The racist Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Bill is now law and the oppressive prison ship chartered by the government to warehouse asylum seekers has docked in Portland Harbour. Although the government is in disarray and likely to lose the next election, it faces only muted opposition to its vicious anti-migrant campaign. NICKI JAMESON reports.
The Illegal Migration Act takes further the draconian measures in the Nationality and Borders Act 2023, and will ensure that anyone arriving in Britain other than by highly limited ‘legal channels’ will be detained and removed, and will only be able to claim asylum from wherever they are sent. Even if someone who arrives ‘illegally’ is ultimately successful in claiming asylum, they will be barred from British citizenship, as will their children.
An illegal Act
The Illegal Migration Act is clearly incompatible with existing laws and conventions on human rights, refugees and modern slavery to which Britain is a signatory, and has been widely condemned by groups working with refugees, including international inter-governmental bodies at the highest level. The day after the completion of the Bill’s passage through Parliament, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi issued a joint statement urging the British government to reverse the law, saying that the Bill was ‘at variance with the country’s obligations under international human rights and refugee law and will have profound consequences for people in need of international protection’. Türk warned that ‘In addition to raising very serious legal concerns from the international perspective, this Bill sets a worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations that other countries, including in Europe, may be tempted to follow, with a potentially adverse effect on the international refugee and human rights protection system as a whole’.
Racist Labour
The Bill’s successful passage through Parliament was inevitable. Despite repeated scandals around Covid-19, harassment and corruption, and its clear inability to manage the economic crisis, for now the government retains a significant parliamentary majority, so will always be able to push through its plans. The antiquated, but frequently more liberal, House of Lords has only very limited powers to challenge this, and even there was stymied by the pathetic subservience of the Labour Lords, as graphically demonstrated when all but a handful refused to back the attempt by Liberal Democrat Lord Brian Paddick to use an obscure mechanism to derail the Bill. Instead, Labour half-heartedly participated in the charade of putting forward amendments which would very slightly blunt the sharpest edges of the racist Bill, only to watch them knocked out one by one by the Commons. On the final night of the ‘parliamentary ping-pong’ during which amendments are sent back between the Commons and Lords, 40% of Labour peers did not even show up to vote.
Labour politicians are keen to ensure that they do not appear any less racist than the Tories. They are banking on the section of ‘Red Wall’ voters they lost to the Conservatives in 2019 returning to them at the next election and do not want to risk doing anything to upset what they perceive to be the entrenched prejudices of this section of the electorate. Polls appear to show that this is working. Keir Starmer said in March 2023 that, if elected, he had no plans to repeal the Illegal Migration Act, but instead would bring in ‘our own legislation to deal with the Channel crossings’. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has repeatedly berated the government for its asylum system being chaotic and slow, but never for it being cruel or discriminatory. Labour’s promise is that it will solve the same ‘problem’ of migrants arriving by boat via more policing and imprisonment of ‘smugglers’, and a return to the ‘fast-track’ asylum system, which was previously abolished following successful legal challenge.
Bibby Stockholm arrives in Dorset
On 18 July, the refitted accommodation barge, the Bibby Stockholm, arrived in Portland Harbour in Dorset. The barge, which was designed to hold 222 offshore workers on a temporary basis, will be used for the next 18 months to house up to 500 migrant men.
Portland is a small ‘tied island’, connected to the mainland by a narrow spit of land. It has a population of 13,500, was previously home to a naval base and currently contains two men’s prisons. Twenty years ago the spot where the Bibby Stockholm is berthed was the location of a third prison, this time a floating one – HMP Weare, also a refitted Bibby Line ship.
The barge’s arrival was greeted by two simultaneous protests: one from the No to the Barge local group, the other by the Dorset branch of Stand up to Racism. There are streaks of racism and xenophobia in some of the local campaigning, which has had the backing of right-wing Tory MP Richard Drax; however, there are also genuine fears about the already run-down local NHS and other services being unable to cope with the demands of an increased population on the island. Despite the Home Office superficially trying to pacify those expressing such worries, it is clearly to the government’s advantage for there to be mistrust and hostility from the local community.
The more that communities facing the stark consequences of the capitalist crisis blame scapegoats such as asylum seekers for their problems, the less they point the finger at the real culprits in Parliament and the City of London. On 27 June all 95 workers at the Stradey Park hotel in Llanelli, south Wales, were peremptorily sacked, following a deal between the hotel’s owner, Gryphon Leisure, and the government’s contracted provider of asylum accommodation, Clearsprings Ready Homes. The hotel has 77 rooms and will be used to house up to 241 people, three to a room. Llanelli has never recovered from the demise of the coal, steel and tin industries, and has the lowest economic growth in Wales. Sacked workers and other local people have been blockading the hotel in protest. Far-right groups with an overtly racist agenda have been quick to rally to exploit their cause.
Rwanda deportation plan unlawful – for now
While, for now the government’s method of dealing with newly-arrived asylum seekers is to warehouse them in army camps and prison ships, the longer term plan is for ‘offshoring’ to other countries – at this stage, primarily Rwanda in East Africa.
On 29 June the Court of Appeal ruled that the ‘Rwanda plan’ – the brainchild of Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s predecessor, Priti Patel –was unlawful. In April 2022 Patel had signed a controversial Memorandum of Understanding with the Rwandan government to the effect that asylum seekers arriving in Britain, instead of having their claims decided here, would be sent to Rwanda. Removal would not be a temporary stage in the process, but would absolve Britain of all further responsibility, with the would-be asylum claimant either granted a stay in Rwanda or further deported from there.
The first deportation flight to Rwanda was due to take off on 14 June 2022, but was prevented from doing so by a determined combination of direct action and legal challenge. The High Court subsequently heard a number of judicial review applications, quashing the attempts to remove the individual claimants on the basis of ‘procedural unfairness’, but ruling against the more generic contentions that the policy itself was unlawful. Ten individuals and the charity Asylum Aid then appealed in relation to the policy itself.
The Court of Appeal found by a majority that Rwanda does not constitute a ‘safe third country’ to which deportations should be effected for the purpose of processing asylum claims. The third judge disagreed with this conclusion and the court ruled unanimously against the rest of the points raised by the appellants. Whilst this is a victory for those fighting against the government’s plans, it does not put them on firm ground. As the Freedom of Movement legal blog points out: ‘Importantly, the majority did not hold that the UK was obliged to decide the asylum claims of refugees who arrive within its jurisdiction; they held that Rwanda was not a safe country to which to send refugees to have their claims decided. The judges do not rule out the possibility of refugees being removed to a genuinely safe country.’
The lack of a stronger decision has made the government confident it can still prevail. Claiming ‘I absolutely believe this policy is lawful’, Braverman has now been granted permission to challenge the Court of Appeal decision in the Supreme Court.
On 26 June the government published the Impact Assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill. Figures in the assessment include that the additional costs for deportation to Rwanda, or another designated ‘safe country’ will be £169,000 per person (made up of £105,000 to the receiving country, £18,000 for Home Office costs, £1,000 for the Ministry of Justice, £22,000 for flights and escorts and £7,000 for the costs of detention). This is all on top of the £140m which has already been paid to the Rwandan government for ‘set-up’ costs.
Managing migration for capitalism
Although Prime Minister Rishi Sunak continues to spout the rhetoric of Tory governments since 2010 that he will reduce net migration – with Braverman in 2022 having echoed the pledge by David Cameron to reduce it to ‘tens of thousands’ – what capitalism actually wants is that migration be like a tap it can turn on and off, as required.
The post-war Labour government somewhat reluctantly facilitated the Windrush generation of ‘colonial subjects’ in coming to Britain, primarily from the Caribbean, to fill labour shortages. Recently revealed documents show how those who subsequently fell physically or mentally ill were returned to their home countries. Only able-bodied workers were wanted.
While subsequent immigration laws, brought in by successive governments, Tory and Labour, from the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act to the 1971 Immigration Act and beyond, were increasingly restrictive, in 2000 Tony Blair’s Labour government began a deliberate programme of ‘managed migration’, leading to the introduction in 2006 of the tiered work visa scheme, a version of which is still in place. On the same day that the Illegal Migration Bill completed its parliamentary passage, the current government put in place changes to the ‘shortage occupation list’ to allow work visa applications by bricklayers and masons, roofers, roof tilers and slaters, carpenters and joiners, plasterers, and other unspecified workers in both the building and fishing industries.
Fight racism! Fight imperialism!
Britain is an imperialist nation which has plundered and looted more than half the world, and which continues an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This imperialism finds its domestic expression in the racist immigration laws which target migrants to Britain, seeking sanctuary from war, economic hardship and climate change. Successive governments have seesawed between attacking ‘economic migrants’ whilst welcoming ‘genuine asylum seekers’ on the one hand, to encouraging economic migration that benefits British capitalism while vilifying asylum seekers as lying scroungers. As anti-racists and anti-imperialists, we do not accept these phony distinctions and we oppose all Britain’s racist immigration laws.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 295 August/September 2023
