The Labour government’s vicious attacks on migrants have two aims: manage the flow of labour to suit the needs of British capital while also appearing ‘tough on illegal immigration’ in order to appeal to an openly reactionary layer of the British electorate. By January 2025, the Home Office boasted of removing the highest number of migrants since 2018 when the figure was 16,400. In less than a year and a half in power it has expelled close to 50,000 people. In November 2025 the government sank to new depths when Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a raft of barbaric measures targeting asylum seekers and refugees. This comes within an intense atmosphere of racism, whipped up by the state and media, that has led to all national and ethnic minorities coming under attack. KOTSAI SIGAUKE reports.
On 28 October 2025, the Home Office published a report detailing ‘Operation Sterling’ – the ‘largest crackdown on illegal workers since records began’. The government invested £5m in immigration enforcement ‘to target, arrest, detain, deport and return illegal workers in take-aways, fast food delivery services, beauty salons and car washes’. Over 1,000 workers have been kidnapped and deported under this crackdown. The operation has seen 8,000 immigration arrests as well as 11,000 raids between October 2024 and September 2025 – this represents a 51% increase in immigration raids and a 63% increase in immigration arrests compared to the previous year.
‘Restoring Order and Control’
On 19 November, the Home Office published a policy paper entitled Restoring Order and Control: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy. The paper proposes a laundry list of draconian measures designed to reduce the number of people coming to Britain to claim asylum and to increase deportations. These include:
- Refugees’ right to remain to be reviewed every 30 months – if their home country is deemed ‘safe’ they will be liable for deportation.
- Removing the automatic right to family reunion for asylum seekers granted protection.
- Refugees to be required to spend 20 years living in Britain before being eligible for indefinite settled status – up from the current five years.
- Consultations with the aim of introducing stricter requirements for migrants to be able to claim benefits.
- Support for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute to be ‘discretionary’ rather than automatic.
- A power to seize valuables such as jewellery or bikes from asylum seekers to fund support.
- Housing all asylum seekers in ‘large sites’ – meaning military barracks.
- Consultations on setting up processes for deporting entire families, including children.
None of this will stop migration. Mass migration is a structural fact of imperialism. Britain is the oldest imperialist country in the world; the wealth it enjoys today is a result of its shameless looting and pillaging of underdeveloped countries. Imperialism also drives wars and armed conflicts while repressive regimes are propped up by imperialist powers. In these conditions, people moving to the imperialist heartlands for safety or work is inevitable.
These policies will mean migrants harassed and their valuables stolen, and families either split up or kidnapped, brutalised and expelled. More people arriving to Britain will be forced to live underground, doing exploitative jobs and living in slum housing, further entrenching a segregated system that creates a hierarchy of workers with British citizens granted the most rights and security while migrants, particularly asylum seekers, are vilified and left destitute. The working class will be further divided and weakened.
Racist attacks on our streets
Migrants and ethnic and national minorities in Britain face not just brutality from the state but increasing racist attacks on the streets. Home Office data shows that in England and Wales excluding London reported racist hate crimes increased by 6% in the year to March 2025. Hate crimes targeting Muslims increased by a fifth. Data from the British Muslim Trust recorded 27 attacks against 25 mosques between July and October. Communities were left terrorised after a Sikh woman was raped by two racists on 9 September in Oldbury. Another Sikh woman was raped in a racist attack in Walsall on 25 October.
Racist attacks are the inevitable result of the climate of racism that has been whipped up by the state and the media to justify the government’s draconian policies; they create a climate of fear which goes hand in hand with the ‘hostile environment’ implemented by successive Labour and Tory governments. When Prime Minister Keir Starmer references Enoch Powell’s racist ‘rivers of blood’ speech by claiming that migrants are making Britain an ‘island of strangers’, it should be no surprise when black and brown people are then attacked and told to ‘go back to your own country’. It is the government’s rhetoric taken to its logical conclusion – migrants and national and ethnic minorities are not welcome in Britain.
Racism, imperialism and crisis
Immigration plays a vital role in capital accumulation. When needed, labour can be drawn in from all over the world, particularly from oppressed nations systematically impoverished and underdeveloped by imperialism. Migrant workers have fewer rights and are at constant threat of deportation; for this reason, migrant labour is not simply extra labour but a special kind of labour – migrants are subject to super-exploitation, living in precarious conditions and doing the hardest jobs for the lowest pay. When migrant labour is no longer needed, in times of economic crisis, it is expelled while new migrants are kept out. The systematic process of dehumanisation, oppression and exploitation of people from oppressed nations, particularly migrants, is the essence of racism.
Reflecting the shifting needs of British imperialism, the Labour government is attempting to attract skilled migrant labour to work in specific industries. On the other hand, families, children, dependents and ‘lower-skilled’ labour are being kept out or removed by force. Over 100 occupations, including rail and social care workers, are all on the chopping block.
Asylum seekers cannot be controlled in the same way as migrants who come to work. They flee their countries and claim asylum on humanitarian grounds, affording them specific rights and protections. Consecutive governments, both Labour and Tory, have been eroding these rights for decades.
As British imperialism continues its relative decline, the state, no matter which party is in government, will continue to attack migrants and the most oppressed sections of the working class. The British state will grow more violent, racist and reactionary as the crisis intensifies. Under these conditions of increasing racist attacks from the state and on the streets, a fightback from the most oppressed sections of the working class is inevitable. The RCG has always been clear that opposition to British imperialism is the key to building an anti-racist movement – this means opposition to all immigration controls, opposition to the racist British state and bringing down the imperialist system that drives impoverishment, oppression and exploitation. The time to organise is now.
