needs to be
inverted to fit the argument. We can help him. If we cram 30 to a room
and calculate that there are so many rooms in a country and then we
get to figure out what a possible flood may actually mean. But what
does a flood mean in the labour supply? What does an oversupply of
labour mean? Does it exist or is it a concept which doesn't exist in
the SWP school of defenders of capitalism in decline? Are wages
actually going up which would imply there was an undersupply of labour
or unions were achieving rights or is the opposite occurring?

WON'T ASYLUM SEEKERS TAKE OUR JOBS?
"NO. Asulym seekers are not to blame for unemployment.
In the 1930's there were virtually no asylum seekers allowed into
Britain, yet we had mass unemployment. In the 1950's and 1960's we had
immigration from the Commonwealth and full employment. It is not
asylum seekers who are putting workers in Britain onto the dole. They
do no sit on the boards of companies that are sacking thousands of
workers every week.
Take the case of Dover. It is true there is a lack of jobs. But who is
to blame? For years the Tory council stopped factories being built so
that locals would be forced into low paid work in the tourist
industry.
It was the Tory government which closed down the Kent pits after the
1985 miners strike. And it was the bosses of P&O who sacked 2,000
local seafarers who went on strike to defend their jobs. All this
happened before one refugee set foot in Dover. As Malcolm Pitt, leader
of the Kent miners during the 1985, says "It is total hypocrisy of Ann
Widdecombe and the Tories who created the stituation to blame the
victims rather than the perpetrators.
The Thatcher government wanted to destroy jobs and let rip free market
economics that tears peoples lives up everywhere. They smacked workers
in the head and now want to divide and rule. The only answer is for
workers in the head and now want to divide and rule. The only way is
for workers of all races to unite in opposition to the common enemy".
One would assume the SWP could take into account different historical
periods. One of capitalist boom and one of capitalist decline. Is the
British imperialist state going to make the ruling class pay for the
extra cost in housing and schooling for the refugees or will it make
the working class pay? As for the attacks on the working class in the
18 years of Tory rule it was helped along by the union bureaucracy
which is bound hand and foot to the Labour Party which we must never
forget did everything in its power to undermine the miners strike and
essentially wipe out the mining industry from the UK. The SWP argument
implies the only ones to blame are the Tories as they are to the right
of New Labour and that asserting that the extra burndens which the
state is undertaking is no cost at all, just "a penny on income tax at
todays levels"(p.7) In other words nothing is really happening one
doesn't understand what all the fuss is about and no jobs have been
taken despite asserting East Europeans are working on the farms in
Kent. ("Yet who harvests the fruit and vegetable crops in this "garden
of England" for poverty pay? British seasonal workers and migrant
labour from Eastern Europe." P.9) The SWP asserts most British people
work in the tourist industry around Dover and the fact that many
hotels are being turned into refugee centres doesn't obviously affect
the London based SWP but it might actually affect the Dover tourist
industry and this might actually be a cause of local resentment that
people in the area may not even be able to have these low paying jobs
at all. To argue as the SWP has been doing, since Labour got into
power that there is no crisis and that hundreds of thousands of people
who get mobilised for instance in the countryside, against the
collapse of agricultural prices and the devastation of rural
communities, that somehow because there are leaders who are Tories or
because the BNP has appeared in Dover is an indication of a turn away
from the class, away from popular protest, into being the 'left'
lawyers for Labour. As if we create the conditions of resistance, as
if we are in control of the form this resistance takes and as if the
1905 Russian Revolution wasn't led by Father Gapon, a priest. Does
that imply that because Tories and fox hunters for their own ends to
ensure the left doesn't take roots so they can diffuse the situation,
appear on protests that the whole protest is reactionary through and
through? The movement against the poll tax also had many local Tories,
priests etc. but somehow that was progressive whilst the hundreds of
thousands from the rural areas are all reactionary? If more scenarios
like Dover develop and they probably will, the SWP will be campaigning
for the police to intervene and stamp out racism as after all they
debate Home Office Reports on racism and claim this is the main threat
in Britian today, not capitalism itself.

4."Arent Asylum Seekers A Drain on Society?
NO. Britian is a very rich country compared to most - the problem is
that the wealth produced is not shared equally.
This government should tax the rich to make funds available to look
after everyone in society - wheteht it be asylum seekers, the elderly,
people with disabilities or anyone else who needs help.
It is not true that there is a housing shortage. There are 800,000
empty homes across Britain many owned by property speculators. They
should be opened up to meet peoples needs. Politicians always talk of
asylum seekers in a negative way. But Home Office studies show that
many are highly qualified. However, this government will not allow
asylum seekers to get a job, even in voluntary work, for the first six
months.
Many asylum seekers who are granted refugee status work long hours for
low pay in sweatshops or jobs in the service sector such as cleaning
and catering."
Suddenly we have no housing shortage in the SWP's worldview, there are
enough to go around. It is a shame people don’t realise that and
they need the SWP to re-educate them with regards to the non-existent
housing shortage that everyone has been speaking about for years
including the SWP one may add, before the Labour Party got into power.
There are also many asylum seekers who are well educated and no one
doubts that, but what is the implication behind this? Under a
sub-contracted government system for education for instance, the SWP
will be campaigning for asylum seekers to get jobs whilst British
people don’t have them. Unemployment in the UK isn't mentioned
at all in their pamphlet as if it doesn't exist. Figures are used to
conceal the depths of the social crisis. And to add insult to injury,
the SWP always uses Home Office reports to justify its political line:
one which is direct and unequivocal support to British imperialism
abroad and at home. Many "asylum seekers work for long hours for low
pay in sweatshops or jobs in the service sector such as cleaning and
catering" they assert. Is it not the case that throughout the
deregulation of council services in the 1980's, many by the Labour
Party the SWP votes for, British workers have been replaced by
immigrants. Every new wave of immigrants replaces another, and each
new wave undercuts the previous one. This in the SWP view of Labour
Britian isn't mentioned or even notified as to them the issue isn't
what is happening, but the 'right' of immigrants to work. In other
words the right of the bosses to use anyone from any corner of the
planet to undercut another group of workers from another part of the
world and everything is fine. This policy of divide and rule the SWP
support under the guise of 'anti-racism' and anyone who criticises the
right of the bosses to use immigrant labour in such a manner is deemed
a racist. One obviously only needs to take a stroll in various London
boroughs to notice that people today are working longer hours, for
less and this continues unabated. The SWP answer is capitalism has
problems but if we fight we can solve them. Modern immigration which
is another form of slavery cannot fight to improve its lot much in the
same way as the slaves of the past couldn't fight to improve their
'slavery'. Only a revolutionary struggle which aims to block
capitalisms ability to permanently use labour to undercut labour can
lead to the overthrow of this new form of medieval serfdom, not a
reformist approach which embellishes the system and asserts 'everyone
is welcome here'. Slavery couldn't be reformed, it had to be
abolished.

In the chapter entitled "Why People Are Forced to Move Across the
Globe" the SWP argues in not too uncertain terms that because
countries collapse people move from the poor countries to the rich
ones. "They may be asylum seekers, they may be "economic migrants",
they may be fleeing the "violence" of famine or drought, yet they are
all branded as "bogus", "illegal" or "scroungers" p.11. One would like
to know is there a class definition of immigration or is immigration a
non-class concept which implies an immigrant is an immigrant is an
immigrant under all conditions and under all circumstances is welcome
in the UK? This liberal, non-class approach doesn't take into account
imperialisms involvement in its neo-colonial adventures. But as the
SWP pretends they don't exist in the hope that they will go away we
will just remind them.
In London in the 1990's decade there has been a large influx of Kurds
and Somalians. By a strange coincidence the British army alongside its
US masters has been involved in neo-colonial adventures. How does
US-NATOist imperialism manage to coerce the local leaders to cede
territory in its wars against the Somalian 'warlords' and the evil
dictator, the rapist of poor little Kuwait, Saddam Hussein? Is it by
any chance agreeing to ship thousands of pro-western Somalians and
Kurds? Or is it out of 'humanitarian' concern for the damage caused by
US missiles on poor defenceless civilians? Which we then have the
obligation as workers to house, feed and clothe? We are morally
responsible for the crimes committed by the gangsters in charge of us
and we have the moral duty to pay. So not only are we criticised if we
campaign for the victory of our governments enemies, not only are we
branded Saddams stooges, we are also now being branded as racists if
we oppose imperialist immigration policies. The SWP want to have its
cake and eat it. It wants to pretend one can have a liberal sit-on the
fence position, of No War but Peace, without siding with one of the
two sides and then if people side with one side it brands them puppets
of one side. This policy or pettybourgeois capitulation to
imperialisms new world order is now taking on a totally reactionary
turn, whereby the terms "ethnic cleansing" and "fascism" has to be
applied to all opponents domestically. We have been through this
process once before in history and it was when the stalinists branded
the trotskyists as appendages of fascism. In that fact alone the SWP
aren't original or even unique. Just a final attempt at holding on to
reactionary policies before the final degeneration into the new world
order of liberalism.

Meberry68