The Conservative government has unveiled its latest piece of racist legislation. Designed to garner support from the same constituency who put the Tories in power and voted to leave the European Union, the uncompromisingly titled Illegal Migration Bill is one of the government’s most extreme gambits so far. NICKI JAMESON reports.
In an effort to divert attention from the capitalist crisis which is eroding the living standards of people in Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman are now using ‘Stop the Boats’ as a mantra similar to Boris Johnson’s ‘Get Brexit done’. As with Brexit, this is scaremongering of the highest order, in which all the inequalities in British society are blamed not on a profit-hungry ruling class but on a foreign enemy – be that the lawmakers of the European Parliament or impoverished, desperate people clinging to a dinghy in the rough waters of the Channel.
This is therefore, by design, a Bill replete with extreme measures; its aim not only to punish would-be migrants to Britain for daring to set foot here, but explicitly to deter others from coming after them. Following hot on the heels of the draconian Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which drew a formal distinction between asylum seekers who arrive in Britain via ‘legal routes’ and those who come using whatever other methods they can, the new Bill is specifically geared to further attack and criminalise the second group.
The Illegal Migration Bill had its first and second readings in the House of Commons on 7 and 13 March. The main new proposed measures are:
- Anyone who arrives ‘illegally’ will be unable to claim asylum and the Home Secretary will have a duty to remove them.
- This is irrespective of whether they make a claim under the Refugee Convention, European Convention on Human Rights or provisions against Modern Slavery.
- They will be detained for 28 days, during which time they will be unable to apply for bail or judicial review. This can be extended in some circumstances.
- People from EU and some other European countries, notably Albania, will be deported to their own country, while others will be sent to a ‘safe, third country’, such as Rwanda.
- Other than in exceptional situations, asylum claims will only be heard after removal, ie hearings will take place remotely from wherever the person ends up.
- Even if their case is ultimately successful, anyone subject to these provisions will be barred from British citizenship, as will their children.
In advance of the Bill becoming law, on 29 March Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick announced plans to imprison asylum seekers in military barracks. As part of what Jenrick described as ‘suffus[ing] our entire system with deterrence’ he made it abundantly clear that this accommodation would be ‘rudimentary’ in the extreme and will: ‘meet their essential living needs and nothing more’. The designation of migrants as second class citizens was overt: ‘We must not elevate the wellbeing of illegal migrants above that of the British people’.
An illegal Bill
Whilst we should generally not be preoccupied with whether vicious racist governments act ‘legally’ or ‘illegally’ (apartheid in South Africa and Nazism in Germany both having been ‘legal’, not to mention Britain’s previous swathes of racist immigration legislation), the Illegal Immigration Bill is in itself almost certainly not legal within the terms of the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into British law.
So much so, that the usual compulsory statement that a Bill is in accordance with human rights legislation has not been made. Instead, there is a 14-page memo explaining how the government thinks it may be able to squeeze the Bill into the framework of lawfulness, while Braverman told Parliament: ‘Of course the UK will always seek to uphold international law and I am confident that this bill is compatible with international law.’ In layman’s terms, this means ‘this Bill is probably against human rights law but we don’t care’.
The Bill’s provisions also appear to breach the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which Britain signed up to in 2009. Whilst this will undoubtedly lead to a raft of legal challenges it is all grist to the mill of the most right-wing Tories who would like to add exiting all those inconvenient legal conventions to having left the EU.
His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition
Labour MPs voted against the Bill; however, the Party’s opposition was profoundly reactionary and centred on berating the Conservatives for failing to be harsh enough in carrying out deportations so far and for their latest plan being unworkable.
At the First Reading on 7 March, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper began: ‘A record 45,000 people crossed the channel on dangerous small boats last year, up from just 280 four years ago… the government have allowed criminal gangs to take hold along the Channel and along our border… convictions of people smugglers have halved; Home Office asylum decisions have collapsed, down 40%… They have been in power for 13 years. The asylum system is broken, and they broke it.’
She went on to urge: ‘…serious action to stop dangerous boat crossings, which are putting lives at risk and undermining border security… Labour has put forward plans for a cross-border police unit, for fast-track decisions and returns to clear the backlog and end hotel use, and for a new agreement with France and other countries…. If the Government were serious, they would be working with Labour on our plan for a major new cross-border policing unit to go after the criminal gangs…’
And when Jenrick announced his incarceration plans on 29 March, Cooper had no words of condemnation at the mass detention of asylum seekers in spartan and inhumane prison camps. All she had to say was that once again this was ‘an admission of failure’ to ‘stop the boats’ on the government’s behalf, and that it was probable that rather than replace the use of hotels, these camps would be used alongside them. Labour, according to Cooper, would show even less compassion, would deport more people faster, imprison more people smugglers and restore control.
Whilst speaking from their own utterly racist standpoint, Labour politicians are correct about one thing. If success is to be measured in the crude terms of ‘stopping the boats’, the Illegal Migration Bill will not work. It will not deter desperate people from attempting to get to Britain. On 14 March the Court of Appeal granted permission to a group of asylum seekers to further challenge government plans to deport migrants to Rwanda. The case will be considered at a full hearing on 24-27 April. If the Court of Appeal rules against the appellants there are likely to be further hearings in the Supreme Court and possibly the European Court of Human Rights.
Until all this is settled there are unlikely to be any deportation flights to Rwanda, and even if the scheme is successfully pushed through, its capacity is limited. The government is clearly planning mass deportations to Albania; however it has nowhere to send people from other places of high migration, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been ravaged by imperialist wars, or Iran, whose human rights record Britain voices opposition to but from where there is no ‘safe and legal’ alternative to the ‘illegal’ arrival.
Own goal for the BBC
On 7 March, BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker tweeted in response to a video of Braverman giving a ‘Stop the Boats’ speech: ‘Good heavens, this is beyond awful’. Lineker has 8.7 million twitter followers and the comment attracted a plethora of responses, both critical and supportive. An hour later he wrote: ‘There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s…’
The government and its supporters were seething. Deputy Conservative Party Chair Lee Anderson retorted: ‘Once again this taxpayer-funded virtue-signalling out-of-touch multi-millionaire ex-footballer pipes up to show how totally out of touch he is with the rest of the British public.’ Zionists weighed in to complain that the comparison to Nazism belittled the suffering of the holocaust and was therefore anti-Semitic.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s press secretary told reporters it was ‘disappointing to see ‘that kind of rhetoric’ from someone whose salary is paid by the licence fee but that it was ‘up to the BBC’ to determine what action it should take.
On 10 March the nominally independent and impartial BBC – whose chairman Richard Sharp has recently come under fire for facilitating an £800,000 loan guarantee for former Tory PM Boris Johnson – ordered Lineker to ‘step back’ from presenting that weekend’s Match of the Day (MOTD), presumably in the hope of whipping him into line behind the scenes. Whoever thought this was a good idea had not reckoned on the solidarity of the other MOTD presenters who refused to appear on the show without Lineker, swiftly followed by match commentators and players refusing to commentate or be interviewed. In the event, the show aired for just 20 minutes on Saturday and 15 on Sunday, with no commentary or discussion. This was a massive own goal for the corporation and highly embarrassing for both the BBC and the government.
Gary Lineker is no left-wing saint. He previously tweeted in opposition to Jeremy Corbyn, when of course there was no outcry about impartiality. However, in calling out the government for its inflammatory, racist language and draconian refugee policy, Lineker instinctively did what Keir Starmer’s Labour Party refused to do.
Having initially distanced themselves from Lineker’s comments, as soon as the popularity of his stance became evident, hypocritical Labour politicians fell over themselves to grab some reflected glory. Reminiscent of Labour’s behaviour when footballer Marcus Rashford campaigned for children to receive free meals during lockdown, after they had been silent on the question, they now applauded Lineker, complaining that the BBC was stifling free speech.
At the same time Starmer, Cooper and the rest of the front bench continued to make clear that they share the government’s racist desires to deter and punish migrants, stressing that they have better ideas on how to achieve this. The Labour Party is gearing up to win the next election and to do this it must win back the voters in the ‘red wall’ constituencies. It calculates that these voters will be happy for Labour to attack the BBC but do not support the rights of migrants.
The following week Lineker was back on MOTD; his tweets are still up and he continues to comment on issues he considers of concern, while the BBC has announced an independent review of its social media guidelines. The BBC clearly only cares about ‘impartiality’ when it conflicts with its role as the propaganda arm of the British state. As former footballer John Barnes pointed out: ‘It was OK for Gary to be critical of Qatar and its human rights record –yet it’s not OK for him to be critical of human rights issues in his own country.’
Racist Britain
Britain is an imperialist country which has looted and plundered more than half the world. It continues to bomb, occupy and wreak havoc and environmental destruction. Yet the people who flee that havoc are vilified and criminalised. Successive British governments, Labour and Tory, have attacked migrants and asylum seekers. As the current Conservative government becomes more desperate to divert attention from the massive crisis of capitalism, it is ramping up the anti-migrant rhetoric and looking for yet more draconian methods of punishment and control. The Labour Party has nothing different to offer.
We stand against all Britain’s racist immigration controls and in solidarity with migrants. An injury to one is an injury to all.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! no 293, April/May 2023
